Motorola's Droid X does many things well, including Wi-Fi and social networking access, but not well enough to conquer the iPhone.

Apple's new-product launches tend to overshadow any company that dares to unveil a gadget around the same time. That's what happened to Motorola and Verizon Wireless, whose Droid X was introduced the same week the iPhone 4 went on sale.

The Droid X is the successor to last year's original Droid. That phone began Motorola's comeback effort after the former wireless king, whose fortunes tumbled when it couldn't create a successor to its hit Razr, scrapped development of its own operating system in favor of Google's Android. The Droid X, which goes on sale July 15, has a few advantages over the iPhone. The 4.3-inch screen, the largest I've ever used, is nearly 25 percent bigger than the iPhone's. Yet the Droid X is lighter and thinner than its predecessor because Motorola jettisoned a physical keyboard in favor of an onscreen one. It can also do something cool that the iPhone can't: provide a Wi-Fi signal for nearby devices. The Mobile Hotspot feature costs $20 for up to 2 gigabytes of data per month, on top of the cost of the phone—$199 after a $100 rebate—and voice and data plans that start at $75.

The Droid X's biggest advantage is that it runs on Verizon Wireless, which is superior to the AT&T network that the iPhone is—at least for now—tethered to. This summer, an over-the-air upgrade will allow the Droid X to run videos using Adobe's Flash software, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs has famously banished from the iPhone. Still, while the Droid X does a lot of things well, it does no one thing well enough to conquer the mighty iPhone.

By Rich Jaroslovsky

Source : bloomberg.com / businessweek