In September, the Motorola Droid 2 World Edition will make its debut. We’ve heard about this device yesterday, and now we seem to have a release time frame. This is the version of the Droid 2 that has support for both CDMA and GSM, making it a ‘global roaming’ .
Also in September, the Motorola WX445 Citrus will be made official, this is a youth-oriented -powered phone that we’ve seen once before, and will probably be appealing to those on a tight budget.
Some new featurephones will make their way to Verizon in September as well. They are the LG Octane VN530 (touchscreen), the LG VN270 (which may be a replacement for the LG Cosmos), the Crux and the ZTE Salute. All of these will be competing primarily on price, and not fancy features.
In mid to late October, the BlackBerry Storm 3 9570 will be released. It will run BlackBerry OS 6, but still come with the SurePress touchscreen of its predecessors, instead of going for the more widely-adopted capacitive touchscreen tech like the recently released BlackBerry Torch 9800.
The new BlackBerry Curve 3 9330 may also hit stores in October.
Also in October, the Samsung Fascinate will finally be available. This represents a delay from the previous rumors surrounding this device which had it pegged for a late September release.
Be it September or October, it’s really hard to understand why Verizon keep delaying the launch of their version of the Galaxy S, since all their competitors already sell theirs. I can only think this has something to do with not cannibalizing Droid X sales. Anyway, bad news if you wanted a Galaxy S on Verizon.
Alongside the Fascinate and the previously-seen lower-end Samsung Gem Android smartphone comes the Samsung Continuum I400, which will fit nicely in between the aforementioned devices as it is a midranger.
Still in October, which is gearing up to be one of the busiest months for Verizon in recent times, the XT610 will see the light of day. This will probably be yet another Android smartphone, with a screen size similar to that of the Droid X, but lesser specs such as a 3.2 or 5MP camera and a slower processor. It should get priced as a midrange smartphone, in the $100-$150 range, which may make it interesting for a lot of people.
Another possible October launch could be the Motorola A957, which, according to yesterday’s rumors, is the Droid Pro. Today’s info is a bit confusing in this regard, since there’s mention that it could be branded “Sick”. One way or the other, there’s no further info on this one just yet.
And finally for October, the Palm Pre 2 may make its debut, although every single detail about this phone is being kept under wraps, it seems. Whatever the specs, just the fact that HP won’t be abandoning the smartphone world to focus exclusively on tablets with webOS is good news.
November will be tablet month on Verizon.
The Motorola MZ600, first talked about yesterday, will be available, as will a Samsung tablet dubbed the I800. Of the two, the Samsung may be the one with the larger screen. This Samsung tablet may or may not be the Galaxy Tab we keep hearing about. That was rumored to have the model number P1000 at one point. That may have changed. Or I800 could be the model designation for its CDMA version. Or this could be another device altogether. This remains to be seen.
A dual screen e-reader plus Android tablet called the enTourage eDGe is also set to launch in November, alongside a little brother called enTourage Pocket.
Last, but definitely not least, in November we’ll see a 10 MP camera-equipped Android smartphone from HTC, the HTC Merge, show up on Verizon. This device will sport a processor of unknown speed, but definitely above the 1 GHz which is more or less the norm today in the high-end smartphone space.
All in all, as has been the case recently, Verizon is banking a lot on Android, with many different form factor devices coming in at many different prices to satisfy all smartphone-related needs that Big Red’s customers may have. At least until that CDMA iPhone will launch, if ever.
It will be interesting to find out what Verizon have got planned for December, given the holiday shopping season and all that, but I’m sure that it will leak at some point soon, as has this roadmap you’ve just read about and the many before it.
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