Jason Hiner: One of the most widely hyped technology products of 2009 is the Verizon Droid smartphone, the first device to use the new Google Android 2.0 platform, which offers much tighter integration with Microsoft Exchange.

I’m Jason Hiner, and this week on CIO Sanity Savers, we’ll look at the Verizon Droid, from a business and IT perspective. We’ll talk about the pros and cons of the device and where it fits in for business. Stick around.

I’ve been a pretty outspoken critic of the first generation Google Android platform. I felt like it was half-baked, clunky, and a pretty poor user experience overall. However, with the combination of the Android 2.0 OS and some good hardware from Motorola, the Verizon Droid feels much more polished. Of course, it’s not perfect and it’s trying to compete in a very crowded smartphone market.

So, let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of the Droid from a business perspective. First, let’s start with the positives:

1. Solid hardware: With a slim form factor, a next generation mobile CPU, a thin slide-out keyboard, an 854×480 hi-res screen, and a 5 megapixel camera, this smartphone has some premium hardware.
2. Web browsing: With a large screen, fast processor, and a solid mobile Web browser, the Droid offers one of the best mobile Internet experiences that you’ll find. The interface isn’t quite as a smooth as the iPhone but it does render a larger area of the Web page because of the higher resolution display.
3. Email management: Android has always offered a great phone experience for Gmail, but Android 2.0 adds even more mail features and also extends that experience to corporate email with support for Exchange ActiveSync.
4. Contact management: This is the place where the Droid really shines. With your permission, it can aggregate and  unify your contact information from Gmail, Exchange, and Facebook. The Quick Contact features also makes it easy to flip through your address book, find a contact, and then decide how you want to communicate with that person — phone, email, Gmail, Facebook, SMS, etc.

Now for the drawbacks:

1. Applications: The iPhone’s biggest advantage over every other smartphone platform is the fact that it has over 100,000 applications that add a lot more usefulness to the device, including a lot of useful business functions. Android is a growing platform but it still has only a 10th of the apps that the iPhone has and the apps it does have tend to feel very 1.0 at this point.
2. User interface: Although the Droid has a more friendly UI than other smartphone platforms such as Windows Mobile or Symbian, it’s still not as easy to navigate as the iPhone. The Droid UI is solid, but it’s still going to require a user manual to figure out.
3. Overhyped: Verizon has blitzed the airwaves with ads touting the Droid’s merits and its advantages against the iPhone. That has raised expectations so high that it would difficult for almost any smartphone to match the hype.

For more on the Droid, check out my full product review. You can find the link to it in the show notes for this episode.

I’m Jason Hiner, and this has been a quick look at the Verizon Droid. For more, you can find my blog at hiner.techrepublic.com, and you can find me on Twitter at twitter.com/jasonhiner. Thanks for watching. See you next week.

[via Tech Republic]

Eric Schmidt, left, CEO of Google, holding the HTC Hero, and Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless, holding the Motorola Sholes (both unreleased)

First came the rumors. Then came the leaked images. And now, 3 all-knowing (conveniently unnamed) analysts have predicted that Verizon’s long awaited foray into Android will happen some time next week with the announcement of Motorola’s Sholes/Tao smartphone. The timing seems feasible, especially considering that Motorola is holding a MOTODEV Android-related press event next Tuesday, October 6 (WinMo 6.5 who?).

But, this is far from certain, folks. In fact, we have it on good word that Verizon retail employees have yet to train on Android, making a near term launch that much less likely. However, that does not rule out an announcement only like the recent Motorola CLIQ event.

Either way, the speculation is definitely heating up. Just this morning the friendly folks over at AndroidGuys have posted information suggesting the Tao (or whatever it will end up being called) will be released on December 1, just in time for the all-mighty holiday shopping bonanza. But the fun doesn’t stop there.

According to the super secret document that found its way to AndroidAndMe, the Tao will purportedly be the “world’s thinnest” slider QWERTY phone at 13.7mm thick. Yes, please! Other juicy tidbits include: a 3.7″ 16:9 touch screen display, 16GB built-in storage, 5MP camera with dual LED flash, full HTML browser with Flash support, and supposedly the next generation of Android, the big 2.0.

Here are the rest of the leaked specs:

* 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
* Operating System: Android 2.0 (with Eclair, no Motoblur)
* Package Contents: Phone Motorola Sholes, battery, charger, USB cable, 8GB MicroSD memory card and other literature