You can’t talk about the Devour, Motorola’s new slide-out QWERTY Android phone, without talking about the Droid, Motorola’s favored child. And it’s precisely when pitted against the Droid that the Devour stops making sense.

The Price

The Devour runs $150, with a two-year Verizon contract. But not really. (More on that later.)

What It’s Supposed to Be

When the Devour was announced, I called it a “Baby Droid with Motoblur.” That’s not quite right, it turns out. Despite a measurably smaller screen, the Devour is actually a bit larger than the Droid. It’s a hefty, machined aluminum slab of a device that feels sturdy in your hand and a bit fat in your pocket. It’s a continuation of the Droid’s design philosophy, if not its actual design: The Devour obviously copies some stylistic traits, but the Droid’s goldish finish and sharp edged evoke an entirely different past than the Devour’s matte silver, slightly more rounded profile. A child of the 70s speaks the Droid’s retrofuturistic design language; the Devour speaks more to a future-forward 90s sensibility. At any rate, it looks nice.

And it feels nice, too—gone is the Droid’s lifeless slider, replaced with a springy mechanism that just begs to be fiddled with. The tapered sides give you a place to rest your index fingers during typing. Speaking of which, the Devour’s keyboard, with slightly raised, perfectly rounded and neatly spaced keys, is a welcome improvement over the Droid’s. And instead of a trackball or d-pad, the Devour has a small, inset touchpad on its lower-left chin. So far, so good.

Then you turn it on.

This is when it becomes clear what the Devour is meant to be, which, despite the apparent improvements, is something less than a Droid. The smaller screen—3.1 inches to the Droid’s 3.7—pushes fewer pixels, too, at just 320×480 vs 854×480. The camera, which shoots 3MP photos, suffers from poor color and clarity issues to a greater extent than the already mediocre sensor of its predecessor.

And the software! Oh, the software. Here’s how Jason summed up the Motoblur widget philosophy in his original Cliq review:

The four widgets of note are the status widget, the messaging widget, the happenings widget and the news/RSS widget. The news widget is self-explanatory, and really cool that a phone would have a built-in RSS reader right on the home screen, but the others are a little bit trickier. The status widget lets you update your “status” to any of your social networking sites, like Facebook or Twitter. The messages widget consolidates ALL your 1:1 messaging, like emails, SMS, DMs on Twitter or private messages on Facebook. The happenings is a feed of other people’s status updates on your social networks.

Motoblur is as good here as it’s ever been, aided by plenty of tweaks, faster hardware, and a more developed underlying operating system. (This is the first time we’ve seen it laid atop of Android 1.6; the Cliq was a 1.5 handset.) But as Motoblur has inched forward, Android has outpaced it. And unfortunately its stablemate, the Droid, is one of the best exemplars of why you don’t need to mess with Android.


What was so refreshing about the Droid was that its software was essentially untouched—Android 2.0, which was at the time the newest build of the OS, had been left alone to represent Google vision for Android, without interference from Motorola or Verizon. And because Android 2.0 was so good, it took the wind out of the sails of alternative Android interfaces like HTC’s Sense or Motoblur.

Motoblur’s greatest sin isn’t that it can be a bit confusing to navigate at first, or that it feels a bit crowded on a 3.1-inch screen, or that its inbuilt Twitter and Facebook functionality depends too much on sending you to an external browser; it’s that in pursuit of a custom interface and minor, proprietary features—Flash Lite in the browser, DLNA media sharing and proprietary voice command and nav software to compete with Google’s native solutions—Motorola has left Devour users with an out-of-date version of Android. Android is an OS that’s fragmented, and 1.6 is one of the fragments that’s getting left behind. Even some Google apps won’t work on Android 1.6, like Goggles or Google Earth. (Update: Goggles apparently works on 1.6, but I can’t find it in the Android Market on the Devour. Ideas?) Of course, an upgrade is possible, but a Blur-adorned Android will always lag a version or three behind vanilla Android, which seems to be assimilating many of its most important features anyway.

The redeeming factor here should be that it’s cheaper than the Droid by about $50, positioned to appeal to people who might otherwise buy a messaging phone, but who don’t want to put down for a Droid. But even at launch, this price positioning doesn’t work.

What It Really Is

if you’re a Verizon customer, holding this next to a messaging feature phone, the choice is pretty clear: go with the smartphone.Thing is, that’s a false dilemma. You have other options.

