The rumour-mill surrounding Telus is working overtime this week.
It seems Canada will be getting it’s own version of the famed Droid phone this week.
Thanks to a pile of leaks, we can be pretty certain Telus will debut the Canadian Droid on Feb. 18. And I have to say it looks pretty cool.
The new device is called the ‘Milestone’ and is built by Motorola. It’s almost identical to the American Droid phone. Both have 3.7-inch 480×854-pixel resolution screens, 5-megapixel cameras with dual-LED flash, and 3.5mm headset jacks.
In terms of form factor, it’s a ‘slider-touchscreen’. While maintaining a fully functional 3.7 in touch screen, you can also slide out a full QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode.
What makes the Milestone special is it’s operating system. It will be running (hopefully the latest version of) the Google Android operating system known as ‘Android’. It’s an elegant piece of software that many people are finding comparable to/better than the iPhone operating system.
Android phones also have the major Google applications built right in. That includes integration of Google Calendar, Gmail, an updated Google Maps, and of course Google Search.
The iPhone made apps a big deal with ‘there’s an app for that’ campaign. While other smartphone designers like Blackberry/RIM have struggled to keep pace with Apple’s amazing success, Google seems well positioned to actually challenge the iPhone. The Android App store is already the second largest after Apple, despite the iPhone’s massive head start.
Just as a hint to how nice this phone is, when I recently visited my local Telus store, one of the staff told me how excited all the staff are to upgrade to this device.
Personally though, the thing I love most about all these Android devices are the ads.
