Buying the Verizon Droid: My pre-dawn odyssey

A line outside the Verizon Wireless store Friday morning, shortly before opening.

It’s not easy to find a decent cup of coffee—or any kind of coffee, for that matter—before the sun rises in the suburbs of New York City. If it hadn’t been for Verizon’s new Droid phone, I might never have known that (which would have been fine). However, in the interest of seeing the Droid for myself, and gaining some insight into the bizarre, early-morning rituals of the mad-for-mobile crowd, I decided to meet a Consumer Reports secret shopper at 5 a.m. in a dark, empty parking lot outside a dimly lit Verizon Wireless store.

The Droid has sparked all manner of hype in the weeks leading up to its release today, which prompted our secret shopper to get in line early to ensure he’d get a phone for our testers. (Last year, when he went to buy the similarly hyped Blackberry Storm, the line stretched around the side of the building.) A day ahead of he launch he tried to find out how many Droids the store would get, but the most he could squeeze from this store’s salesperson was “we’ll have more than five.”

Fear, hype, and (for me) a small sense of adventure had us racing alongside airport limo drivers and insomniacs to a Droid stakeout. In the end, there was little to fear. We were among only a handful of very early risers, as Engadget can confirm. Others showed up just before opening, but no one was denied a phone for lack of stock. Here’s a rundown of the morning:

5:10 a.m.: Met our shopper at the Verizon Wireless store. We sip burned, acrid coffee. There are four other cars in the lot with passengers, waiting like us. We have an unspoken agreement to stay in our cars for the time being. No reason to line up in the cold just yet.

5:15-6:15 a.m.: Small talk with our shopper. I take in all sorts of secret-shopper stories. My favorite: Our man was once kicked out of a beer distributor for checking the “born on” dates of beer brands we were testing. The proprietor thought he looked fishy, kicked him out, and refused to sell him the cases of brewski already in his cart—about a half-hour’s worth of work. Still no line.

5:50 a.m.: A veritable army of Verizon employees stumble en masse into the store. Lights come on and they start prepping for zero hour, 7 a.m..

6:00 a.m.: The sky suddenly brightens with the sunrise. The birds in the parking lot all wake up at once and start flying formations. Avian bedlam. Still no line.

6:15 a.m.: A line forms. Two overly eager beavers decide to leave the comfort of their warm car 45 minutes before the store’s doors open. That means we all have to get out and stand behind them in the brisk morning air. Thanks, guys.

6:15 a.m.: We all stand by the door, about seven of us, moving from one foot to the other to stay warm. C’mon, Verizon. At least Apple released the iPhone in June.

6:45 a.m.: Some stragglers arrive and get in the line, which maxes out at 15 people.

6:55 a.m.: A manager inside gives all the salespeople high fives as they move to their stations. They ignore our pleas to open five minutes early.

7:00 a.m. on the dot: The door opens. We file in, grateful for the warmth, and everyone rushes toward a salesperson. Our shopper buys three phones–the Droid, the HTC Droid Eris (Droid’s little cousin), and the LG Chocolate Touch–to take back to the labs.

8:20 a.m.: We leave after some delay with phone setup due to our complicated account structure. Not a huge inconvenience, as it lets me play with a number of the phones we’re buying. Cool.

I drive to the office using the Droid’s GPS Navigation, a very nifty free app, though not without its faults. (My colleagues in the GPS and Cars departments have already tested the Droid's GPS capability and posted a full review of its performance.)

If you haven’t already, check out our Mike Gikas’s review of the Droid, with video, and his head-to-head comparison of the Droid and the iPhone. Since this morning the Droid has been undergoing our formal testing. Check our smart-phone Ratings soon (available to subscribers) to see how it fared.

Tonight I’ll sleep well. If you also lined up early for a Droid, let us know how it went. —Nick K. Mandle

Comments

[Eric]

Too little, too late. Tough to make a big splash with this phone when the iPhone has already established itself...and in this economy. Wish the iPhone would have been partnered with Verizon instead.

[Sherri]

The Verizon store in my area (Emeryville, CA) only had four customers in line when they opened at 7 am, a huge difference from the line-down-the-block when the original Storm launched.

I have to say that I was very impressed with the browser speed and processor, but found the Droid to be a HUGE disappointment and returned it. The deal breakers for me were the horrible physical keyboard (and the virtual not any better), the absolutely horrible camera lag (though picture quality was good), the lack of Bluetooth voice command capability (which will be addressed in a software update per the Motorola rep I spoke with),and most of all, the unnecessary steps it takes to actually make/answer a phone call. It seems that in the process of adding "bells and whistles", Motorola forgot the concept of making the functionality convenient.

[don]

The new droid may be a good smart phone and verizon is a great network but to pay a termination fee oF $350 Is nonsense.Consumer reports did a investigation in 1/09 and found the cost of the phone is included in your monthy fee. I passed one Verizon store when they opened and there wer only 3 customers.This was at 9 am.

[donnie]

Do secret shoppers sign up for a new wireless service account when they buy each phone?

[Jason Gooljar]

While this is all well and good I cannot read this post and help but comment. To me the whole waiting in line ritual is unhealthy and basically transports people right into the hands of marketers and consumerism in general. Last year there were enormous lines at Apple stores for the initial launch of the iPhone (as shown by media old and new) which I also found disheartening.

At $550.00 how many people can really afford to get this Droid phone? The fact that the line wasn't that long and etc., does tell me that the economy may be grounding people somewhat however.

Don't get me wrong I've come to admire the utility of the iPhone and the speed of the 3g network. I'm sure the Droid may follow suit in its bid to wrestle some of the smart phone market share. However, I own neither phone. I have a $20 (prepaid)Tracfone which I got back in 2006. I seem to be doing alright and I simply could not afford to purchase either phone and pay for their monthly plans. I cannot possibly be the only one who feels this way.