Motorola's Droid phone will cost $199 (after a mail in rebate) when it comes to Verizon Wireless next week, the companies announced today.
Droid has become the next phone to watch since Motorola began hyping it as an iPhone killer last week. That sort of talk has burned the tech industry before -- See: the Palm Pre -- but it's hard not to get excited for a phone that claims to do everything the iPhone does not.
The phone has a 3.7-inch WVGA screen, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, "DVD quality" video recording, a 16 GB MicroSD card expandable to 32 GB, a replaceable battery and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
But above all, Verizon is stressing the software. Droid will debut Google's Android 2.0 platform, which allows for multi-tasking and a customized mobile desktop, and this phone in particular has Facebook integration. Improvements over previous Android versions include a faster Web browser, multiple accounts, a re-tooled virtual keyboard and a quick contact tool for firing off text and social networking messages. Google apps such as Gmail, Maps, Talk come pre-installed, and of course there's the Android Market for third-party apps.
Another feature Google's debuting on the Droid is turn-by-turn navigation, which provides voice guidance using Google Maps and Street View. And unlike navigation apps on other phones, Google Maps Navigation is free.
The Droid's $199 price point puts it in line with Apple's 16 GB iPhone 3GS, but there's an obnoxious catch: You'll need to mail in a rebate, which comes back as a debit card for you to spend elsewhere. You won't save any money on service, either, as you'll need at least a $40 voice plan and a $30 data plan to get the phone.
We're starting to see some hands-on videos online now that Droid is officially out of the bag. I still won't call it an iPhone killer, but it's the first Android phone to distinguish itself from the rest.
