Verizon Prices Droid 4 at $199

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 2/7/2012

Basking Ridge, N.J. - Verizon Wireless priced its Motorola-made Droid 4 LTE smartphone at $199 and plans Feb. 10 availability through its direct channels.

An availability date in Verizon's indirect retail channels wasn't available.

The Droid 4, promoted as the thinnest 4G LTE QWERTY smartphone announced to date, was one of three Motorola-made Android-based LTE phones unveiled by Verizon at International CES for the carrier's Droid franchise of smartphones. One of the others, the $299 Razr Maxx, became available Jan. 26, and the third phone, a purple version of the $199 Droid Razr, is also out.

All three feature Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) OS but are upgradable to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

The Droid 4 offers 4-inch qHD display, dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, and five-row QWERTY keyboard with edge-lit keys for typing in the dark. The 8.99mm-thick Razr Maxx is slightly larger than the 7.1mm Razr. But extends talk time to 21 hours and comes with 32GB of memory compared to the Razr's 16GB.

 Droid 4 features include government-grade encryption, 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video capture, front-facing camera for video chat, 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot supporting up to eight Wi-Fi-enabled devices, 1GB of RAM, HDMI Mirror Mode to display images and video on an HDTV, 16GB onboard memory and 32GB MicroSD card slot.

 The Droid 4 can be mated with the laptop-look $299 Lapdock 500 with 14-inch display and full keyboard to download documents, browse the web, edit Droid4-stored documents, manage mobile email, and attend virtual meetings via the Lapdock's built-in webcam.

 The phone also features a Smart Actions app to automate everyday tasks and optimize battery efficiency by, for example, letting customers set the phone to vibrate during work hours or automatically dim the display when the battery level hits a certain point.

Droid 4 is preloaded with the Citrix Receiver app for Android to remotely access a PC's content.