By Last night a few Phandroid tipsters (see via) wrote in to share that wnrussell from Howard Forums posted pics of the Motorola Tao, also/formerly called the Motorola Sholes – we’re not sure of the name just yet. At first I passed on the pictures because – to be honest – they don’t reveal much beyond pictures of the screen lit up. We can’t make out any hardware features at all and the poster said he is restricted from featuring the QWERTY or DPAD.
Nonetheless I know you folks are craving something, and by something I mean anything, so here are the pics:
I warned you… not much there. But we DO find out that the Tao/Sholes has a 1390 mAh battery. And I skimmed the rest of the 56+ page thread and found the following insight provided by bill23 – just a regular member as far as I can tell so take it for whatever its worth to you:
eclair yes
oversized dare but made of metal and very heavy ,yes
battery life is good but gps will wear it down quick
battery is very tiny
it is droid 2.0
and has a app market so you can dl tons of free apps or paid apps
youtube plays in full HQ,my pc doesnt even do that
the music player plays very clear and just loud enough.
the soft qwerty is so damn accurate it isnt funny
the hard qwerty board is like the htc i would say
phone is super slim and thin but like a large dare
the load time of pages is lightning fast.i wish i could post h/w pics or screen shots but its under wraps tight.
i wonder where the other fellows are getting there pics from? *cough*
A little curious that the Sholes is supposed to have 2.0 Eclair and we haven’t even got 1.6 Donut yet. And look how long it took to get from Cupcake to Donut. Oh and I’m guessing by small battery he means the dimensions. And Bill, I’m not usually into the whole “disease” thing but would you mind coughing in this direction?
UPDATED: The most meaningful LIVE picture yet has emerged from the same source:
[Thanks DigitalBusker, some1, Matt]
That is definatly the market from donut…so its at least donut
I hope that the zoom in/out buttons on the last screen doesn’t mean that multi-touch still isn’t included.
Damnit!! Release this phone already!! I’m tired of my tilt randomly rebooting. This is the third replacement, and they’ve all done it.
Good point @tke. This puppy better be multi-touch saturated. No more useless buttons!
From a developers point of view, 2.0 could easily be out soon.
1.6 branch and 2.0 branch can be worked on independently by two different groups of developers.
Say 2.0 is at 90% completion by the time 1.6 comes out, you just merge/integrate the 1.6 code into 2.0 and then finish off the last 10% and give it a (damn) good test.
… and they’ll need a 2.1 after the 2.0 to fix the bugs they miss in testing :)
When I had a chance to play with the Tao/Sholes with a “highball” with Verizon about 3 weeks ago I took note that the Motorola had a SNN5843A battery, (this is the same battery that was to be in the CLIQ. I was a previous employee of Verizon Wireless so I still get all the little inside tips of releases. No date has been assigned for this phone but my guess is November will be the month for this phone. If Verizon would be getting it in October it would have already been on the upcoming phone sheet list for Customer Service Technicians as well as the Customer Service Reps. If release in late November it will have the steam for excessive Christmas sales. Let me know what you all think. Big fan and developer for Android. I’ll keep you posted, if you have any questions about this phone let me know
this also later in the thread:
http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=13062132&postcount=811
not sure of legitimacy
What does he mean by “soft QWERTY” and “hard “QWERTY”?
It refers to either software (on screen) or hardware (physical keyboard)
Soft QWERTY – On-screen keyboard, such as what is found on the iPhone.
Hard QWERTY – Physical keyboard
@Holly: I am sure he means virtual QWERTY keyboard on the touch screen versus the physical slideout QWERTY keyboard.
What I really want to know is how a guy who makes concrete blocks (per his Howardsforum bio) got pre-release pictures of the Sholes/Tao.
^
it means the screen keyboard and the physical slide out key board
LoLz @ concrete blocks
I agree w/ Rob, there isn’t much to go on here, but Phone Arena & Engadget picked up the story.
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@Rob, As for the Tiny Battery, I think they mean compared to the latest Android Phones, its pathetic: http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/09/10/android-battle-cliq-edition/
.
I have to say, this news is a bit disheartening, especially considering the processor upgrade.
So, wait. This thing is supposed to be a Stock Android, Google Powered Phone? No Motoblur apps? Please tell me I can load the Hero Roms on it! Also, can we then saw that its coming w/ Android Market & not JUST some crap Verizon Reroute Market?
@StephenSaurusRex – if you think that is bad, check out the battery on the Samsung Behold 2 https://phandroid.com/samsung-behold-2/
1000 mAh
What a bunch of pessimists most Andriod fans are. Always complaining / moaning / whining like little kids- grow up already!!.
The battery is this, its ugly, screen is too big, its laggy etc – Android is less than 2 yrs old for crying out LOUD – give it a break !!
An aspiring Android developer.
No motoblur? Will we be able to load a Motoblur/Sense Rom on this phone?
The pictures look great. I’ve seen 1400 for the battery for a while, so 1390 is right there as expected.
I like the looks of motoblur, but the google apps integration is more important to me. I’m sure there will be similar apps to choose from at the app store if motorola doesn’t make it available.
So far this phone looks like it has everything I need, except a release date!
@Tochi- your right… its two years old… so why is it ok for it to still be laggy?
Per Motorola’s website (http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola-CLIQ-US-EN.alt) the Cliq, which has Motoblur, has all the Google services integrated. Just because this phone is running Google maps does not mean it will or won’t have Motoblur. We will all have to wait to see.
there’s rumor that the Android 1.6 market demonstration video is also the Tao(Sholes).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ma9Xh67Eyo
Look at the screen border size, and especially the silver(ie. Metallic) rim around the phone, which no other android phone, that I know of, has.
also, if it is the Tao, it verifies what bill23 said about page loading times. crazy fast
@Rob, I know, I commented on the Samsung’s Phone’s garbage battery. Rubbish! But what if the battery turns out to be this phone’s Kryptonite?
@TeKNoTroNiK multitouch? this is make or break at this stage in androids evolution. and i too am curious about the ui, will we see mmotoblur ui? any idea on a price?
Notice the 4 “standard” android hardware buttons on the face of the phone. There were only 3 on the CG renders.
@BKdroid
I’ve watched the video a couple times.. I think it’s a myTouch.
@tke… If I’m not mistaken, multitouch is not enabled in Google Maps, but is in the browser and other select apps, so I couldn’t worry about that. I cannot imagine a beast like this not having multitouch at this juncture.
FYI folks the device WILL NOT have MotoBlur that is a given. It is being sold as a Gooogle Experience device so it will have the Andriod 2.0 and the updated UI in Eclair. MotoBLur is Motos UI they designed for there Andriod device but can not be used on devices that fall in the Google Experience category. A Google Exp device means fully unlocked and no content restriction by the mfg or carrier, and will be fully integrated will all Google apps.
Secondly the video posted is one of the older pre-production units and is not what is in the device some of the folks over at Hofo currently have in hand and are using. And yes the video does have and is running Andriod 1.6 but that is not what the current production units have. Secondly if I had to guess that is the GSM model getting worked on that is suppose to be out in early 2010. CDMA and VZW do not use 3G on there digital phones it is always displaying either EV or 1X depending on the phone. Othe CDMA carriers just display as D for digital
As for anyone wondering if the info is good by the 2 fellows being mentioned here, yes all of it is. As for pricing word is traveling $199 on a 2 yr contract. Full retail will be in the area of $500+