Moto Droid and HTC Eris to launch next week

The Moto Droid needs to turn up in the UK soon
The Moto Droid needs to turn up in the UK soon

Motorola and HTC are set to launch their next-generation Android phones next week in the US on network Verizon.

The Moto Droid has been hyped so much that the company's stock price has risen on the basis of a favourable early review, while there has been less information on the Eris from HTC, which is said to be an evolution of the Hero.

Both will be launching under the 'Droid' banner on Verizon, so it will be interesting to see whether the Moto Droid is rebadged for the UK (we'll assume it will be after the Dext was re-named from the Cliq in the US).

Do we need another Hero?

But don't get too excited about the Eris - as far as we can make out, the phone is just another version of the Hero, with a similar 528MHz processor and Android 1.5 OS.

If it is launched next Friday, as is stated on BGR, then it will be dwarfed by the excitement over the Moto Droid release, which apparently is rocking Android 2.0 ( we're starting to get confused here too).

But don't worry - HTC has acknowledged the new 2.0 version of Android and will be bringing it out on 'future phones'.

Either way, here in the UK we want the best phones, and we want them now. We'll be chatting to Motorola to find out whether there will be any impending launches - so watch this space.

Via Gearlog and BGR

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief


Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.