Meet the Motorola Devour, Verizon's New Android Phone

Motorola Devour: The Software

Motorola's Devour will offer a drastically different software experience than the Droid and many other Android phones. Like the Cliq, the Devour comes with Motorola's Motoblur interface on top of the stock operating system. It'll be the first Android device on Verizon to feature the Motoblur skin.

Motoblur changes the very look and feel of the phone, adding live streams of information onto the home screen through a series of custom widgets. Social network status updates, e-mail, and other messaging tools are all integrated into the desktop with a unique graphical look not seen in the standard Android OS. Motoblur also provides automated backups of user data and phone settings.

One possible software downside: Reports suggest the Devour will ship with Android 1.6 rather than the more recent Android 2.1 release that debuted on the Nexus One or even the Android 2.0 release introduced with the Droid. Motorola has yet to confirm this.

If the Devour does ship with Android 1.6, one would imagine that a 2.1 update would be rolled out at some point in the coming months. With that said, though, Verizon and Motorola have yet to update any other Android handsets to 2.0 or 2.1 thus far, so it's tough to say how long the wait might be.