As promised, today is the first day that Verizon will begin taking orders for the Motorola Droid 2 – the follow-up the well-received original Motorola Droid. You can log onto the Verizon web-store to put in your pre-order for the new Droid 2, which will run you $199.99 when purchased with a 2-year service contract from Big Red. A quick check of the website shows that the on-contract price of the Droid 2 is a hefty $299.99, but is being offered with a $100 online discount, making your checkout price about two C-notes.
If you’re not yet familiar with the Droid 2, you should know that it’s the second-generation version of the Droid, and it’s made by Motorola. The D2, as we like to call it, features the same 3.7-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera (with auto-focus and dual-LED flash) and side-sliding QWERTY keyboard form-factor as the original D1, but it ups the ante with improvements in some key areas.
The slide-out keyboard has been updated with a new layout that does away with a space-hogging D-pad in favor of arrow keys. The somewhat flat keys from the original Droid keyboard has been updated on the D2 to be more contoured and offers “better tactile differentiation” – in other words, it just feels better and lends to a faster typing experience.
Perhaps the best feature of the D2 is that it ships with Android 2.2 Froyo OS. That means you’ll see overall faster system performance, support for Adobe Flash 10.1 Player, faster JavaScript performance, and the ability to save Android apps to the microSD card. The D2 also features the Verizon Mobile HotSpot feature that allows you to use the handset as a portable WiFi router – giving your WiFi devices access to the internet via Verizon’s 3G data network. You also get the Swype on-screen keyboard preloaded on the Droid 2, which makes typing no harder than dragging your finger across the virtual keyboard to trace out words.
Verizon has also posted a video tour of the Droid 2, featuring “Derek.” Take a look at the D2 tour below! Oh, and don’t forget that Verizon will be pushing out an R2D2 version of the handset in the near future, for all you Star Wars fans out there.
[Via: Verizon]