Nine months after a first showing at CES, Motorola and Verizon confirmed the long-delayed Droid Bionic. The Android 2.3 phone is Verizon’s first dual-core phone with LTE-based 4G and is potentially one of the fastest phones on the web. The 1GHz TI OMAP 4430 is fast enough to both record and play 1080p video, including over HDMI out.
It centers on a 4.3-inch, 540×960 screen with Gorilla Glass and anti-glare and has an eight-megapixel back camera along with a lower-resolution front camera. Verizon ships it both with 16GB of memory built-in and a 16GB microSDHC card already loaded inside.
The design is only Motorola’s second phone to support the Webtop interface we first saw in the Atrix and gets a pseudo-desktop interface with a Firefox browser when used in the 11.6-inch Lapdock, the HD Station dock, or the Webtop Adapter.
Motorola’s flagship be one of the most expensive phones in Verizon’s catalog and is shipping tomorrow, September 8 for $300 on a contract. The Lapdock also costs $300, but it can be dropped to $200 when bought at the same time as the Bionic and a 5GB, $50 per month data plan. The Webtop Adapter and HD Station will cost $30 and $100 respectively, while an in-car Navigation Dock mount will cost $40 and a Battery Dock with an extra battery pack costs $50.
The Bionic is so far Verizon’s headlining Android phone for the year and preempts the rumored Droid Prime, having been given heavy promotion even without a release date. Most see it as a test of whether or not new, top-tier Android phones can significantly challenge the iPhone now that both are on the same carrier. A dual-core iPhone 5 could be just a month away and may quickly overshadow the Bionic given that some customers are known to be holding off on a phone purchase until a completely new iPhone is available.
