Motorola Droid 4 Release Date, Price Announced By Verizon

QWERTY keyboard fans, rejoice!

The Motorola Droid 4, with its trademark slide-out keyboard, has gotten an official price and release date. The Droid 4 will be released on Friday, February 10, for $199 with a two-year Verizon contract.

Verizon has confirmed the price and release date of the newest Droid phone in a press release, touting the Droid 4 as "the thinnest and most powerful 4G QWERTY smartphone measuring at less than half an inch thin."

Among the other tech specs of note: a dual-core 1.2 gHZ processor; a 4.0-inch display screen; an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera; and Android 2.3.5 "Gingerbread" (no timeframe yet for Ice Cream Sandwich, though Motorola has stated before that it is "planning on upgrading as many of [its] phones as possible."

The real star of the Droid 4, and its single defining feature, however, is that slide-out keyboard, a five-row QWERTY keyboard with edge-lit keys.

The Droid series was first promoted as an iPhone alternative in 2009, positioning itself as a better phone for texting and productivity than Apple's keyboard-less offering; Kevin Fitchard of GigaOM notes that this incarnation of the Droid is the first to support 4G LTE.

With its launch on February 10th, the Droid 4 will join another recent high-profile release from Motorola: The update to the Droid RAZR, the Droid RAZR Maxx, whose apparently incredible battery life has garnered rave reviews since the device debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

The Droid 4 will be available on Verizon in stores on Friday, February 10; Cnet notes that this coincides with a Verizon promotion that doubles the amount of data one gets for $30/month, from 2GB per month to 4GB per month. That promotion will be available to both new customers and existing customers signing new two-year contracts -- perhaps, Motorola and Verizon hope, those picking up a new Droid 4.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article listed an 8 megapixel front-facing camera and a 1.3 megapixel rear-facing camera. The Droid 4, in fact, has an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera and 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera.

The Droid 4 made quite a splash at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, but it wasn't the only smartphone that got people buzzing. Take a look at the slideshow (below) to see the phones that stole the limelight at CES 2012.

Also on HuffPost:

Comments

[steveanderson1357]

04:57 PM on 02/09/2012

Dont suck for me and I have unlimited. Try someone else.

[bronxlcsw]

11:31 AM on 02/08/2012

Thats why my droid Bionic is not selling on craigslist. i listed it for 275 then 250 now at 220. I am lowering it to 200 dollars in a few minutes. A truly fast smartphone the bionic is the perfect phone for all the droid fans out there.

[lifehub]

04:45 AM on 02/08/2012

Verizon is not to be trusted by any means or for any reason. They have been selling customer numbers, both landline and cell.

[Deadline Delayed]

12:54 PM on 02/09/2012

So what? Join the National Do Not Call Registry and it's illegal for advertisers to contact you for an entire year. It literally has no effect.

[Bill Rex]

01:47 AM on 02/08/2012

I would like to see verizon give the resident of Lakewood,NJ the benefi of FIOS. They jumped completely over our township when they hooked up the rest of NJ with it.

[Pectin]

10:21 AM on 02/09/2012

I would like to see Scarlett Johansson in my hot tub, but it ain't gonna happen.

[summoningki]

12:57 AM on 02/08/2012

Oh joy yet another phone which will be outdated in what, 6 months to a year? I'm waiting for my Tricorder!

[smurf264]

12:04 AM on 02/08/2012

Is it me or does every upgrade get crappier and crappier? Though I have never used a Motorola, I have had LG phones and they are awful, unfortunately LG seemed to be the least of the evils available at the store price-wise and seemed most practical for my use. I'll wait for folks to review this one once it's been out for a while, but you won't see me in a hurry to get another "upgrade".

[straveler222]

09:51 PM on 02/07/2012

They can release what ever they want but they are losing customers by the thousands, what ever you do, do not sign up for a contract with them, once they get you, they no longer care, they have you on a contract and are not afraid to extort even more from you as time goes by. They used to be a great company, but after ten years with them, I was so glad my contract expired, I now get better service, unlimited everything, and a droid phone with a qwerty keyboard for 45 dollars a month with no contract. And that is a good thing because there in more and better compitition hitting the bricks every day, DO NOT SIGN A CONTRACT

[cheaptrick00]

10:00 PM on 02/07/2012

Verizon as a company does suck....but I can't beat their contract that I've had for years cheaper than yours and I get great reception via telephone even in the most rural area of the country

[straveler222]

10:16 PM on 02/07/2012

it can't be cheaper than mine because they do not have true unlimited service any more, and as for coverage, come to my house, you will not get a call out without a booster and they want to charge you double for that, even though before we moved here they swore they had full coverage here and would be able to take care of us, after we moved, they said literly, well the fine print says. yep, they are liars and thieves, never ever again.

[itmytocents]

09:41 PM on 02/07/2012

I hope there is MUCH dissappointment!! ha ha ha, phone FREAKS!

[unreal2011]

09:31 PM on 02/07/2012

bunch of phone freaks!!! damn,get a life.its just a damned phone already...

[itmytocents]

09:40 PM on 02/07/2012

I agree, this is NOT BIG NEWS!!! and most people dont have a life! this is why they buy this garbage!

[TomMartin]

09:26 PM on 02/07/2012

Phones that can do texting should be banned, because too many text while driving. Who wants to read a text anyway, if you hear the person speaking you get the intonation, that is missing in the text.

[glockman]

08:00 AM on 02/08/2012

Yeah, that's it. Ban it if there's any chance it might be used in a dangerous manner by some fool.

Let's go back to banning alcohol. Let's ban car radios since people fiddling the radio might crash. Let's just ban everything that might distract a driver and a cause a crash, including cars.

[Pectin]

09:49 AM on 02/08/2012

Breakfast cereal, newspapers, and eye shadow should be banned, because too many eat, read, and apply makeup while driving.

Or you could quit being silly.

[TomMartin]

08:42 AM on 02/10/2012

Breakfast and newspapers are important. Texting is not important, anything texted can be told over the phone instead.

[elicourey]

09:24 PM on 02/07/2012

Remember the 90s? That phone is huge!

[Carri]

08:58 PM on 02/07/2012

News to me would be if they started offering a family data package. Most of the new phones are smart phones. How is a family supposed to afford this stuff, especially with this economy.

[cheaptrick00]

09:58 PM on 02/07/2012

Vote for obama in 2012 his new credo...."A free droid in every hand"!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DavidEvan]

08:58 PM on 02/07/2012

No more Droid upgrades for me

[Chuck Dick]

08:12 PM on 02/07/2012

Which Droid is this? What version of Android does it run? Who makes this one? Oh wait, even though it's new it can't be updated to the latest OS? Why not? Oh, right. Ahh, for that feature I need the Samsung Galaxy Turbo 4G Death Star II X-FG Model Z edition? Ok. Give me an iPhone 4S. Black. 64GB.

[theveggiedude]

06:55 PM on 02/07/2012

Oh no. It's another Foxconn product like iPhone. Boycott!!!