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Filed under: Hardware, Mobile, Android

Droid Does... only have 256MB of storage for apps

Motorola's Droid is a sweet piece of hardware that's hyped to give the iPhone a run for its money, especially since it's running the new Android 2.0 OS, and works on the Verizon network in the US. We care about software here at Download Squad though, and there's some dismaying news about the Droid on that front: it has only 256MB for app storage. Seriously.

The Droid reportedly only packs a 512MB ROM (that's the built-in memory), of which only half is allocated for apps. There are some iPhone games that couldn't even fit in that teeny-weeny storage space! But at least it's expandable, right? Um, nope. Google doesn't support installing apps to the SD cards that Motorola relies on, so developers are pretty limited in terms of file sizes for their Android 2.0 software.

The Droid may have a solid CPU and GPU for gaming, but games that take full advantage of that hardware are likely to need 100 megabytes or more of storage space. That's going to make things pretty tough until Android 2.0 comes to a device with a lot more pre-installed flash memory.

[via Daring Fireball]

UPDATE: While it's true that the Droid only has 256MB for apps, commenters have pointed out that various resources for the apps (graphics, etc.) CAN be stored on the device's SD cards. It looks like the situation isn't as bad as the numbers seem to indicate at first.

Filed under: OS Updates, Mobile, Android

Android 2.0 gets Facebook integration and a car mode

When you hear that there's a new iPhone-killing Google Android phone that's coming to Verizon and has a name straight out of Star Wars - the Droid - it's easy to get so excited that you forget about the software side of things. Yes indeed, Android 2.0 is coming, and it has a spate of hot new features that might legitimately make iPhone users jealous. Gadget-blog Boy Genius Report ended up with a pre-release copy of Android 2.0 and posted a walkthrough of the OS's new features, including Facebook support in the address book, and a Car Home mode for drivers.

Facebook contact syncing is a pretty sweet feature on its own, but combine that with Android 2.0's new unified inbox – which collects messages from multiple email addresses (including Exchange accounts) and Facebook messages - and you've got a pretty sweet address book system. BGR says that Gmail accounts are handled in a separate app, which is presumably better able to support Gmail's many features. Car Home is a dashboard for using your phone in the car. It provides voice access to the apps you need when you're driving, so you can dial numbers or search for something on Google Maps without taking your hands off the wheel.

We won't know how cool the Droid is until we can actually touch one, but BGR reports that Android 2.0's software keyboard offers a nice haptic response – that slight vibration that lets you know when you're pressing keys. That puts it well ahead of other non-iPhone touchscreen smartphones (I'm looking at you, BlackBerry Storm), and I can't wait to give a Droid a try for myself.

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