Today Verizon officially announced the Motorola Droid launch date: November 6th. The Droid will be the first phone to release with Android 2.0, which will include that jealousy-that-burns-like-the-herp-inducing navigation system. Yeah, the free turn-by-turn GPS that sent Garmin and TomTom stock into free fall. The phone will run $199.99 after a $100 debit card rebate on a two-year contract.

The phone has Verizon understandably excited (though it did seem like Verizon forgot about the Storm 2) – it’s got a snappy processor, a great screen, a decent keyboard, and an excellent operating system. It’s the phone Verizon’s been missing, and with the free turn-by-turn announcement today, it got even better. In my mind it’s the phone to have if you’re trying to avoid AT&T, as I expect any reasonable person would.

Verizon had this to say about the Droid: “It is a no-fuss, high-tech, location-aware, voice-recognizing, over-the-air updating, multi-tasking machine.” Sounds to me like quite a bit of fuss. Quite a bit of fuss I’d like to get my hands on – know what I’m saying?

The most recent info on Motorola’s Droid suggests that the phone isn’t just for Verizon. In fact, it looks like there’s a GSM model that would work on AT&T’s 3G network, as well as Canada’s Rogers.

So it looks like the new name for the “Droid” is now “Sholes,” at least pre-release. That’s the name buried deep in the FCC docs that also show the AT&T 3G bandwidths. To me the big advantage of the phone would be that it’s a nice piece of hardware for anything other than AT&T. If I was going with AT&T, I think I’d still stick to the iPhone. Android still has some catching up to do in the app department for me to genuinely consider a switch. Although there is that Google Voice thing…

On Saturday night, Verizon publicly declared it would be going after the iPhone with a new Android phone from Motorola. To do so, Big Red is using the same tactic Palm did, but it will probably see a much higher success rate. The reason: the OS.

It’s not just that I think Android is a superior platform (which I do), or that Palm continues to botch almost everything it tries with regard to the App Catalog (which it does). It’s really that Verizon isn’t trying to pioneer a new OS against the world’s most successful smartphone. Android is not the thriving development community it could be, but it’s not brand new either. That means there will be plenty of app support on launch day, but more importantly that developers are familiar enough to create apps that take advantage of specific features of the new Motorola phone – a big part of what makes the iPhone so good.

On top of that huge advantage, the phone looks really nice. It’s sleek and slim, has a landscape keyboard that far outstrips the cramped POS on the Pre, and it’s on Verizon. I don’t think I need to mention all the other features Verizon’s new ad points out.

This isn’t something Apple will take lying down, though. We should see the rebuttal in what promises to be a snarky little ad war before long.