It's the biggest gap in Verizon's smartphone lineup. All the way back at CES in January, Verizon Wireless debuted the Motorola Droid Bionic. We did a full hands-on with the Droid Bionic at the show. But since then, the phone has gone completely missing, cropping up periodically with various rumored release dates, all wrong. The most recent update, on an official Verizon sign-up page, just says "this summer."
Verizon customers are waiting for the Droid Bionic because it combines two things: a dual-core processor and LTE. Verizon's 4G LTE network is the fastest in the land, and it's expanding aggressively; every few weeks, the company announces more LTE cities. But Verizon's three LTE phones, the HTC Thunderbolt, LG Revolution, and Samsung Droid Charge, are all less than state-of-the-art when it comes to processor speed. That's been forcing Verizon early adopters into a tough bind: do you go with the fast processor or the fast network?
In our tests, the fast network has won out. When we compared Motorola's dual-core Droid 3 to Samsung's single-core Droid Charge in a Verizon LTE coverage area, the Droid Charge loaded and rendered Web pages and executed other Internet-based tasks faster, just because LTE is so much faster than Verizon's poky 3G network.
The Droid Bionic, when and if it ever comes out, will let Verizon customers get the best of both worlds: dual-core gaming and great Flash performance with the nation's fastest network. The Droid Bionic's 960-by-540 screen is also higher-resolution than Verizon's other LTE phones. The phone's 1930 mAh battery may give it better battery life than the struggling HTC Thunderbolt. LTE is so power-hungry that we could only stream videos for 2 1/2 hours on the Thunderbolt's 1500mAh cell.
If Motorola can't get its act together, it may find itself beaten to the punch by Samsung. Samsung is widely reported to be working on versions of its dual-core, Editor's Choice Galaxy S II phone for all of the major U.S. carriers. While Motorola hasn't managed to release a single LTE phone yet, Samsung has three—Verizon's Droid Charge and MetroPCS's Samsung Craft and Samsung Galaxy Indulge—so producing LTE devices obviously isn't a problem for the world's number-one mobile phone maker.
I have another worry about the Droid Bionic. In my review of the Droid 3, I found that Motorola's Android skin damaged the phone's performance. While the Droid 3's TI OMAP4430 processor did very well on benchmarks, Motorola's heavy animations made the phone feel gummy in day-to-day use. Hopefully, the Droid Bionic won't suffer from the same disease.
For now, the Motorola Droid Bionic remains vaporware. Trapped in Verizon's approval labs, it isn't clear when it will see the light of day. We'll probably have some sort of dual-core LTE phone for Verizon within the next few months, though, whether it's from Motorola or not. I'd also like to add to the wish list: how about an LTE phone with a QWERTY keyboard?
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