One of the biggest (and best) questions you all asked after Google brought multitouch to the Nexus One this week was “What about the Motorola Droid? Will it get multitouch, too? Of course, the Droid has multitouch outside the U.S., and you can hack it on to your phone if you have the American version. But we’re talking about an official, sanctioned update here. Following are the responses we got from Google and from Motorola:
Says Motorola:
While designing DROID, and all Motorola mobile devices, Motorola work very closely with carriers and partners to deliver differentiated consumer experiences, depending on the region, carrier preferences and consumer needs. DROID features double tap zoom, a new way to zoom in on content. For example, when viewing web pages, simply tap twice on the content you want to view and DROID automatically zooms in and fits the content to the width of the display. You can also zoom in and out with on screen zoom controls.
Says Google:
The Android 2.0 framework includes support for multi-touch. As with other Android platform technologies, such as the text-to-speech engine, operators and handset makers can choose to implement this technology. Regarding the specific pinch-to-zoom functionality included in this new update, once we make this software update (2.1-update1) available to operators and handset makers, they can update their Android-powered devices accordingly.
So, if manufacturers and carriers choose to use it, they can. Same old story. (Let’s hope they do.) We also asked Google about enabling multitouch on the keyboard. The big G’s response:
The Android 2.0 framework includes support for multi-touch. As with other Android platform technologies, such as the text-to-speech engine, operators and handset makers can choose to implement this technology. Today’s update for Nexus One devices only incorporates pinch-to-zoom functionality.
So there you go. Maybe we’ll see it later, maybe we won’t. Feel free to vent in the comments.