Verizon can only go up from here.

To my surprise, over half (53%) of our readers think Verizon will cripple Android in some way. Only 23% think Verizon will leave Android untouched and 23% could care less because they plan to hack the phone.

These numbers are ugly, but Verizon can only improve their image from this point forward. We have no evidence that Verizon has any plans to cripple Android, but each carrier has the right to make changes for their network.

Some of our favorite comments from the poll:

“Verizon has no heart. They’re modeled after microsoft. They like to break down their services into hundreds of small bits and sell each one to you for as much as they can get each with a two year contract.” – freon500

“If they cripple the GPS i just won’t buy it.” – Joe

“If they don’t cripple the phone itself they will cripple your wallet with the plan rates they have.” – Seth Stevenson

“This bodes well for Android… mostly, but I am sure that even if it isn’t crippled in the usual sense, it will be weighted down with “Excusive Services” like VZNavigator (directions), and other such garbage in order to try and pull every dime they can out of the customer.” – JayMonster

“I am unfortunately a Verizon customer and have been waiting FOREVER for Verizon to get a good phone. They have been known to cripple all of their phones in the past so I wouldn’t be too surprised if they cripple their Android phones. If they do cripple their Android phones, that will be the last straw and I will leave Verizon for Sprint, so that I can get a HTC Hero.” -Mikael

Look to late October for a Sholes launch on Verizon.

No date has been given and I suspect this is because Google and Motorola are working endlessly to finish Android 2.0.  I have spoken with enough inside sources to be convinced the Sholes will ship with Eclair and be advertised as the first Android 2.0 phone.

October might sound like an aggressive time frame if you are wondering how Android 2.0 could be finished in two months.  I myself am worried if it will be ready in time and I would not be surprised to see this launch delayed another month.  Never the less, it appears October is the deadline that some company executive was aiming for.

If the Motorola Sholes is in fact launching in October, this is another good sign we might see the device announced on September 10, 2009 at Mobilize 09.  Apple is rumored to reveal a new iPod on September 9, 2009 and this is a good chance for Andy Rubin and Google to top that announcement with one of their own.

“Hey Taylor, you are an idiot. Donut comes before Eclair”

As I have often expressed, I am worried about the possibility of Eclair and Android 2.0 not making their way to first generation hardware like the T-Mobile G1.  I have no evidence, but I believe Donut will become Android 1.6 and rollout on the G1 in a similar time frame to Eclair on Sholes.  I believe the G1 will continue to receive 1.x updates from that point on, while second generation hardware gets 2.x updates.  I hope I’m wrong about this info, but I still don’t see T-Mobile or Google doing anything to address the storage issues on the G1.

Verizon customers are in for a treat this holiday season.

The price is still to be determined, but we predicted $199.  This would put it in the same price point of the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS.  We should get more details on the Motorola Sholes in mid September and get our hands on the device at the upcoming MOTODEV Summit this October 6th, 2009.

The Sholes might be coming sooner than we expected.

Verizon customers are in for a treat this holiday season.

Using the power of Google search, I think I found the missing link.  Look at this info taken from the LinkedIn profile of a Motorola employee with the title “3GSM Reference Design Principal Staff Firmware Engineer at Motorola”.

He list all kinds of interesting information, but all we care about is Android.  Clearly, Motorola is working on an Android device with the TI OMAP 3430 processor and it’s not the Morrison.  With this new info in hand, the pieces of this Sholes puzzle are starting to come together.

New Predictions

1. Sholes will have a TI OMAP 3430 processor

As cool as it would have been to get a Snapdragon phone, it looks like we will have to wait till 2010.  The Texas Instruments OMAP3430 is a more mature processor and ready for mass production at an affordable price now.  Noteable phones to feature the OMAP3430 include the Palm Pre, Sony Ericsson IDOU, and the Samsung OMNIA HD.

We could spend an entire post on the OMAP3430, but I’ll just give you the highlights.  The OMAP3430 has a 600 MHz CPU and contains a PowerVR SGX 530 GPU.  For detailed information on the OMAP3430, please see Texas Instruments or Imagination Technologies.

2. Sholes will ship with Eclair(Android 2.0?) and feature serious gaming

Google worked very closely with T-Mobile and HTC to bring us the G1.  The launch was a success and Google is going to double their efforts with Verizon and Motorola.  Verizon is the largest carrier in North America and Google will use this opportunity to showcase Android.  Sholes is going to be the new flagship device for Android in 2009.

We know the upcoming Donut branch is not Android 2.0.  According to the Reuters interview with Andy Rubin last week, Eclair is likely to get the 2.0 love and be ready to ship this year.  Donut is set to include many UI enhancements and Eclair looks to focus on multimedia and gaming.

Rubin said, “You can start really thinking about serious gaming like you would on a Nintendo DS or a PSP handheld.”  This makes perfect sense because the OMAP3430 supports the latest OpenGL ES 2.0 standard.  Google also recently released the Android Native Development Kit and is hard at work on an upgrade.  Browsing Google groups I found this info on the NDK, “In a future release we hope to support linking with OpenGL ES and audio libraries, which should enable high-performance games.”

Native support for OpenGL ES 2.0 + hardware acceleration from the PowerVR SGX 530 = mobile gaming device more powerful than a Sony PSP or Nintendo DSi

3. Sholes will sell for $199

Verizon just slashed the prices on most of their smartphones to $99.  Boy Genius Report speculated “new crap is coming” and he was right.  Given the current wireless market, $199 is the obvious price for the Motorola Sholes.  It has comparable specs to the Palm Pre and iPhone 3Gs which also debuted at $199.

If Verizon wanted to get super aggressive I suppose they could subsidize the phone at a lower price.  This would be quite amazing, but I don’t see it happening.  The $199 price tag is justified for Sholes and I don’t think people are going to complain over that.

Given that Sholes could possibly ship with Android 2.0, I’m going to change my targeted launch date from October to late November.  I would expect to see Sholes right before Thanksgiving.

Summary of the leaked specs for Sholes:

• OMAP3430 – 600 MHz ARM Cortex A8 + PowerVR SGX 530 GPU + 430MHz C64x+ DSP + ISP (Image Signal Processor)
• Dimensions 60.00 x 115.80 x 13.70 mm
• Weight 169 g
• Battery Li-ion 1400 mAh.
• Standby 450 hours, talk time 420 minutes
• 3.7-inch touch-sensitive display with a resolution of 854×480 pixels, 16 million color depth. Physical screen size is 45.72 mm by 81.34 mm.
• 512MB/256MB ROM/RAM
• microSD / microSDHC expansion slot
• Camera: 5.0 megapixel with autofocus and video recorder
• Connectivity: USB2.0, 3.5mm audio jack, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, Wi-Fi
• Supported audio formats: AMR-NB/WB, MP3, PCM / WAV, AAC, AAC +, eAAC +, WMA
• Supported video formats: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, WMV
• GPS navigation
• Package Contents: Phone Motorola Sholes, battery, charger, USB cable, 8GB MicroSD memory card and other literature.

p.s. given the huge role that sholes will play, i have a hard time seeing verizon cripple android.  i expect the full google experience.