There was a lot of buzz when the Droid came out that it could be an “iPhone killer.” But now that the hype has died down, it is plain to see that the existence of the Droid hasn’t put the iPhone out of commision.

While the Droid is a definite competitor for the iPhone, it has its drawbacks as well. One of its biggest strengths is its speed, which is hands down faster than the iPhone. However, currently the Android Marketplace doesn’t come anywhere near the iPhone’s App Store in terms of availability of applications, with the App Store coming in with around 100,000 applications compared to Android’s meager 10,000.

The Droid also has a slide out keyboard in addition to its on-screen text writing software. By contrast, the iPhone lacks any keyboard hardware, though some users have reported that they find this feature to be more obtrusive than useful.

At a press event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Motorola lifted the wraps and debuted their new wireless handset, the Backflip, which has both a touch-screen and keypad similar to the popular Droid handset that went on sale at Verizon Communications Inc. in November.

The difference on this device from the Droid is that the Backflip has its keypad in the back, which folds out rather than sliding out.

The smart phone also features the Motorola’s, MotoBlur software, a platform that is designed to integrate social networking and other communications features easily for the user. MotoBlur is featured on the Cliq but not on the Droid.

Motorola’s co-CEO, Sanjay Jha who leads the handset business, said the company plans to launch the device in the first quarter of this year, but could not give a specific launch date, carrier partner or price on the device.

AT&T had press conference earlier in the day, and said it planned to launch new Android phones this year, and had a picture of the Backflip.

Like all new smartphones released to date, they will sooner or later go through the traditional ‘which is better’ comparison against the god of the smartphone world, the iPhone.  The Apple iPhone has dominated the smartphone/mobile world for years and hasn’t slowed down for any of it’s competition.  Although there are many who dislike the iPhone you’ve got to give it to Apple.  They changed the game in the smartphone world.

Now, Google is getting into the smartphone business with their Nexus One, a smartphone that has been tipped may be a game changer if Google goes the unlocked route and sells the unit themselves.  Can Nexus One take down the iPhone giant and capture the smartphone market for itself?  There have been many who have tried and haven’t come close.  We shall see in the coming months, though I seriously doubt it.

The Blackberry Curve 8900 is the ideal gadget for the technologically savvy professional. The Curve 8900 provides users with tools aimed at making conducting business simple and efficient while offering features made for one’s pleasure and entertainment.

The Blackberry Curve 8900 synchronizes with Microsoft Outlook, allowing you to synchronize your tasks and calendars. It is also an excellent for checking e-mails, viewing documents, taking photographs, recording videos, and listening to music.

Blackberry offers technology that allows you to attach up to ten personal and corporate e-mails to phone. As a result you can receive, read and respond to email no matter where you are.

In addition to reading email, users can open attachments, view and edit documents, because the Curve 8900 has capabilities to support Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Adobe PDF files. It also provides an impressive 2.4-inch, 480 x 360-pixel LCD screen with 65K colors to make viewing these files a pleasure.

The Curve 8900 also has an excellent functioning camera and video recorder both providing high quality photographs and videos. The camera has 2x digital zoom, image stabilization, auto focus, and flash.
All of these features come in a relatively small package. This smart phone is compact and light; it weighs 3.9 ounces and measures 2.4 x 4.3 x 0.5 inches.

If you want a smart phone that effectively and efficiently combines practicality and pleasure, the Blackberry Curve 8900 is the smart choice for smart users.

Nine out of ten blurry-cam operators agree, a diet of caffeine and Twinkies is best for getting those sneaky shots that make you so popular among tech blogs.  Someone has sent CrunchGear a deliriously wonky photo of what’s said to be an e-reader from a company with no track record in the tablet or ebook reader segment.

The device apparently runs Android, and there’s speculation that it’s a musical-themed gadget since there are some decidedly note-like icons up near the top of the image.  Of course, given the fact that there are exposure trails from most of the on-screen images, it’s entirely possible that those “notes” are in fact simply circular, with camera shake creating the hooked tails.

