First look: The Motorola Droid X

This newest member of Verizon's family of Droid smart phones was scheduled to be available on July 15 at a price of $200 after a $100 mail-in rebate. That was too late for us to fully test the Motorola Droid X for our Ratings (available to subscribers). But early impressions suggest that this Android-driven phone will score well and be a recommended model once we buy and test it. Here are highlights from our evaluation of a press sample of the Droid X (we paid to use it, as is our policy):

Fine performance

Launching apps on the Droid X was as fast as on the phone's highly rated Verizon siblings, the Motorola Droid and HTC Droid Incredible. Text passages and other details in documents and Web pages looked sharp on the huge 4.3-inch multitouch display.

A pleasing user experience

Measuring 5x2.6x0.4 (HxWxD) inches, the Droid X is one of the taller and thinner phones we've seen. A pop-up navigation bar lets you jump directly to any of the phone's seven home screens. You can also resize widgets to cram more on a single screen, and there's an app that presents all of your social-network contacts on a single page. The responsive virtual keyboard supports Swype, which lets you type text by sliding your finger from letter to letter.

A fine camera

Though it fattens the top of the phone (to about a half-inch thick), the camera has 8-megapixel resolution. It yields still images on a par with better subcompact cameras. It also shoots HD video that rivals that from a pocket camcorder, though it falls short of HD video from the iPhone 4. The Droid X also supports YouTube HQ, which streams smoother and sharper versions of some of the videos on its site.