Earlier this morning the Motorola Droid 3 quietly became available to order online from Verizon, shortly before it was officially announced. The Droid 3 is the successor to the popular Motorola Droid and the Motorola Droid 2.
Like its predecessors, the Droid 3 features a slide-out, five-row QWERTY keyboard. According to Verizon, the Droid 3 is actually the world's thinnest smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard. While it doesn't take advantage of Verizon's new, lightning-fast 4G LTE network, the phone is powered by a dual-core 1GHz processor. It comes with 16GB of memory on board, along with a microSD card slot that can accommodate up to 32GB cards.
The Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) Droid 3 has a 4-inch qHD display, along with an 8-megapixel camera than can record 1080p HD video. There's also a front-facing camera for video chatting, though details of its resolution have not yet been revealed.
The Droid 3 is global ready, so you can use it in more than 200 countries. It also comes equipped with a number of enterprise-level security options, as well as device and SD card encryption, remote wipe, and complex password support. In addition to this, the Droid 3 has access to the Android Market, which currently has over 200,000 apps.
The Motorola Droid 3 is currently available online from Verizon for $199.99 with a two-year contract, or $459.99 without. It will be available in Verizon stores by July 14. Keep in mind that today is the first day for Verizon's new tiered data plans. Existing customers may keep their unlimited data plans, but new customers have to choose from a number of new, usage-based options.
Check back with PCMag for a full review of the Droid 3, and to see whether or not it makes the cut for our list of the 10 best phones with keyboards.