Motorola's long-awaited Droid Bionic will hit store shelves in September, Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha said this week. The phone has been delayed several times since Jha first showed it off at CES 2011, with the most recent projections putting its release sometime "this summer," but it appears consumers could have the Bionic in their hands just in time for fall.
In an interview with CNET, Jha said the Bionic will have a September debut on Verizon Wireless. He also confirmed that Motorola plans another LTE smartphone this year, as well as two tablets.
Motorola did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
How does the Bionic differ from any other smartphone on the market? It includes a dual-core processor and LTE, something not currently on the Verizon lineup. The carrier's LTE network has earned high praise from PCMag, but its 4G phones—the HTC Thunderbolt, LG Revolution, and Samsung Droid Charge—aren't much to talk about when it comes to processor speed. As a result, Verizon customers have had to choose between a fast processor or a fast network.
When the Bionic was first announced at CES, Jha said it would be released in the second quarter, but rumors then surfaced that the Bionic was on the chopping block to make way for the slightly more powerful Motorola Atrix. At the end of April, Motorola officially announced it was delaying the Bionic's release to the third quarter in order to enhance the device based on feedback since CES.
In recent weeks, small clues about the Bionic's release date have popped up—a Best Buy flyer was picked up by This Is My Next; Verizon launched a sign-up page for alerts about the phone's release; and a screen shot tipped an August 4 release date with a $299.99 price tag.
If the rumors are to be believed, meanwhile, a September release for the Bionic would put it head-to-head with the iPhone 5. Time will tell if LTE and a dual-core processor are enough to battle Apple's next-gen iPhone. Which one would you choose? Let us know in the comments.
Until then, see Why You May Want a Motorola Droid Bionic, PCMag mobile analyst Sascha Segan's hands-on with the Bionic at CES, and the slideshow below.
Motorola Mobility, meanwhile, reported its earnings this week. It sold 440,000 Xoom tablets and 4.4 million smartphones for its second quarter, the company said.