Plugging Up Bad News Leaks [Editorial]

I don’t know about the rest of you, but after months of leaks from Internet and radio silence from Verizon and Motorola, it’s hard to get excited about the Droid 3 now that its here. Sure it’s fun to get info on unreleased phones, to speculate about them, and have something to drool over. Leaks though have to be handled delicately on the part of OEMs (you can bet that not all leaks are accidental), or things get pretty stale.

It seems especially true of late. The Droid 3 spilled all its guts in a most un-exciting way. On the other end of the spectrum, we know almost nothing about American versions of the Galaxy S II. Its not just Android that’s been boring me with leaks, if I read one more headline that says “iPhone 5 Could Maybe Possibly Have Bigger Screen” I’m gonna scream.

Marketing is a tricky subject, its far from the clear 1s and 0s that rule most of the Android world. In the end it probably won’t effect the quality of a device, but with the importance of online hype when it comes to selling something like a smartphone, Android’s success as a platform could rely on its device manufacturers’ ability to get people excited about their phones.

The truly good hype is generally reserved for “hero phones,” the EVO 4G, the Motorola Atrix, the Thunderbolt, these phones all had what I would consider fairly successful build up before its launch. Lately the less exciting hype normally reserved for less exciting phones has spread to some of the top level devices. Is this a result of too many phones in the top tier or maybe marketers are getting lazy, letting blogs handle the work for all but their most prized phones. Either way Android needs to stay on its advertising toes to make sure it can continue to grow like the awesome machine it is.