Motorola Droid gets official, slated to arrive Nov. 6 for $199

Not the biggest of surprises, I know, but now at least we have the official pricing and release date for the Android-powered Droid slider, which is poised to land in Verizon Wireless's smartphone lineup next Friday. Among the features: free, turn-by-turn GPS directions.

Let's get right down to business: The QWERTY-equipped, 3G- and Wi-Fi-enabled Droid will set you back $199 with a two-year Verizon contract, after a $100 mail-in rebate. Meanwhile, the Droid's 3G data plan will cost you $30 a month, which is about par for the course.

As far as details on the phone itself, well ... they've already been leaked every which way, but here are the basics again: expect a six-ounce, 0.5-inch handset (thin, but a bit on the heavy side) with a jumbo-sized 3.7-inch, 480 by 854-pixel touchscreen and a full, slide-out QWERTY keypad.

The Droid will be the first phone to run on Android 2.0, the latest version of Google's smartphone OS, good for features such as native Exchange and Facebook support (which means you'll be able to pull contact info from your Facebook friends into the Droid's address book), along with the new Google Maps Navigation app, which gives you voice-activated turn-by-turn directions, for free. Nice.

Other standard Android features include Gmail and Google Calendar integration, GPS-aided Google Maps with digital compass-aided Street View, a full HTML Web browser, a media player, and a sleek, easy-to-use (and now gussied-up) Android touch UI.

Also on board the Droid: a five-megapixel camera with auto-focus and a dual-LED flash, "DVD-quality" video recording, microSD memory expansion (up to 32GB), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities, and a promised 6.4 hours of talk time (which sounds a bit optimistic to me, but we'll find out soon enough). Not included, though: MotoBlur, the new Motorola service that sends a steady stream of social-networking updates to your phone's home page.

I'll be getting some hands-on time with the Droid later today, so stay tuned.