Mobile Phone News

When the most of your business suddenly shifts virtually all of its marketing and engineering resources to Android, certain things are bound to fall through the cracks — take the “Ruby,” for example, once said to be the fallen would-be successor to the RAZR 2. We guess Moto got far enough along on engineering with this one that they figured they’d toss it over to one of its decrease-volume markets rather than canning it altogether, though, because the higher-end flip has reemerged in South Korea as the KLASSIC. For anyone who keeps track of these sorts of stats, that’s precisely three more letters than the typical Moto model name has, but the phone breaks all sorts of rules — after all, it combines an old-school 2G radio (which in operator SKT’s case, means CDMA) with a relatively fresh 5 megapixel cam, not unlike the ZN5. There’s no word on a release outside South Korea at this point, but frankly, we’re pretty sure the DROID would eat it anyhow.

Turns out that the DROID does support multitouch after all — it’s just not as baked as the MILESTONE’s, and it’s certainly not the kind you’ll see out of the box. The DROID’s European cousin features multitouch right in the phone’s core software load (most notably pinch-and-zoom in the browser, which we’ve seen demoed on video) whereas the DROID itself still features multitouch capability in APIs but doesn’t expose it through any built-in app. Translation: the apps you use every day — Google Maps and the browser, chiefly — get left out in the cold for some reason that neither Google nor Motorola (nor Verizon) have thus far been willing to adequately justify. Where you can experience the magic of pinch-and-zoom is in third-party apps written to take advantage of Android 2.0’s new APIs (Phandroid demos it on a fresh version of Picsay, for instance), but at the end of the day, that’s a consolation prize — we still want a spin-free explanation of why this was all turned off for the base apps. Follow the break for video of Picsay’s support for the good stuff in action.

When the Motorola DROID debuts in Verizon Wireless stores bright and early this Friday, one nice little feature that won’t be making an appearance yet is tethering, for computing with your laptop on-the-go when that Android 2.0 interface just won’t cut it. We’re pretty sure that missing functionality won’t be lessening the early adopter crowds too much, but if you are so inclined, Gearlog’s confirmed with VZW that its “Broadband Access Connect” tethering plan is indeed coming to the device, but not until sometime early 2010. at this time, how about muscling Motorola and / or Google for some of that double-finger pointing our fine European friends get to indulge in?

Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Verizon Wireless, Android