And a few things we don't love about Motorola's forthcoming Google-powered phone.

Droid does (and doesn't) wow our writer.

The Droid is a fierce phone. Motorola's newest smartphone has a number of features that match and even best its biggest competitor, Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. It has a fast processor. It’s got a large display with almost double the resolution of the iPhone as well as a slide-out keyboard. And it’s got a five megapixel camera with flash and zoom and a video camera that renders your Flip camera unnecessary. Add to that a new sharp-edged form factor straight out of Star Trek. And the marketers have given their campaign a bunch of attitude with their “iDon’t” commercial that pits the Droid directly against the iPhone.

But is any of that going to be enough to woo iPhone fans to Motorola's new device? As I wrote in a September feature, the company has a lot riding on it. Thanks to a massive marketing push by Verizon Wireless (VZ), plenty of excitement is building for the Droid’s November 6 launch. But just a year ago there was a lot of similar hype around RIM's Storm, which was also going to take on the iPhone. Though initial sales were pretty good, the smartphone received lukewarm reviews.

Motorola's new offering will have to prove itself once the hype dies down. And with so many Android-powered devices coming to market in the next few months, it may be hard for the Droid, which Verizon Wireless will sell for $199 after an $100 rebate with a two-year contract, to stand out.

Fortune received a Droid to test this morning. I powered it up, and a monotone robotic voice uttered “Droid.” Here are five things I think Motorola (MOT) has done right with the Droid…and a couple features I miss.
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The largest smartphone maker you've never heard of wants to capture the hearts – and dollars – of the U.S. consumer.

Motorola's (MOT) Droid phone is getting a ton of buzz, and that’s by design. Verizon Wireless (VZ) chief Marketing Officer John Stratton has said the marketing campaign behind its iPhone competitor will be the largest in its history.

But the Google (GOOG)-powered device isn't the only smartphone the company is likely to begin selling at the start of November. Though no one has officially confirmed, the carrier is expected to announce a second device that will also run on Google's  Android operating system at half the price: the HTC Droid Eris.

Haven’t heard of HTC? You aren't alone. More

Photo: Apple Inc.

Call it fallout from the Sidekick fiasco.

Having watched Microsoft (MSFT) go through a weekend from hell for wiping out the personal data of thousands of T-Mobile (DT) customers, Apple (AAPL) finally acknowledged a data-swallowing bug that Snow Leopard users have been complaining about since September.

"We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix," an Apple spokesperson told CNET's Erica Ogg on Monday.

According to several hundred messages on Apple's discussion boards, the Snow Leopard problem is triggered when users log in and out of an old Leopard guest account and then try to log back in to their regular account. One victim described the effect as follows:

"Not only did Snow Leopard wipe out ALL of my documents, my email accounts, my address book, it broke the dynamic spell checker in yahoo messenger, caused random problems with Safari, InDesign, and others, caused lockups, spinning beach balls, loud fans… and it was just getting worse. I am restoring Leopard (sans snow) as I write this." (link)

The Sidekick disaster is of a different magnitude — which may be why Apple is willing to have the two discussed in the same news cycle. More

Verizon, Sybase and Quickcomm team up to manage corporations' mobility needs. Their service just scratches the surface

Chen wants to help your company go mobile. Photo: Sybase

Telecom giant Verizon (VZ) says it is launching a suite of services to help corporate IT departments manage their fleets of mobile devices. Corporate clients can hire Verizon to track their inventories of phones and monitor billings, add and drop devices as employees come and go, enforce security policies on phones and even remotely deliver applications and data to employees' handsets.

Verizon is partnering with software company Sybase (SY) and Quickcomm, which specializes in telecom-expense management, to offer a one-stop shop for companies looking to outsource mobile operations.

Analysts' reports suggest there's a need for such tools: Forrester Research estimates that by 2012 nearly three-fourths of workers worldwide, or nearly 400 million people, will be using mobile devices for work. More

Gene Munster. Photo: Piper Jaffray

No cheap, mass-market iPhone — ever. A deal with Verizon or T-Mobile next summer. And a $30 – $40 subscription TV service on iTunes that could compete with cable TV within the next year.

Those are some of the predictions offered by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster in a note to clients Monday that addressed 14 "unanswered questions" about Apple (AAPL). The exercise has become an annual tradition for Munster and can be a useful way to catch up on the news, although some of his answers are more surprising than others.

The three this year that interested us had to do with cheap iPhones, the end of AT&T (T) exclusivity and competing with cable television:

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The way consumers use Apple's mobile phone (i.e., constantly) means big headaches for carrier AT&T. And more smartphones are on the way.

Randall Stephenson, chairman, CEO, and president of AT&T, holds up his Apple iPhone

At the South by Southwest music, film, and interactive fest in Texas earlier this year, the iPhone was all the rage — and not in a good way.

The device proved so popular with Internet-addicted attendees that AT&T's wireless network in the city of Austin buckled under the strain, all but shutting down both voice and data service for many customers.

iPhone users bashed the phone company on Twitter and in blogs, and AT&T (T) had to haul in extra network equipment just to ease the gridlock. More

In the dog days of summer last year, when balky downloads in cities across the U.S. were slowing iPhones to a crawl, Wired.com's Gadget Lab launched a survey of 3G network speeds to try to pinpoint the problem.

