Monday, May 2, 2011

Droid Bionic Gone From Motorola Website



Let’s preface this story by saying this; unlike other rumored devices, the Motorola Droid Bionic is/was a very real device. The Motorola Droid Bionic was launched at CES by Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha. The Motorola Droid Bionic wasn’t even announced just once, there were two big announcements, one at a Verizon press conference and another at Motorola. We were at both.
There has been a lot of speculation about the Motorola Droid Bionic.  We can tell you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the Droid Bionic was out for beta testing twice.
More after the break

We can also tell you that the Motorola Droid Bionic was supposed to be the second 4G/LTE phone out of the gate at Verizon Wireless, not the third. However with the recent pull back on  the Droid Charge even that’s up in the air.
We can also tell you that while the Motorola Droid Bionic was announced at CES by both Verizon Wireless and Motorola, Verizon Wireless has never confirmed a release date (similar to what happened with the HTC Thunderbolt). No, don’t write in, don’t gtalk, don’t tweet, there is no “missed date” because Verizon Wireless never issued a date. They did however say Spring 2011 and with that they have another month and 19 days.
The other day our very own Elijah Ketchum wrote a story on enhancements that were coming to the Motorola Droid Bionic, which he sourced from our friends at Droid Life.
The Targa Rumor
If you have been following the 6 part saga that is the Droid Bionic than by now you’ve also heard about the Motorola Targa. I dual core superphone. It’s unclear exactly what the Motorola Targa is. Some say it’s a multi-core superphone.  Some insist it’s the highly anticipated Droid 3. Others feel that the Motorola Targa is actually the new enhanced Droid Bionic and that Motorola will scrap the Targa name and re-issue the device as the Bionic.
On Motorola’s Q1 earnings call, Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha said this:
Motorola (Sanjay):  As we saw that that product (original Bionic) was pushing out a little bit, we worked with our partners at Verizon Wireless and re-featured the device and we believe that the result of it, we will have a much better device.  We had another device which was a potentially…which had different features than…and we brought in some of the features to deliver what we consider to be a higher feature device that will launch as we go forward into the summer.
source: Droid Life
Based on that quote from Jha it is apparent that Motorola is retooling the Bionic and is probably incorporating the feature sets of two different phones, the Bionic and another device (perhaps the Targa) to create one new device and call it the Bionic.  If all of this jives than the hypothesis Ketchum came up with is most likely the scenario.\
The Motorola Droid Bionic is also supposed to support the Motorola Lapdock accessory and possibly the Motorola Tabdock accessory.
Where are we at today?
At this point in time any mention of the Droid Bionic from the Motorola Mobility consumer website is gone.  This could be because the Motorola Droid Bionic is also gone and scrapped or more likely to put the focus on other devices in Motorola’s pipeline while the newly tooled Droid Bionic is ready and available.
Jha suggested on the Q1 earnings call that the Droid Bionic as well as the 4G upgrade to the Motorola Xoom, will be available over the summer.
In the “rumored” timeline we are expecting a Droid 3 and Droid X2 to be announced sometime during the summer as well.
 

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