Samsung Charges Up Its Smartphone Lineup With First Droid-Branded Phone for Verizon
Verizon and Samsung on Thursday announced the Droid Charge–the first Samsung-made phone to carry the Droid branding.
The phone, the second smartphone for Verizon’s 4G LTE network, will go on sale April 28 for a hefty $299, with a two-year contract. Among its features are a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, 8 megapixel rear-facing camera, 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera and 1GHz processor.
The original Droid phone, launched in 2009, was made by Motorola. All Droid models until the Charge have been made by either Motorola or HTC.
The launch of the Droid Charge comes as Motorola and Verizon have delayed the debut of the Droid Bionic, another LTE-capable phone. It was originally slated to launch this quarter but has been pushed back until later in the summer.
The only phone currently running on Verizon’s LTE network is HTC’s Thunderbolt. On its earnings conference call earlier Thursday, Verizon said that it activated 260,000 Thunderbolts during a two-week period following its launch.
The company said on the call that it also expects to have “up to three” phones running on the LTE network by the end of the current quarter.