Will Droid Be the Ultimate iPhone Competitor?

If you were watching football or the baseball playoffs yesterday, you likely saw the media campaign Verizon Wireless has launched for its impending Droid smartphone.

Using a sort of "War of the Worlds" sci-fi approach, the ad takes off on the iPhone's weaknesses (no keyboard, no running of simultaneous applications) using an "iDon't" approach, and then moving into "DroidDoes" in what could be the biggest cannonball yet fired into the competitive smartphone battle.

Check out Verizon Wireless's Droid page and you'll see what I'm talking about. The new handset is described as a "robot sidekick" that can move at lightning speed, get you out of any problem and lives in your pocket.

That problem resolution aspect is intriguing to me, I have to admit. I'm guessing, though, Droid won't explain to my bosses why I missed a deadline, but rather help me with finding a location or reaching the right person on my phone.

Features include video, directions, tunes, 10,000-plus applications, a 5 megapixel camera, speech recognition and a notification panel (whatever that may be). It'll run on Android 2.0, the open source platform that Google embraced and launched the G1 with handset maker HTC last year.

While there's no information about when exactly Droid is arriving, I can assume that it's being made by Motorola, given the handset maker's name is in the page url.

Given I'm a Verizon customer, I signed up for more news as it comes out and loved this message the carrier provided: "Droid will notify you when Compromise has been deactivated."

You can't get more droid-like than that.

Photo courtesy of Verizon Wireless