Verizon Motorola Sholes not running MOTOBLUR?
By Nilay Patel 
posted Oct 6th 2009 4:51PM
posted Oct 6th 2009 4:51PM
We'd been hearing rumors that the Motorola Sholes on Verizon wouldn't be running MOTOBLUR because it's to be a "Google Experience" device, and while that seemed silly at first, it certainly looks like the device Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam was waving around this morning was running stock Android. How can we tell? For starters, Blur has a different 3G icon in the menu bar, and different icons for several apps -- Calendar leaps out to us here. What's more, that certainly appears to be the default Android search box lurking back there, something that's not part of the Blur homescreen. That's definitely odd, considering how big a bet Motorola seemed to be placing on Blur as its handset differentiator -- and doubly odd since the HTC Hero Eric Schmidt was holding at the same photo op was running Sense on top of Android. We'll have to see how this one shakes out when the Sholes is actually launched, but for now we'd say those rumors are looking awfully true.
[Image credit: Associated Press, under license; thanks to everyone who sent this in]
[Image credit: Associated Press, under license; thanks to everyone who sent this in]
I'm actually glad it's not running Blur.
Isn't it safe to say that there will be a fairly easy way of loading a Blur-like or Sense-like interface onto this phone anyway once we get a chance to play with it first hand?
We've already known this for over a week now. Where were you guys when somebody on Howard Forums started talking about the phone and posting pictures of it in action?
call me crazy but wouldn't the phone need send and end buttons to run stock android?
First - I'm pretty sure this isn't news, as it has been reported just about everywhere that "Sholes" wouldn't be running MotoBlur.
Reason being that MotoBlur is while nice looking and all, intended at a social networking end user, whereas "Sholes" is (according to what I saw) intended to a more high end (business) market, so MotoBlur and all its "Facebook" and "Twitter" integration would not be something you would want on this phone.