October 28th, 2009
Verizon's HTC Droid Eris (aka Desire) may be priced at $99
Rumors of the first two Google Android devices coming to Verizon Wireless have been floating around for a few weeks and as you know today Verizon and Motorola made the official Motorola Droid announcement with a release date of 6 November at a competive $199.99 price. The other rumored Android device is the HTC Droid Eris that Peter from GDGT is stating will launch for just $99. The HTC DROID Eris is the Verizon version of the very appealing HTC Hero and $99 is a killer price for such a functional device. These are both excellent choices on Verizon and it is great to see the price difference that gives consumers a clearer choice between a QWERTY keyboard device with larger form factor or a sleeker all-touchscreen device.
The HTC Eris will also be running Android version 1.5 with HTC’s custom Sense user interface built on top compared to the standard 3-screen Google Android 2.0 software seen on the Motorola DROID. There has been no official announcement for the Eris yet and we do not know when it will launch, but it should be in November so people can get one before the holidays.
You may also have heard of the HTC Desire, getting confusing now isn’t it, and to clear it up the HTC Desire IS the HTC Droid Eris. HTC uses codenames for their devices as you can see on the XDA Developers site and Desire was the in-house codename for the HTC Droid Eris as it was named for Verizon Wireless. I wonder if this Eris device was named after the dwarf planet, spider, or Greek goddess of strife and discord. Anyone know the history behind this Google Android device name? As we see more Google Android devices appearing in the Verizon Droid series we will try to help you manage these names too.
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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