Either way, it’s seemingly bigger than other Android touchscreen devices we’ve seen previously, and we’ll always welcome a new entrant to the tablet/e-reader sphere.  Anybody have any idea what this mysterious gadget might be?

Sony Ericsson weren’t, to be fair, being all that coy about their launch plans for the XPERIA X10 Android smartphone back at its launch a few weeks ago: asked when it was likely the touchscreen Snapdragon handset would arrive within its “Q1 2010″ window, the SE exec told us “it’s not going to be the beginning or the end of the quarter”.  We presumed a February release, then, likely around or about Mobile World Congress, and sure enough Sony Ericsson’s own online store are suggesting a February arrival for the X10.

It’s possible to pre-register interest, though not preorder at this stage, which means we’re still not entirely clear on how much the XPERIA X10 will cost.  Still, this is a premium handset and, as part of Sony Ericsson’s XPERIA range, will be priced accordingly; online retailer Clove are saying £400 ($668) pre-tax, though we’re guessing that’s speculative rather than based on any solid figures.

More interesting than the general release is when the XPERIA X10 might make it to North American shores.  Sony Ericsson did express their intention to launch the smartphone there – complete with its nifty Timescape and Mediascape apps – but blamed carrier issues for what will likely be a release later in 2010.

The BlackBerry app store may be trailing the iPhone and Android app market but it’s got an exclusive that’s sure to leave other smartphone users envious.

The official Craigslist app will soon be exclusively available to BlackBerry users. The $5 app created by Movela and Pyxis Mobile will allow users to browse and search through Craigslist postings across different categories, reply to them and save searches. The app supports all categories and countries available on the Craigslist website. So if you want to read ‘missed connections’ on the go, the BlackBerry will be the only place for it.

“We took about two days to create an initial version of the app and then took it to Craigslist for their approval,” says Todd Christy, president and CTO at Pyxis Mobile, which helped develop the app. “They liked it because we had a working app and not just a concept.”

It’s a big coup for Pyxis, which has been creating mobile applications for businesses for about nine years.

“A number of mobile app makers have applied to Craigslist for licenses and to date there is one authorized licensee,” says Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist.

BlackBerry launched it app store in April. Currently it has a little more than 2000 apps compared to the 12,000 in the Android Market and 100,000 in the iPhone app store. Craigslist apps exist on the iPhone but without official licensing, they are rather limited in their feature set.

Pyxis says the reason it chose BlackBerry is because it’s mobile technology platform is targeted at business users and a large number of BlackBerry users are business customers.

“Its our core platform and we have done a lot of testing of apps on the BlackBerry,” says Christy. “There was also no competition on the BlackBerry front for a Craigslist type app. ”

In the “distant future,” Christy says, the official Craigslist app could make its way to iPhone and Windows Mobile phones.

Check out a video of the official Craigslist app for the BlackBerry.

When it comes to smartphone operating systems it doesn’t take a genius to see that Android is the hottest OS on the market. Android devices are starting to flood the market and except for AT&T, all major wireless carriers in the US offer Android phones.

Reports are coming in that Samsung will be moving away from Windows Mobile in its handsets and moving towards using Android. According to analyst Greg Noh from HMC Investment Securities Samsung will move from 80% Windows Mobile usage to 50% in 2010.

That percentage is said to be decreased further in coming years until only 20% of Samsung’s devices use Windows Mobile by 2012. The move is seen as a signal by some that more and more handset makers are moving away from Windows Mobile towards Google’s open source Android OS.

In case you missed it last week, the Storm 2 from Blackberry hit the Verizon network officially on Friday. We also reviewed the Storm 2 at the end of October and found it to be a device worthy of being on your touchscreen shortlist.

Verizon customers can now get the Storm 2 for $179.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate. In case you somehow missed the hoards of posts with the specifications for the device, I’ll run the main items down for you here.

