Droid Bionic 4G aimed for August: report

The Droid Bionic, successor to the Droid and the Droid X, looks to be locked for launch.

Or mostly locked: The good folks over at This Is My Next have published a Best Buy promo advertisement featuring the Bionic. The ad seems real enough, although the poster is missing the precise launch dates and a spec lists. What we can tell from the advert is that the Bionic is aesthetic: a face-lift, some nipping and tucking, and some rounding around the corners.

In fact, if you just glance at the Bionic, you could be forgiven for confusing the thing for an iPhone 4. It seems identical, except the Apple home button has been swapped with the familiar Droid button array. "Control it, and you control everything," reads the Best Buy promo copy. "With the ferocious force of Verizon 4G LTE, the Droid Bionic is an all-powerful, unstoppable machine."

Among the other additions promised in the advertisement: video chat functionality, a beefed-up dual core processor, and the ability to wirelessly pull files from your hard drive. Of course, as This Is My Next points out, the Droid Bionic has been promised before, and just as quickly yanked away from the spotlight. After taking the wraps off the device at CES in January, in April Verizon announced production on the Bionic would be delayed until this summer.

At the time, Verizon said only that it was "incorporating several enhancements to make this an even better consumer experience."

So when, exactly, will the Droid Bionic launch? Well, the tech rumors site Android Central is pointing to an August 4 release date, which lines up with the early Verizon statement. More when we know it.