Before the Devour hits shelves later this week, it will have been undermined by one of its biggest sellers. Best Buy, at launch, will be selling it for $100, alongside the Droid, also priced at $100. The $150/$200 Devour/Droid distinction will remain intact at Verizon stores, but you can probably depend on these lower prices to be an option from here on out.

What you’re getting with the Devour, then, is a downgraded Droid. Sure, the keyboard is a bit better, and the styling may appeal to some people alienated by the Droid’s aggressive lines, but if you’re a Verizon customer, holding these two potential purchases in your hands—which, by the way, have access to the exact same smartphone plans—it’s hard to imagine why you’d opt for the silver one. [Motorola]

Elegant, brushed aluminum design


Better keyboard and slider than the Droid; generally better hardware than the Cliq


Motoblur works reasonably well for social networking hounds, but later versions of Android with dedicated social apps serve just as well


Same street price as the Droid, which is just a better phone.


It’s stuck on Android 1.6, rendering it incompatible with some newer apps—even apps from Google

Windows Phone 7 snuck up on the world today, but having played with it, I’ll tell you Microsoft is putting all its muscle behind this. No matter who you root for, to be anything short of impressed is stupid.

How does it feel? Nothing like an iPhone, for starters. The slippery, rotate-y screens may take a little getting used to, but they feel right. Microsoft deliberately wanted to get away from icons and this notion that all behaviors get the same size button on the home screen, and you definitely get more of a sense of priorities here: Entertainment, social networking, photo sharing—those matter, and oh yeah, here’s a phone if you need a call, and here’s a browser if you need that too.

It’s hard to tell from looking at this stuff, but much of it is customizable, including almost everything on that home screen. Don’t let the uniformity of design language fool you, there will be a lot you can do to differentiate from other people.

As you can see, the fluidity of the “panorama” navigation is here—when you enter a hub, you get those little teasers to the right, showing you want you’ll get if you flip one screen over.

Though details are scarce in these early days, the device here is built “to spec,” so probably running 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. I can tell you that everything ran smoothly. This is obviously too early to make any technical statements, but it really was impressive, and where there are a few hiccups, it’s hard to say whether it was human error or a glitch, but we’ll leave it be for now. This is just demo software.

On to the screenshots—click here if thumbs haven’t loaded, or if you just hate gallery format:

As you can see from the screenshots above, most hubs are fleshed out, though we couldn’t have a look at Marketplace. Some of the shots here are “in between” shots, that moment between tapping a start screen element and the whole hub springing in behind it. There is also one shot of the slide transition from sleep screen—which has a lot of great heads-up information—to the start screen.

There aren’t a ton of answers yet, but what we do know you can find above or in Matt’s piece: Windows Phone 7: Everything Is Different Now

[Windows Phone 7 on Gizmodo]

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Josh Miller/CNET

We like Lincoln’s new design language; that big winged grille looks good on the mid-size MKZ. But the car struggles to separate itself significantly from platform-mates the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan. The interior is generally nicer, but some control surfaces come from a common …

Originally posted at The Car Tech blog

The HP and Voodoo co-branded Envy notebook in 2008.

(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)

Hewlett-Packard is sending mixed signals on what exactly it plans to do with the Voodoo PC brand it acquired three years ago.

After purchasing the gaming and PC enthusiast brand in 2006, HP in 2008 began using the Voodoo name beyond powerful gaming PCs. It painted the name Voodoo and VoodooDNA on high-end HP notebooks and desktops, and talked up their premium engineering and design. They used the analogy that if the HP brand were a Smart Car and Compaq were a Chrysler, Voodoo would be their Maybach.

But a year later, HP’s consumer PC lineup contains little trace of the Voodoo branding. HP had introduced the HP Blackbird with VoodooDNA and more recently HP Firebird with Voodoo DNA. Both are nowhere to be found on HP.com. In a more recent example, a new notebook, called the HP Envy was released last week. A year ago it was called the HP Voodoo Envy 133. Though the updated model takes some Voodoo ideas like the thin profile, quick booting, the power adapter, and packaging, you’d have to be a Voodoo fanboy to know Voodoo had any sort of influence at all on it.

So what gives? It seems the Voodoo team didn’t have much to do with the Envy, despite its sharing the same name with older products.

“The reason there’s no ‘Voodoo DNA’ on the (most recent) product has to do with the overall design language, the target market, and the fact that we weren’t directly involved in the design,” Rahul Sood, the founder of VoodooPC and the chief technology officer of gaming PCs for HP, wrote on his personal blog.

