November 06, 2009, 12:40 PM — Hoping to buy a new Motorola Droid smartphone, more than 20 people waited in line in 40-degree weather for the 7 a.m. opening of a Boston-area Verizon Wireless store.
The launch was repeated at hundreds of Verizon stores nationally early today, including a midnight opening at the downtown Manhattan Verizon store where a crowd also gathered, Verizon officials said.
Early sales were brisk, Verizon officials reported. The device costs $200, after a $100 rebate and with a two-year wireless service conract.
In a tony section of Newton, Mass., called Chestnut Hill, two computer analysts for a nearby health-care company were the first in line at 5:30 a.m. They finished their separate purchases of the Droid by 6:30 and rushed off to work, smiling.
The two analysts, David Perrone and Matt McCarthy, said they will use the smartphones to have access to both personal and work e-mail services, as well for its broad array of multimedia functions. Both said the ability to multitask, such as playing music while reading e-mail, is a clear benefit over the iPhone.
Perrone said he bought the Droid because he wanted to stay on Verizon's wireless service, the carrier he has used for a while. Otherwise, he said he likes the iPhone, but it is exclusive to AT&T and he is not prepared to change carriers to get one.
"I can't change to AT&T for the iPhone," Perrone said. "I see the Droid as competing with iPhone."
McCarthy said he was much less interested in owning an iPhone than Perrone. As the two men stood in line before doors opened in the brisk fall air, a work colleague drove up in a sporty BMW and tapped his horn. "Take your iPhone," McCarthy said to the man in the car, laughing. "He recently got an iPhone, but not me."
Both Perrone and McCarthy said they expect to spend about $100 to $110 a month for voice, data and texting service for the device. McCarthy said because he will use the device for some work functions, he expects to be reimbursed for about $30 of that monthly cost.
In addition to the Droid and a new two-year contract with Verizon, Perrone also scored one of the rare desktop docking stations for the Droid, which gives him the ability to easily charge the device and read its display.
Both McCarthy and Perrone typified the early crowd at Chestnut Hill, a group of tech-savvy early adopters.
McCarthy said he had spent the last few weeks learning all he could about the Droid, and even knew how many seconds it would take to fully boot the device. "It takes longer than some phones [to boot] because it's really a full computer," he said.
But the longer boot time is a small tradeoff for getting a large touchscreen device with a separate physical keyboard that runs Wi-Fi, McCarthy said. Droid has almost twice as many pixels on the display as some other devices, McCarthy noted.
The Droid crowd at Chestnut Hill was decidedly male, although the first 20 customers included two women, one who also called herself an early adopter and wanted a Droid to combine her work and personal e-mail accounts on a single device.
Jane Song, a hospital administrator, said she currently has a BlackBerry Pearl smartphone on Verizon service for personal e-mail and a BlackBerry Curve for work e-mail with AT&T.
"I really wanted an iPhone and I wished it worked on Verizon," Song said. She said she prefers Verizon service over AT&T, however, having noticed her Curve on AT&T sometimes experiences coverage gaps when Verizon service does not.
Before making her purchase, Song played with a display unit of the Droid in the Verizon store, saying it is heavier than she thought it would be. On the other hand, the touchscreen on the Droid "is better than the iPhone," she said after a few minutes of use.
Ultimately, Song said she wished Droid would operate over a GSM network so she could use it internationally.
Steve Kearns, a software engineer from Boston, said he bought a Droid partly to learn about Android 2.0, the Droid's operating system, and potentially to design an application for the device, even one that might someday sell on the Android Market of applications.
"I'm really interested in the open development platform," he said. The only downside of buying the Droid, Kearns said, will be that he already has a rich store of songs on iTunes, which he won't easily be able to sync to his Droid. The Droid is selling songs via Amazon.com, but Kearns said he's not interested in that approach.
The Droid also has a faster processor and will provide better Web browsing than his previous phone, an LG VX1000, Kearns added. "Web browsing is pretty bad" on his LG, he noted.
