Android-iPhone War Gaining Speed During Pre-Orders

With a small army of Android phones headed to the market from Motorola, LG Electronics, and Sony, the stage is set for a major showdown between the two fastest-growing smartphone platforms as Apple brings the iPhone 4 to market. But the challenges seen by AT&T, Apple’s exclusive U.S. carrier, and Apple in taking advance orders for the iPhone 4 could give the competition a boost.

Those rivals include Motorola’s Droid X — launching one day before the iPhone 4 — with its 4.4-inch screen and the Droid Shadow with a 4.3-inch screen. Like Sprint’s HTC EVO, these upstarts are showing defiant bulk as the iPhone gets slimmer. The Droids are packed with goodies like slide-out keyboards — still absent from the iPhone — fast processors and sharp cameras, and, perhaps, Android’s latest multitasking operating system, version 2.2.

iPhone 4 Mania

According to several reports, LG will release up to 20 new Android devices, while Sony Ericsson is readying the Xperia 8 for battle.

But the iPhone 4 is no slouch either, with its 960-by-640-pixel screen with Retina display, a gyroscope, and dual cameras for video conferencing. A leak of the prototype in April and AT&T’s decision to allow early upgrades to iPhone 3GS customers have fueled a landslide of pre-orders.

The carrier said there were 13 million upgrade inquiries on its web site and it had to suspend pre-orders on Wednesday, when a new system designed for fraud protection reportedly went haywire amid the chaos.

Apple, too, said it was overwhelmed, announcing on its site that the computer giant and its partners had taken 600,000 pre-orders, the largest ever in a single day. That forced Apple to push back the order-fulfillment target date from July 2 to July 14.

"Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration, " Apple said. "We apologize…

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