Motorola Droid Bionic (Verizon) After
months of delays and teaser promos ,
Verizon Wireless officially announced
the release date and pricing for the
much-anticipated Motorola Droid
Bionic.
Available starting Thursday, September
8, for $299. 99 with a two-year contract,
the Droid Bionic is the carrier's first 4G
smartphone to feature a dual-core
1GHz processor, more specifically TI's
OMAP 4 chipset. If you've been
following the smartphone since its
introduction at CES 2011, you'll know
that the use of TI's OMAP processor is
a switch from the original Nvidia Tegra
2 chipset.
That's not the only change either.
Originally slated for a Q2 release,
Verizon and Motorola delayed the
launch to make enhancements to the
handset in order to provide "an even
better consumer experience." According
to Motorola, those enhancements
include a thinner design with premium
finishes, 1080p HD video capture, more
enterprise features, and battery
optimization.
The Droid Bionic will also ship running
the latest Android 2.3 .4 Gingerbread
software out of the box and will come
with a number of preloaded apps. One
app that the companies are pushing in
particular is ZumoCast, which offers
remote access to your videos, music,
pictures, and documents stored on your
PC or Mac. The smartphone also comes
with Video Surf, a Shazam-like app for
videos, Motoprint for wireless printing,
NFL Mobile (free on all Verizon's 4G
phones), and support for Netflix.
Like the Motorola Photon 4G and Atrix
4G , the Droid Bionic also features the
Webtop app that gives you access to a
Firefox 4 browser and allows you to
view the contents of your phone on a TV
or monitor when the phone is docked to
a special accessory, such as the HD
station, Lapdock, or Webtop adapter.
Pricing for the accessories starts at
$29.99 for the Webtop adapter, $99 .99
for the HD station, and $299.99 for the
Lapdock. For a limited time, Verizon
customers who purchase the Droid
Bionic and the Lapdock together with a
$50 5GB data plan or higher will get a
$100 mail-in rebate. Other available
accessories include a car mount for
$39.99 and a battery dock, with an extra
compartment to charge a second
battery, for $49. 99.
Though it's nice to have all these extra
goodies, the Motorola Droid Bionic has
plenty to offer on its own. The Android
superphone boasts a 4.3 -inch qHD
touch screen with scratch-resistant
Corning Gorilla Glass, an 8-megapixel
main camera, and a front-facing VGA
camera with support for Google video
chat over 4G , 3G, and Wi-Fi. The
handset also has 1GB RAM, 16GB of
internal memory, and comes
preinstalled with a 16GB microSD card,
though the expansion slot can support
up to 32GB cards.
On paper, the smartphone certainly
looks like a winner, but does it actually
live up to all the hype?
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