Verizon, which offers more Smartphones or cell phones for that matter, added the Droid X to its expanding stable of hot Android phones. [Follow me on Twitter.]
Motorola’s Droid X not only competes with its intended target, Apple’s iPhone 4, but other Verizon offerings such as the HTC Droid Incredible, which if you ordered today would not be shipped July 22nd. I chatted with “Charity” on the Verizon Wireless’ site and she offered me $30 off the the Incredible if I bought an accessory. Discounting a phone I can’t get for month!? Seems weird.
Verizon’s strategy is simple: blitz the market with powerful Android-based smartphones, which offer a great web experience, cam/camera, video, music – you know, the stuff brought to us first by the iPhone – and get all those customers to sign up for two years of Verizon wireless. Verizon could care less which phone you buy. It wants to send you those monthly bills which include a data plan.
When I asked Charity what the difference between the Incredible and Droid X, she said she was “unsure” and seemed intent on selling me an Incredible. From the looks of it, the main difference is bigger display. Note that HTC’s Evo 4G from Sprint has a 4.3 inch display – bigger displays is where smartphones are going.
It’s the razor blade strategy on steroids. Give the phones at a discount, which could be lot steeper, by the way. Here’s the Droid X details lifted from the Verizon press release (hype removed) that came out today.
“DROID X [offers] a 4.3-inch high-resolution screen (compared to the Incredible’s 3.7 inch display – TDR) for viewing movies and video from BLOCKBUSTER On Demand®presented by V CAST Video, the newest addition to the Verizon Wireless V CAST application, which also includes access to favorite TV shows. The DROID X video capabilities let customers capture spontaneous fun, combining a dual-flash, 8-megapixel camera, HD camcorder, as well as DLNA and HDMI connectivity to download, stream and share personal HD content.
DROID X also [offers] Android 2.2 and Adobe Flash Player 10.1 with an over-the-air update in the latter half of the summer. With the update, the Flash Player will allow mobile users to experience hundreds of sites with rich applications and content inside the browser, including games, animations, rich Internet applications (RIAs), data presentations and visualizations, ecommerce, music, video, audio and more.”
Boy Genius liked the Droid X – a lot, according to its first impression. I hope to get my hands on a review unit very soon. Here’s Boy Genius’ summary:
“Our first impressions are very, very positive. Between the phones impressive stat sheet and our initial tests we can’t wait to start really putting this thing through its paces over the next several weeks.”
By the way, a site called Shrinkage is Good sent me a handy chart comparing total cost of smartphone ownership when you commit to a phone and the service agreement that go with them. Verizon is the most expensive of the four for both unlimited data plans and the minimum plans, which goes to show how relatively inconsequential the price of the phone is: it’s the phone bill, stupid!
The Droid X isn’t on the chart, but would cost the same as the Droid Incredible. The chart is accompanied by a blog post which explains the usual apple to oranges comparison:
source: Shrinkage is Good.
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