In a press conference today, Motorola and Verizon, along with special guest, Google’s Eric Schmidt, announced the newest member of Verizon’s Droid family, the Droid X – Motorola’s next generation Droid handset, which by the looks of it will be leaps and bounds past the current Droid by Motorola.
There have been rumors abound about the Droid X and the Droid 2 (they’re two different phones), and which one we would see today – turns out the Droid X is a new slab-phone with physical keys at the bottom, a bigger, higher-resolution screen, a 1GHz processor, 720p video recording, an 8-megapixel camera, 24GB of storage (8GB on-board and a 16GB SD card, upgradable to a 32GB SD card), and 3 microphones for superior call and recording quality. The Droid X will be available July 15th for $199.99 after a $100 rebate for new contracts or – thanks to Verizon – any Droid owner with a “new every two” upgrade coming in 2010.
The Droid X will also serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot for an extra $20 per month, which is a huge feature, and will support Android 2.2 “Froyo” and Adobe’s Flash 10.1 when they’re both made available later this summer (but not at launch.)
The Droid 2 continues to be un-announced phone, and although a few blogs claim to have had their hands on it, nothing official from Motorola or Verizon has been announced. The Droid 2 appears to be more of a direct upgrade to the existing Droid by Motorola – with a slide-out physical keyboard and a faster processor than the existing Droid but not as powerful as the one coming in the Droid X. The Droid 2 will retain most of the features of the original Droid by Motorola, and it looks like Motorola is positioning it as an upgrade and an additional device in the market as opposed to positioning it against some of the kings of Android phone performance like the Droid Incredible and the Droid X.
Regardless, if you’re looking for an upgrade to your Droid (although not many original Droid owners will have an upgrade coming this year) or want your hands on the most powerful smartphone on the market, you may consider the Droid X. Still, it was just announced today, so the reviews have yet to roll in.
UPDATE: PC Mag has some first impressions and video, live from the unveiling event!