In the same post, Sood that Voodoo is “transitioning from ‘desktop and notebook’ manufacturing to something beyond.” While it’s unclear what “something beyond” means, he hints that besides HP taking some design and engineering cues from Voodoo that the company he founded didn’t quite fit into HP the way Sood had initially expected.

…

Originally posted at Circuit Breaker

Hartmut Esslinger‘s Frog Design made WEGA/Sony’s electronics fetish items, and then designed the “Snow White” language the Mac used. He’s a design legend and an author. Here he tells us about the challenges of designing, then and now.

How did you shift from entertainment products to personal computers? Did you seek them out or were you pulled in? And were there others besides Apple? Was there a chance you might have ended up sharing your Snow White design language with some other company, turning a competitor of Apple into the iconic “cool computer” maker of the day?

My second client in 1970 was the German company CTM, an offspring of Nixdorf, back then a leader in making data processing affordable and usable to mid-size companies. They were quite successful and together we created the first ergonomic desktop terminal with a tilting display and detached keyboard in 1978 which won international acclaim.

Apple’s “Snow White” design language was the result of a very close relationship and collaboration with Apple, and ultimately expressed the very specific values and aspirations of Apple. The key was that Steve Jobs wanted “the very best design, not only in the computer industry but the entire World”. This allowed us to create a totally new design paradigm for “digital-convergent products” without historic precedence.

How have product considerations evolved in the same time? What was the 1979 equivalent of hardware vs. software? Or physical button vs. touch surface?

Let’s take Sony as an example: as of 1976, we were working on remote controls for multiple sources from TV to Audio-Systems and “Home-Control” with software screens, activated both by buttons and direct-touch. Even as the key problem – aside of cost – was slow processing power and LCD screens with little contrast. Our objective was to simplify usage and some products went into the market in Japan. So to your answer: we already had it in 1979.

What design trends were hot in the late 1970s that are coming back around now? Which trends from the 1970s will NEVER come back?

The late 1970s were very much defined by the shock of the oil crisis and the subsequent recession especially here in the United States. In Europe and Japan, there was a wider acceptance of energy-saving and ecologically responsible product strategies. The hot design trends were “personalization and miniaturization” – SONY’s Walkman being the best manifestation – and with the Japanese domination of electronic consumer electronics making professional-grade technology – e.g. cameras – accessible and affordable to millions. This also was a time, when the United States lost out big time in this field. The late 1970s also were the “Golden Age” of product design – and this trend will return for product experiences and hyper-convergence – which means to design how people feel.

Isn’t part of design envisioning products that use technology that doesn’t yet exist? What were the sorts of things you envisioned in the 1970s that are commonplace today but didn’t yet exist? What are you envisioning now (or what have you envisioned lately) that will take some time for technology to catch up?

This may sound a bit arrogant, but in 1968 I proposed an “Atomic-Time Radio-Wristwatch” for a watch competition. People laughed at it, but in 1986 frog designed exactly such a product for the German Junghans company.

Sometimes, technology surpasses human speed: today we are using mobile phones with more computing power then could be imagined 20 years ago – and even science fiction authors like William Gibson or Arthur C. Clarke didn’t even anticipate them – but the user interfaces are split into “old-phone-physical” and “agnostic-digital” (Apple’s iPhone succeeds because it is the first product to bridge this idiotic chasm).

Looking a the future, I think that technology and our body will grow closer together – a couple of years ago, we designed “Dattoos”, the vision of a protein-based computer “living” on human skin. Closer to reality are concepts of enhancing brain activities by electro-magnetic impulses. Already, design is expanding from “bits and atoms” to “neurons and genes” – one could call it BANG-Design.

Were there times when companies were afraid to go as far as you wanted them to? Are there any examples of companies that refused to make design improvements—perhaps because of cost—and paid a larger price for that?

Strategic design is not about “going as far as possible” but about “going the best way together”. As said above with the Apple Snow White example, the interactive relationship between client and designer is a vital element for success or failure. So, even as I may push for more advanced solutions, the client may have many reasons not to follow. At the end of a day, each jointly achieved result shall be a healthy compromise, motivated by achieving the best for the user and/or consumer. Naturally, there are some negative examples where I couldn’t convince clients, which I also describe in my book: Polaroid which stuck too long to chemical image creation, Maytag which refused to innovate in a strategic way and Motorola which missed the opportunity to create the iPhone long before Apple did.

Dr. Hartmut Esslinger, founder of Frog Design, just published a great book entitled A Fine Line, on the lessons he’s learned in his career and on the future of business informed by design. We encourage you to check it out.

Gizmodo ’79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.