The handset has a touchscreen measuring 3.25-inches with a 480 x 360 resolution using capacitive technology. The handset supports 3G and operates on the EVDO Rev A network. It runs the Blackberry OS 5.0 and has a 3.2MP camera with autofocus and image stabilization. The battery is a removable 1400mAhr unit good for 5.5 hours of talk and 11.2 hours of standby.

Verizon’s second smartphone announcement this morning is one for the heavy messengers (no, we’re not talking about fat couriers): the BlackBerry Curve 8530, tipped as dropping this month back in August.  The Curve 8530 has not only EVDO Rev.A but WiFi b/g and GPS, together with a full QWERTY keyboard and 2-megapixel digital camera.

There’s also VZ Navigator, a 3.5mm headphone socket and dedicated media keys, all the usual messaging accounts (including SMS, MMS and IM) and a microSD card slot.  Onboard storage is 256MB and the processor is a 528MHz chip; the traditional BlackBerry trackball has been replaced by a touch-sensitive trackpad.

The BlackBerry Curve 8530 will go on sale from November 20th in black and smoky violet, priced from $99.99 following a $100 mail-in rebate.  That presumes a new, two-year agreement, with data plans kicking off at $29.99 on top of a regular voice plan.

Press Release:

VERIZON WIRELESS INTRODUCES THE BLACKBERRY CURVE 8530

New Smartphone Features 3G Connectivity, Built-In Wi-Fi and GPS, Touch-Sensitive Trackpad and Dedicated Media Keys

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and WATERLOO, ON – Verizon Wireless and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today introduced the BlackBerry® Curve™ 8530 smartphone, an exciting new addition to the BlackBerry Curve series of smartphones. The slim BlackBerry Curve 8530 gives customers access to Verizon Wireless’ 3G network, built-in GPS and Wi-Fi® capabilities, as well as easy access to music, games and other mobile apps for entertainment on-the-go.

Available Colors: black and smoky violet

Key features:

• Easy-to-use, highly tactile, full-QWERTY keyboard and touch-sensitive trackpad for reliable, responsive typing and navigation

• 256 MB flash memory and 528 MHz next generation processor for enhanced performance

• Supports voice-activated dialing and Bluetooth® (2.1), with support for hands-free headsets, car kits, stereo headsets and other Bluetooth peripherals

• 3G-enabled (EV-DO)

• Built-in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)

• GPS with support for location-based applications, including geotagging pictures; Supports Verizon Wireless’ VZ NavigatorSM service.

• 2.0 megapixel digital camera with zoom and video recording*

• Advanced media player for music, pictures and videos, with dedicated media keys and a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack, plus BlackBerry® Media Sync, which makes it easy to quickly sync music from your computer to the smartphone**

• Access to BlackBerry App World™, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications developed specifically for BlackBerry smartphones. Categories include games, entertainment, social networking and sharing, news and weather, productivity and much more

• Access to e-mail, messaging (IM, SMS, MMS) and popular social networking sites (including Facebook® and MySpace)

• Rich multimedia capabilities, including dedicated media keys smoothly integrated along the top of the handset, giving customers an easy, convenient way to control their music and videos

• Support for BlackBerry® services with access to up to 10 supported email accounts, including most popular ISP email accounts such as Yahoo! ®, Windows Live™ Hotmail®, AOL® and Gmail™; and BlackBerry® Enterprise Server support, which provides advanced security and IT administration features for corporate deployments

• Expandable memory via hot swappable microSD™/SDHC memory card slot, supporting up to 16 GB cards today and expected to support next generation 32 GB cards when available

Pricing and Availability

• The BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone is expected to be available from Verizon Wireless beginning Nov. 20 for $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement on a voice plan with an Email and Web feature or an Email and Web for BlackBerry plan. Customers will receive the mail-in rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted. Data plans for the BlackBerry Curve 8530 smartphone begin at $29.99 when added to any Nationwide voice plan.

• For information on all Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.

* Video recording requires microSD card, sold separately

** Certain music files may not be supported, including files that contain digital rights management technologies