Gadget Lab invited iPhone owners all over the world to run a simple network test and submit their findings electronically.

After collating the results from 2,636 users — 62% of them in the U.S. — Wired concluded that the fault lay not with Apple's (AAPL) device, but with the U.S. carrier it had chosen to partner with, AT&T (T). See the results here.

Now, following rumors that Apple has been talking with Verizon (VZ), the Gadget Lab has decided to give it another try.

On Monday, it launched a second Battle of the Carriers, this time testing all the major U.S. carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (DT) — and other 3G smartphones, including Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry.

The exercise only takes a few minutes. The instructions, available here, are fairly straightforward: you go to a Wired website on your phone, take the test, and then record your results on an interactive Zeemap. Just remember to click the "details" tab before you submit your entry, or else you end up — as I did the first time — sticking a blank entry on the map.

Below the fold: The 2008 results in map form. More

AT&T's rivals have become more aggressive about their pricing, and that — paradoxically — could be good for Apple (AAPL), according to Kaufman Bros.' analyst Shaw Wu.

In a report to clients issued Monday, Wu notes that Sprint's (S) Boost Mobile unit now offers a $50 plan that includes unlimited talk, messaging, Web, and walkie-talkie service. Deutsche Telekom's (DT) T-Mobile, meanwhile, is test marketing a $50 unlimited voice plan plus $25 more for unlimited data/Internet.

So far, AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) are standing firm, charging a full $130 a month for unlimited voice and data.

That means that iPhone customers pay more than twice as much for all-they-can-mobile service as, say, T-Mobile customers using Google (GOOG) Android G1s.

How is that good for Apple's iPhone, whose fate is tied for now to AT&T — at least in the U.S. market?

According to Wu, evidence shows that it's the high cost of AT&T's monthly service plans, not the cost of the devices themselves, that is the limiting factor keeping iPhone sales from growing faster than they are. (See here.)

He believes Sprint and T-Mobile's price cuts will boost their lagging smartphone sales, which will in turn put pressure on AT&T and Verizon to cut their rates — to the ultimate benefit of iPhone owners.

"Overall," he writes, "we view lower service plan prices as positive as it should help smart phone adoption maintain its healthy pace, even in this fragile economy."

Wu is modeling Apple to sell 3 million iPhones in its second fiscal quarter, which ends in March, although recent checks with his supply-chain sources suggest that sales are tracking closer to 3.5 million.

He's sticking with a price target of $120 a share, arguing that concern over possible management changes are mostly priced in and that a 15X price multiple these days is "reasonable and conservative."

Apple closed Monday at $86.95, down 4.66% for the day.

Despite the hundreds of customers who queued up outside Verizon (VZ) stores early Friday to buy the Storm –  Research in Motion's hot new smartphone — the company is likely to miss its subscriber targets for the quarter that ends Nov. 29, according to a report issued Monday by Citigroup (C) analyst Jim Suva.

The Storm, RIM's (RIMM) answer to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, sold out almost immediately — and that's the problem, according to Suva.

Further investigation, he says, showed that the stores only received 40 to 100 units each, and that disappointed customers were told they could order online but wouldn't get their Storms until Dec. 15 — too late to count in RIM's third quarter sales.

The Storm's late release and its limited supply were among several factors that caused Suva to trim his estimate of new subscriptions this quarter from 2.9 million to 2.7 million. He also predicts Q3 earnings to come in at $0.85 per share on sales of $2.85 billion — well below the Street's consensus of $0.91 EPS on sales of $2.96 billion.

Among the other clouds on RIM's horizon, as Suva sees them:

• Lack of Wi-Fi on the Storm and reviews that were "generally positive, but by no means spectacular."
• The delayed launch of the Blackberry Bold at AT&T (T) and sales that, while "solid," seem to be primarily replacements rather than sales to new subscribers.
• The continued unavailability of the Bold in the United Kingdom, a key European market for RIM.
• The "tepid" response to the Kickstart clamshell phone at T-Mobile (DT), which seems to be more concerned with selling Google (GOOG) G1s than RIM BlackBerries.
• A shift in thinking within corporations, which in today's economic climate are starting to view the BlackBerry as a "nice to have" item rather than a "have to have."

See also BlackBerry Storm: The reviews are in and BlackBerry Storm vs. Apple iPhone.

Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 3G and the G1 with Google (GOOG) unveiled on Tuesday have a lot in common.

Both are smart phones designed for users who want easier access to the Web than is offered by the current generation of RIM (RIMM) BlackBerries.

They share a lot of features — high res (320 x 480 pixel) color displays, motion sensors, support for GPS and Bluetooth 2.0, and venues for third-party apps. And they share some of the same flaws — both are locked to their respective networks, both lack video recording capability and full cut-and-paste text editing, to name just a few.

But there are real differences, which we've tried to summarize in the table below. If you spot something we've missed, let us know in the comment stream and we'll update the chart.

Detailed specs are available for the G1 here and the iPhone 3G here.

Several sites have posted side-by-side video comparisons of the two devices from the noisy demo room below Tuesday's press conference. Engadget, for example, compares the speed and responsiveness of the two Web browsers here.