Motorola Droid (Milestone) coming to Canada in January, exclusively on Telus
On Friday, November the 6th, the heavily hyped Android 2.0 Droid smartphone launched on the largest US carrier, Verizon. The Droid is another phone in the long list of iPhone killers, but unlike the other pretender’s to this crown, it really seems to have all the right mix of features and cool to succeed – with commercials like this, these, and good early reviews here and here.
However the biggest news for Canadians is the news that Droid will be coming to Canada in Q1 2010. When I started writing this article over the weekend it was only a rumour, from a reliable source, that the Droid, or specifically the HSPA ‘Milestone’ version, was coming to Telus exclusively in Q1 2010. On Monday night both Mobile Syrup (who had a hands on at a recent Telus event) and BGR broke the news that it was officially coming, and today it was formally announced with a press release detailed on Mobile Syrup, and an updated page, with specs, on Motorola`s Canadian website. Since this is the Milestone, not the Droid, it will be lacking Google Maps ‘turn by turn’ navigation, but this is more to do with the navigation data rights situation in Canada, rather than Motorola and Google not wanting to offer this to Canadians. On the bright side multi-touch will be supported out of the box, and by the time it ships there will probably an update to Android 2.0 to fix some of the little glitches that the Droid has.
It would have been cooler if they could use the Droid branding in Canada too, but since it is a Verizon exclusive we’ll be stuck with the less nerdy Milestone. Also the cyberpunk future marketing of the Droid in the US wouldn’t exactly mesh with Telus’ cute and friendly image here in Canada! No matter what they call it though, this announcement is sure to make a lot of hardcore phone geek’s decisions pretty hard over the next few months – should they hold out for Wind Mobile (if it ever launches), sign up with Telus/Bell now to get a HSPA HTC Hero, Omnia II or iPhone, or wait to get this piece of mobile cool? If they can wait, hopefully by then, either Wind will have launched, or Rogers will have responded with better deals, forcing Telus to improve their HSPA data offerings, since this phone is one device that you will probably chew through a lot of data on.
Despite my own personal misgivings about the current Telus data rates, I definitely will be one of first in line for this phone. Droid does!
