Droid Pro surfaces…and is not what we expected

October 5, 2010 Zealot Benmergui 1 Comment

Now here is something interesting, a device that came out of left field and beaned me (and most tech bloggers) right in the head. A Pro version of the Android-based Droid has been whispered about for some time, with early fuzzycam shots and rumors describing a Droid with slightly different color scheme (white of all things, for business?) and international bands…but otherwise nothing too radical.

However, everyone was wrong. Feast your eyes on Motorola’s Droid Pro above, soon to be released on Verizon in the US.

The phone is being billed as the first Android phone aimed squarely at business users, and as if to make that immediately apparent it seems that the Droid Pro put on a BlackBerry costume.

The candy-bar style phone sports a 3.1-inch touch screen, a front facing QWERTY, and Froyo along with the following features:

Voice service in more than 220 countries
Data coverage in more than 200 countries
A 1GHz processor (no word which, but think Snapdragon or Hummingbird)

5MP camera
Exchange security features
Complex password support

Device management options

Of course we are missing a lot of details (RAM? External storage?) so I am still holding my breath a little about this one. However, while there is no way to tell until I actually get my hands on one, the QWERTY keyboard that the device is based around looks very good, reminiscent of Moto’s excellent keyboards on the Q. Candy-bar style keyboards are much better than slide-out ones (like on the Droid and Droid 2) for business users, as it allows for one-handed typing. That is invaluable when you are travelling and need to send an email while getting to your departure gate or navigating the office hallways. Of course, it is also a great change in my eyes since the keyboard on the original Droid may be the worst I have actually physically touched and lived to tell the tale. I mean it; it was like the keyboards I used to draw on paper and pretend I was typing on when I was 6.

…stop looking at me like that.

No word on pricing yet but it will be available at the beginning of November from Verizon. As it is a world phone, I assume it will be rolled out in other markets as well. I hope it does cross the pond soon since, unless I am very mistaken, this will be the phone I replace my Treo Pro with.

I can’t help it. Candy bar QWERTYs make me forget my name.

UPDATE: Engadget got more complete specs from Moto, as follows: