Motorola Droid Bionic from Verizon Wireless Finally Arrives with Hefty Price Tag

Nine months of suspense are over – the Motorola DROID Bionic goes on sale today at Verizon Wireless retail outlets and online.

The new Motorola smartphone was first announced in January as the next great rival to Apple’s iPhone, but delays have caused it to lose a bit of its steam. The Bionic, which is compatible with Verizon’s speedy 4G LTE network, also comes with a $300 price tag. Just one of VzW’s other six LTE smartphones is that pricey: the Samsung Droid Charge.

That being said, customers might find that coughing up the extra dough is worth it. The Bionic has a dual-core, 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and a 4.3-inch gHD display. It’s also the carrier’s thinnest LTE smartphone. The device includes some new features that have not been offered in previous Motorola phones, including ZumoCast, an application that lets customers bring their digital world of videos, music, pictures and documents stored on their computers to their handset via remote access. The manufacturer says the new features essentially turn the Bionic into a multimedia hub.

The new smartphone is powered by Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread), has two cameras (the rear-facing one is 8MP) and includes an HDMI jack that supports 1080p HD video playback. It has 32GB of memory, with 16GB on board and a 16GB microSD card pre-installed.

Like most phones, the Bionic requires a new, two-year service agreement. Customers will also have to subscribe to a Verizon Wireless Nationwide Talk plan beginning at $40 for 450 minutes per month and a smartphone data package starting at $30 monthly access for 2 GB of data.

Verizon Wireless says its 4G network offers download speeds of 5-12MBps and upload speeds of 2-5MBps.