At CES in January, Motorola made a point to show off three new devices: the Motorola Atrix for AT&T, the Motorola Xoom tablet running Honeycomb, and the Motorola Droid Bionic: a 4G LTE smartphone destined for Verizon Wireless. The Droid Bionic has appeared on a number of leaked release slates, even though Motorola and Verizon have both declined to say when the phone will be released. Now rumors are popping up that due to issues in testing, the phone may be scrapped altogether.
The rumors started over at Howard Forums, and then wound up over at sites like Droid Life and Pocket Now, but for its part Motorola and Verizon Wireless are keeping tight-lipped about them. Some people point out that the Droid Bionic is entirely too late in its development and testing cycle to signal a cancellation. A delay may be possible, but not an outright retreat from the market.
Others point to a litany of rumored issues with battery life, and the fact that Motorola may be releasing a new version of MotoBlur with the Droid Bionic as all signals that all’s not well with the device. It’s also possible that Motorola may be refocusing its efforts on a new handset codenamed Droid Targa, which reportedly looks more like the Droid X with rounded edges and a smoother case design.
Still, the Bionic would be Verizon Wireless’ second LTE device (after the HTC Thunderbolt,) and its first dual-core LTE phone. Even though the hardware is very similar to the already-released Motorola Atrix on AT&T, Motorola is still doing a lot of things for the first time with the Bionic, the least of which is putting in an LTE radio.
It’s important to point out that all of this is rumor at the moment, and Motorola isn’t about to acknowledge any design or testing difficulty they have or haven’t had with the Droid Bionic by responding to them. Until they or Verizon Wireless pipe up with a release date for the Bionic, the speculation is likely to continue.
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