New Droid Turbo Charges to 8 Hours of Battery Life in Just 15 Minutes

Motorola/Verizon

With all the Nexuses and Galaxies and Motos and HTC Ones out there, the Droid lineup of phones can get lost in the shuffle. The new Droid Turbo, developed in a partnership between Verizon and Motorola, wants to steal back some of the spotlight with some enticing features.

First on the list is a fixed 3,900mAh battery that gets up to 48 hours of life on a single charge. Rather than having to wait around for that beefy battery to charge up, you can top it off quickly with a “Turbo Charging” feature that provides eight hours of battery life when you plug it in for 15 minutes.

The main camera is a 21-megapixel shooter, giving you plenty of room to crop and use digital zoom without making a pixellated mess. Those high-res photos look sharp on the Droid Turbo’s 5.2-inch AMOLED QHD display (2560 x 1440, 565ppi), and the phone also shoots 4K video at 24fps.

Durability is sure to be a strong suit, as the Droid Turbo comes with black backings made of ballistic nylon or metallic glass fiber or a red backing made of the metallic glass fiber. They feel good in the hand. And just in case the Gorilla Glass screen breaks, Verizon and Motorola are offering free “Turbo Screen Assurance” coverage good for one free screen replacement per two-year contract.

It’s well-specced under the hood, with a 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon system on a chip and 3GB RAM. Although the new phone runs Android 4.4 KitKat with the dramatically redesigned Android 5.0 Lollipop waiting in the wings, Verizon and Motorola say that the new phone is “guaranteed” to get a Lollipop upgrade once the new OS is available.

The new Droid Turbo will be available this Thursday, Oct. 30, on Verizon only. It’ll be $200 on contract ($25 per month) for a 32GB version with the black or red backing in both materials. The 64GB version is priced at $250 on contract ($27 per month) with the black ballistic nylon backing only. To grease the wheels of commerce, Verizon is offering a trade-in plan: Any phone you trade in will get you a minimum of $100 towards the new Turbo, and they’ll also waive all the activation fees.