Verizon Wireless lined up its partners – Google, Motorola, and Adobe – to announce a Droid successor a day before the iPhone 4 launch. The aptly named Droid X launched with much fanfare at a New York event labeled “Unleashing the Next Generation of Droid.”
The Droid X is a solid upgrade over the Droid which arrived last Fall as the first viable alternative to Apple’s iPhone, backed up with an aggressive marketing push by Verizon Wireless. The Droid X features a large 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen display running at a 854×480 pixel resolution, incorrectly first advertised as a 720p screen. And just like any iPhone, the Droid X has no physical keyboard.
At the heart of the handset is Texas Instrument’s Snapdragon processor clocked at 1GHz, basically the same CPU like on its predecessor, sans twice the RAM (512MB, like on iPhone 4). More memory should result in snappier app performance, faster task switching, and less crashes. Storage-wise, the Droid X packs in 8GB of flash memory expandable to 32GB via an SD card slot. Other biggies include a dual-flash eight-megapixel camera that records video in 720p, as well as both DLNA and HDMI video outputs.
On the software front, the Droid X is powered by the latest and greatest Android 2.2 code-named Froyo that sports numerous improvements for end users and robust capabilities for businesses, like push email with Exchange and Gmail and live widgets for email and calendar updates. In addition, it also runs Flash Player 10.1 with hardware-accelerated H.264 video playback via Nvidia’s Tegra chipset.
This makes the Droid X the first smartphone to offer full Flash acceleration. Both Android 2.2 and Flash Player 10.1 are to be delivered to Droid X users with an over-the-air update in the latter half of the summer, the carrier said (Droid users will also get the Android 2.2 update).
The Droid X will be available starting July 15 through Verizon Wireless for $199 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a two-year contract that must include a voice plan (begins at $40) and the $30 a month unlimited data plan.
Optional services include $20 a month 3G Mobile Hotspot that turns the Droid X into a wireless modem for up to five WiFi devices. Existing customers whose contracts are ending by the end of the year are eligible for upgrade without paying any penalty. More information is available at the Droid X mini-site.
Christian’s Opinion
Although the Droid X announcement is unlikely to draw Apple die-hards and iPhone fans, it shows Android has a lot of momentum going on. The Droid X looks like a solid upgrade to the already capable device, the one that will help Verizon weather the iPhone 4 storm this summer.
The fight between Apple’s iPhone and Android in the run-up to the holiday season will intensify with a new Motorola device slated for the fourth quarter that is said to carry a 2GHz processor and possibly trump iPhone 4 in terms of raw specs. And if Verizon’s nasty anti-AT&T and anti-Apple adverts from last year were and indication, AT&T will take a new round of beatings as the nation’s #1 wireless carrier thinks up new mocking commercials. Looking forward to it!
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