We've been hearing about a 1GHz Snapdragon-based Android handset called the
HTC Dragon ever since the
HD2 came out, but now it looks like some pieces are falling into place -- apparently
this mystery HTC set we spotted over the weekend is a CDMA version of the Dragon headed for Verizon as the HTC Passion sometime in Q4. Apparently Verizon's trying to unify the hardware UI of its Droid lineup, which is why the
Motorola Droid, the
HTC Droid Eris, and the Passion share a set of buttons along the bottom edge of the screen, and some people are also claiming that the white notification bar is further sign of similarity. As for us, well, we'll wait to hear more before we start to get too excited -- and we can't help but wonder if this thing will run Sense or stock Android 2.0 when it hits, as
HTC's big new ad push is all about personalization. Still, it's looking like a hell of a year for Android (and Verizon), no?
posted Oct 26th 2009 12:21PM
the white notification bar is the standard android interface, nothing special about that.
Check this article on PhoneDog:
http://www.phonedog.com/cell-phone-research/blog/not-verizon-htc-passion-is-a-gsm-android-phone.aspx?utm_source=Rss&utm_medium=Blog&utm_campaign=PhoneDog
The author of that article is an idiot. Had the article come out two months ago i'd say he's just wrong, but to still say this late in the game that because a top bar has 3G instead of EV makes it GSM is just rediculous. It's been discussed ad nauseam that many of Verizon's recent phones have switched to using 3G in order to make it less confusing to customers shopping around and seeing 3G on other carriers and to support the eventual switch to "4G" in the status bar when LTE rolls out.
I'd like to see people spending this much time on finding some comparisons between Snapdragon and OMAP processor performance (and i mean real benchmarks! not statements like "ummm, OMAP totally like has a dedicated GPU therefore hencetoforth it must like totally like kick ass"). Or figuring out the other real mystery around this phone which is that some are reporting it's not a Snapdragon processor but a TI OMAP 3640 1 Ghz instead.
Why does the notification bar and "Welcome to ..." have censor blocks over them? What are you hiding????
Have you seen the big "www.TheUnlockr.com" over the middle of the picture, this isn't an Engadget exclusive, its a leaked picture of a sample phone sent out to someone under an NDA. The white blocks are to remove the date and time info (in case the source could be identified by who had one at that time) and the welcome to page had an identification number on it instead of a model or operating system name. If engadget actually gave the original source some recognition and possibly a link to the original leak you could have checked this out for yourself.