The @DroidLanding scavenger hunt has come to a close (check out the winners list here) and one of our Droid Life readers managed to win one!  Andrew Webber, at full sprint through a bar in Cleveland, found the hidden certificate giving him a brand new Droid X.

During his quick interview, he originally had mentioned Droid Life, but VZW decided to remove that from the final cut.  Damn them!  No matter what it’s pretty sweet that one of our readers made Droid X history…

Congrats Andrew!

(Click for full size.)

Update: Our sources have given us July 19th as a possible release date.  (Yep, Monday.)

Phone has been out for just about 2 full days now and Verizon is apparently readying an update to be sent out OTA.  No date has been given but according to Verizon’s Droid X Support page, we have a list of fixes on the table just dying to be eaten…

Improvements:

+ Improved battery charging status indicator.
+ Smoother transition for camera and camcorder functions.
+ Redesign of weather widget icons.
+ Faster Exchange ActiveSync® email loading.
+ Streamlined organization of newly downloaded applications.
+ Organized favorite contacts by call count.
+ Updated Bluetooth® connection for enhanced video sharing experience.
+ Coordinated date and time across phone displays.
+ Cleaner looking status bar for GPS symbol.
+ Improved sync capabilities for 3G Mobile Hotspot.
+ Faster Visual Voice Mail loading.

Enhancements:

+ Take advantage of the enhanced, preloaded My Verizon application.
+ Preloaded Amazon Kindle® application lets you read Kindle books on your Android™ phone, including thousands of free books.

All sounds great to me.  Definitely interested to see how a Kindle book looks on this 4.3″ beauty.  And no, this is not Froyo.  We’re still expecting that in August.

Source:  Verizon

Cheers @iSeano!

Anyone notice on the new Droid Does page for the Droid X that there was a box for you to input secret codes?  Check out the image below to see what we are talking about…

Follow this link and input this code to unlock a secret landing page:  JXYDA QWQYD

Update: Cheers to Jared for showing us that this code came from the new Droid X commercial we posted this morning!  Nice work!  What a fantastic campaign.

Enjoy!

Cheers Wade!

Motorola Marketing Director James King sat down with some Facebook readers this morning and touched on a bunch of topics, but there was one in particular cleared up which has been taken completely out of context and blown into something absurd.  Yes, we’re talking about that damn eFuse…

Regarding e-Fuse. References to dynamite, explosions, booby traps…really?? Please….Everyone is fully versed in our policy over Bootloader access, but eFuse is the same as on Milestone and is not loaded with the purpose of preventing a consumer device from functioning, but rather ensuring for the user that the device only runs on updated and tested versions of software. If a device attempts to boot with unapproved software, it will go into recovery mode, and can re-boot once approved software is re-installed. Checking for a valid software configuration is a common practice within the industry to protect the user against potential malicious software threats. As expressed before, and that have circulated in the past, malware, hacks and various nefarious situations for owners and companies will likely to become increasingly common for smartphones as has been seen in computers, and at Motorola we have a duty to the widest consumer base and businesses to ensure we have done everything we can do to protect. JK

The bootloader essentially does what we’ve always thought it would do, lock you out should you try to tamper with it.  How is this new?  Is it because we have a locked bootloader stateside finally?  Seriously, this might have been the most obnoxious rumor on the face of smartphone earth.  Can we officially drop it now?

He also went on to talk about Froyo for the Milestone to those of you wondering…

Next European Milestone and 2.2 (Froyo). I have expressed over the last few days that the decision is pending. The team here has been collating key pieces of information and views from this community in the last month and providing input to relevant teams in Motorola so they are aware. I am pushing for that decision to be made as quickly as possible, and we can then all go from there. Some others ask why the decisions on upgrades take so long, and why does implementation then take much longer still. What I can say and have stated recently is that upgrades are not a walk in the park. Sure there are short cuts that people can take, but when you have to integrate software to a specific hardware, then test it and integrate with third party applications, let alone any innovation from ourselves, plus then get approvals to make this all official and safe… its is a big undertaking that requires planning and resource and third party coordination to see this all through. As I say, once we have decision, we will inform. JK

That sounds like 50/50 odds for Milestone Android 2.2 to me…let’s hope not.

Update: As this was sitting in line to post, it looks like Engadget received a similar response from Motorola.  You can read it here.

Thoughts now?

Source:  Motorola Europe Facebook

Cheers @RaptorBot!

Keeping track of the @DroidLanding DROID X scavenger hunt so that you don’t have to!  Here is the list of winners in case you missed your opportunity and feel like stalking someone.  The Twitter account for the hunt is also deleting their coordinate posts so grouping them all into one was just so much easier…

1.  Jose Larrea - Las Vegas
2.  Todd Leykamp – Los Angeles
3.  Justin Schauer – San Francisco
4.  Francis Choung – New York City
5.  Louis Cantoran – Dallas
6.  Ted Webster – Orlando
7.  Christena Berner - Seattle
8.  Alex Abenoja - Birmingham
9.  Chris Bamman - Nashville
10.  Matt Garza - Houston
11.  James Stepanek – Oklahoma City
12.  Andrew Webber – Cleveland
13.  Michael Inglet - Buffalo
14.  Ryan Wallace – Chicago
15.  Marc Martinez - Denver
16.  Brian Luckerman - St. Louis
17.  Stephen McGee – Detroit
18.  Kelly Altmann – Minneapolis
19.  Joseph Umanzor – Philadelphia
20.  Karen Hennelly – Boston
21.  Blake Ourso – Washington DC

Congrats to those of you who made it to each spot first!  It doesn’t appear as if any Droid Life readers snagged one, but we heard from many of you that came oh so close.  This was definitely a fun and well received promo.  Nice work VZW.

We have only had the new Droid X for about an hour now, but wanted to quickly give you our first impressions and also let you see the device in action.  We’ll have a full review in the coming days after we’ve had a chance to dive into this device; wouldn’t want to short change something this powerful.  For now, check out this quick video…

And we’d love to hear questions you may have about the device.  Feel free to drop them in the comments!

Well hello there Droid X and 32GB SD card which says $99, but really only cost Droid Life $50.  Yay!

OK, so we’re back from a little adventure to pick up the new beast on the Verizon block and have some news to share that might change your current and future orders…

• Sold Out – First of all, the DX is basically sold out everywhere.  We were just at a store outside of Portland that received 65 devices and had 2 left when we walked out the door.
• Next Shipment – When you can place an order for one in store again?  Confirmed by 2 sources, as of today (7/15), orders placed after 2:30PM will not be shipped until 7/23.
• Device on Hold – If you had a DX on hold, it is likely gone.  Stores were holding until 2PM today and will sell your device if you had not picked it up by then.
• 32GB SD cards – While Verizon had announced that the 32GB SD cards would be discounted from $149 to $99, I was able to purchase one for $50.  Some stores may do this, others may not.  Either way, it’s worth asking to see if you can save yourself some cash.  (Yes the one with the bigger geebeez.)
• Data Service – If you are attempting to activate a DX right now, good luck.  They have had so many activations today that a backlog is currently hampering new devices from accessing data.

Online orders now being shipped 7/23…

And our first impressions coming up shortly!