Motorola Droid 3 arrives earlier than expected, now available on Verizon

According to last week’s leaked launch details for the Droid 3, all-out sales for the device wasn’t due until July 14. It looks like they jumped the gun and released it early (either that or the leak was somehow misinterpreted), because the Droid 3 is now available at Verizon’s website.

So here’s the deal: the Droid 3 costs $199.99 with a 2-year contract, and $459.99 for just the phone. Fork over the cash, and they’ll hand you Motorola’s latest, rocking a 4-inch qHD screen that slides over a 5-row QWERTY keyboard and powered by a dual-core TI OMAP4430 processor and Android 2.3.

The rest of the phone’s spec includes 16GBs of internal flash storage, a microSD card slot for adding 32GB more, an 8-megapixel, 1080p-capable camera with facial recognition, an HDMI port that can mirror 1080p content, and a 1540mAH battery that’s listed to be good for 550 minutes of talk time.

Sound good? Click here if you’re looking to stuff a virtual shopping cart with a new $200 smartphone.