Think of it as the Motorola XX. Verizon Wireless and Motorola today announced the Droid Turbo, an all-in superphone with some of the most intense specs we've ever seen.
Motorola's Moto X has been considered one of the finest Android devices around, but the Droid Turbo outdoes it in nearly every way. The Turbo is about the same size and shape, with a woven nylon back and prominent Verizon branding. But wow, those specs.
The Droid Turbo uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor running at 2.7GHz and powering a 5.2-inch, 2,560-by-1,440 AMOLED screen at 565 ppi. That's the fastest Qualcomm processor we've seen yet and the densest screen, outpacing the LG G3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
That crazily dense screen is backed up by a huge 3900mAh battery. As a result, the phone is a little thicker than some of its competitors, 11.2mm at its thickest point. Motorola and Verizon say the Droid Turbo will have up to 48 hours of "mixed usage," although I've seen those superdense screens take a real toll on overall battery life.
But wait! There's more! The phone has a 21-megapixel main camera that records 4K video and a 2-megapixel front camera. It doesn't have a MicroSD card slot, but it comes in 32GB and 64GB models, each with 3GB of RAM. And there's a two-year, no-questions-asked replacement guarantee on the Gorilla Glass 3 screen. It runs Android 4.4.4, but it's guaranteed to get Lollipop.
In short: the Droid Turbo is a complete monster of a phone, in a surprisingly non-monstrous size. (At 73.3 by 145.5 mm, it's just a teensy bit larger than the Samsung Galaxy S5 – still bigger than the phone I want personally, but in line with where the industry is going today.)
The 32GB Droid Turbo will cost $199.99 with contract and the 64GB model will cost $249.99, both available starting Oct. 30.
Keeping Exclusives Alive
In an era when carrier exclusive devices are on the decline, Verizon's been fighting valiantly to keep its Droid brand alive. Verizon, not a manufacturer or Google, owns the Droid name, and for a while it was considered synonymous with all Android phones.Last year's Droid lineup didn't make much of a splash in the market, though. Confusion was a big part of the problem: the Droid Ultra, Droid Mini, and Droid Maxx were all dropped on the market shortly after the 2013 Moto X, creating a swamp of similar Motorola Droid phones on Verizon that consumers didn't seem to want to wade through.
The Droid Turbo takes another tack: offering a single device with the most extreme specs available anywhere in the U.S. to draw people over to what we rated as the best LTE network in the U.S. The Droid Turbo locks in Verizon's association with premium quality at premium prices, making it clear that if you want to turn it up to 11, this is your carrier.
We'll have a review of the new Verizorola Droid Turbo soon.