Verizon Wireless, one of the biggest wireless carriers in the United States, today announced the release of the much awaited Droid phone, that is expected to be a major competitor to other phones, that are being launched on the Google Android mobile operating system platform. The release of the Droid was announced in conjunction with Motorola.

The coolest feature of Verizon Droid is its voice activated search, that enables a user to search the internet via the Google search engine, just by speaking the search string into the phone. The same voice activated search has also been embedded with the Google Maps application that comes pre-loaded in the phone. For example, if a user is looking for restaurants in a certain region or area, all he has to do is speak “restaurants” and Google Maps will automatically display all registered restaurants in the area. When the user selects a certain restaurant, the device initiates a turn by turn direction for the restaurant and narrates it to the user.

The Droid is based entirely on Google Android with a 550MHz processor. The device features a 16:9 touch screen with 480×854 pixel resolution along with a 5 mega pixels camera and a 16GB micro-SD card. This all new smart phone is loaded with other functions such as, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS etc. and for internet browsing experience, it comes with a Webkit HTML 5 browser. The battery of the Droid provides 6.4 hours of talk time and 11 days of standby time.

Even though the Droid is the flagship of Verizon, yet it is not equipped with Verizon’s VZNavigator and it also lacks the Verizon’s VCast music service, However, the omission of Verizon’s navigational application is hardly going to make any difference, as the Google Android based Droid comes pre-loaded with the Google Android navigation or Google Maps, if you want to simplify the name.

Via Cnet.