droidStory

Verizon and Motorola still going strong with their Droid marketing campaign. Earlier this week I received this little “care package” from Verizon with a bunch of DroidX swag – a t-shirt, an accessory coupon book and a bumper sticker.

Did you get your DroidX flaunting package?

Motorola and Verizon now officially announced the Droid 2, available for pre-order tomorrow and in stores this Thursday.

DROID 2 is a feature-packed device that helps manage work and social life with an enhanced QWERTY keyboard, ultra high-speed Web browsing, 3G Mobile HotSpot capabilities, full push corporate e-mail, intuitive social messaging and Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 for access to the full web – all built on Android 2.2.

In addition, they will offer a Limited Edition R2-D2 Droid 2, in September.

R2-D2 DROID 2
In honor of the iconic Astromech Droid from the Star Wars™ Saga, Verizon Wireless will offer a limited-edition R2-D2 version of the DROID 2, available only online in September. The special version of the phone will feature exclusive Star Wars content and external hardware designed to look like the trusty Droid from the film saga. Visitors to the upcoming Star Wars Celebration V in Orlando, Fla., can see a preview of the limited edition phone and sign up to receive alerts when the phone is ready for sale.

The successor of the wildly popular Droid, aptly named Droid 2 is coming to Verizon. Many signs are hinting that the latest Droid will hit stores this week.

The Droid 2 seems almost identical to the original Droid, and this ad spotted in a Florida news paper is touting a NEW advanced keyboard as the main improvement. Overall the Droid 2 feels more evolutionary than revolutionary, without any killer features that will set it apart from Droid Incredible or Droid X, unless you want a physical keyboard of course.

Promotional materials leaked from Best Buy list the phone at $199 with a 2 year contract, and $599 without contract.

via Engadget, droiddog

Wow! Both high-end Droid’s, the Motorola DroidX and the HTC Droid Incredible are sold out at Verizon. What’s up with that? It seems odd that powerhouse Motorola can’t keep up with the sales demand, manufacturing enough units for the launch.

Is this just the latest marketing fad in showing off the popularity of a product by artificially limiting initial supply, or are component shortages truly to blame? Either way it looks like both phones are sold-out online and in stores.

Although both Motorola and Verizon claimed to have plenty of stock on hand, it does not come as a big surprise that the DroidX already sold-out online. Shipments are expected to resume by July 7/23, which is still ahead of the next shipments of the Droid Incredible . If you want to get your hands on the DroidX now, your best bet is to call your local Verizon store or Best Buy to pick one up.

FYI: The $100 mail-in rebate is waived and instantly credited for qualifying “new-every-two” customers and some other customer loyalty criteria. It’s always good to ask. I managed to skip the tedious mail-in rebate.

The DroidX went on sale today. The Verizon online store listing went live around 2AM EDT, and I woke up to an email from Verizon telling me that the DroidX was ready.
Unfortunately it seemed their website was not quite ready for the onslaught of interested buyers, showing some serious overload problems between 7-9AM.  I kept hitting refresh but no luck in getting through to the actual site.
Oh well, off I went to the nearest Verizon store.  It was now a little after 9AM and the store was already filled with over 30 people waiting in line. There was a sign-up kiosk, but only the names of the next 15 or so customers were displayed on the overhead screens. I had no idea how many others were in front of me or how many phones the store actually had on hand. The store manager refused to provide any insight into how many phones they had received and if waiting in line would get me a phone today. I suddenly felt more like being at the DMV than a retail store. Verizon can certainly learn a bit from Apple and how they handle their retail launch events. Still, their sales staff was friendly and worked very fast. An hour later my number was up and I got my DroidX- YES! The sales rep told me that only 18 phones were left. Not everyone left waiting was going to get one today. I wonder when they were told…

My first impression. This phone is awesome indeed. Its giant screen makes my Nexus One look puny next to it.

Setup was a breeze using AppBrain to get all my current apps loaded. But the most notable and very pleasant surprise so far is the battery life, which was a big concern given the fast CPU and large screen. I had charged both the N1 and the DroidX to 100%, and 8 hours later the Nexus One is down to 29%, while the DroidX still has 50% charge remaining. This is amazing, given that I mostly used the DroidX today.

More to follow…