TECH LAB
A smartphone worth lining up for
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | July 8, 2010
The people at Verizon Wireless expect lines at their stores next Thursday, like the ones Apple Inc. had last month when it debuted the new iPhone. It seems hard to believe; most people don't get that excited over a new cellphone unless Apple chieftain Steve Jobs tells them to.
Verizon is expecting its own brand of excitement for the new Droid X, which comes from stodgy old Motorola Inc. Motorola delivered one of last year's biggest hits, the original Droid. Based on Google Inc.'s Android operating system, the Droid became a legitimate rival to Apple's iPhone.
The Droid X, which goes on sale July 15, is even better, but will carry the same price: $200 with a $100 rebate and a two-year service contract.
The original Droid's worst flaw was its wretched physical keyboard. The Droid X gives up on the concept; as with an iPhone, you type by touching an on-screen virtual keyboard.
The lack of a hard keyboard makes the Droid X luxuriously lean. Its structure is thickened only along the top, where Motorola has installed an 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flashbulbs.
The same camera also shoots good 720p, high-resolution video.
But I wish Motorola had added a front-facing camera for videoconferencing.
The virtual keyboard comes with Swype, a program that lets you type by dragging your finger instead of poking at the screen. To type a word, touch the first letter, then drag your finger to the next, and so on till you're done. Somehow Swype figures out the word, getting it right about 98 percent of the time. It's almost creepy how well it works.
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