Hasta La Gadget!

In the best sort of tradition, Best Buy Mobile has gone for a repeat of its Palm Pre offering and is offering the $299 Motorola DROID at $199 thanks to the automation of a mail-in rebate you’d have to actually “mail in” if you were to purchase the handset straight from the carrier. Best Buy also seems to be the first place to offer pre-orders of the phone, so if you’re worried about a sell out or just generally averse to affixing stamps to things, Best Buy appears to have you covered.

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Best Buy offering DROID pre-orders as of today, automates the mail-in rebate originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, the DROID’s getting all the attention today, but you might recall that it’s not the only thing Verizon has in the pipe has it preps its first Android assault — HTC’s got the Droid Eris in there somewhere, too, which is shaping up to be little more than a branded Hero in a slightly different shell. Against the insanely-spec’d DROID, that may not be a drool-worthy proposition, but fortunately, it’s looking like Verizon is going to be pursuing an aggressive tiered pricing strategy that might allow these phones to coexist in peace and everlasting harmony: unlike the DROID’s $199 sticker, gdgt has it on good authority that the Droid Eris will run a hundie less at $99. That spanks Sprint’s version which currently runs $179.99, but hey, if this means we’re going to see a price war down in the 528MHz trenches for the Android midrange, we’re all for it.

[Image via AndroidGuys]

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Droid Eris priced at $99 for Verizon? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We knew good and well this thing was coming sometime in November, and now Verizon Wireless has made it official: the Motorola DROID will hit Big Red on November 6th for $199 on contract (after a $100 mail-in rebate). Naturally, the DROID itself is just the first of what could be many Android-laced phones coming to the carrier, and Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton even stated that the phone “is wide open” — pretty big words from a company like VZW. Android 2.0 will be front and center, along with Visual Voicemail, a 3.7-inch display (854 x 480 resolution), 5 megapixel camera (with dual-LED flash), a bundled 16GB memory card and a beta version of Google Maps Navigation(!). For those wondering, yeah — the DROID is the first phone to offer that, which transforms Google Maps into a turn-by-turn routing system that’ll have your dedicated TomTom / Garmin trembling in fear. There’s also a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3G, WiFi, voice-activated search and over-the-air Amazon MP3 downloads. With all that, who needs the iPhone, right Ivan?

Update: Check on our in-depth hands-on coverage on the DROID, Google Maps Navigation and the accessory dock!

Continue reading Motorola DROID official on Verizon: $199 on contract, coming November 6th (video)

Filed under: Cellphones

Motorola DROID official on Verizon: $199 on contract, coming November 6th (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The phone you’re peering at above has more names than we’d care to count, but the so-called Aries (or the Gemini‘s CDMA’d sibling, if you please) may end up on Verizon as one of two things: the BlackBerry Curve 8530 or the BlackBerry Curve 2. The folks over at CrackBerry managed to get their hands on a unit far before this thing has even been officially released, and of course they’ve given us the rundown just as the Storm2 is stealing all of the attention over at Big Red. The WiFi-equipped handset (yeah, you read that right) was said to be “identical to the Curve 8520” with the exception of the back cover design, meaning that while solid, the device definitely felt “entry-level.” The interface was said to be satisfactorily snappy, the optical trackpad was dubbed “really great” and the web browser was still thoroughly worthless. If you really need to hear more, give that read link a look.

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Verizon’s BlackBerry Curve 8530 gets reviewed early originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember how in grade school, you usually made fun of the people you had crushes on? Verizon — hot on the heels of some surgically strategic anti-iPhone marketing to promote its upcoming Android line — is singing a very different tune in the corporate boardroom, with CEO Ivan Seidenberg (who has a storied reputation for running his mouth) saying during the company’s earnings call today that the company “obviously would be interested at any point in the future that they would be interested in having us as a partner.” He went on to say that the decision to bring the iPhone to Verizon is “exclusively in Apple’s court,” though we doubt that’s entirely true — Verizon has a reputation for putting manufacturers and devices through the wringer, and if any carrier in the world were to spike the iPhone for failing acceptance testing or throw its gargantuan weight and reputation around to put pressure on the contract, it’d be Big Red. Either way, though, it’s an olive branch and a potential start to the near-constant cries of “if only the iPhone were on Verizon” that we’ve been hearing for the past two years; we’re still having an awful hard time picturing a CDMA-equipped version ever happening, but with Verizon’s LTE network progressively lighting up over the next few years, it might just be the perfect opportunity for these wayward souls to finally find common ground, especially with the tune AT&T’s singing these days.

Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon chief says offering the iPhone is Apple’s call originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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