SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Verizon Wireless said Wednesday that it will begin selling the Droid X, the follow-up to Motorola Inc.'s popular Droid smart phone, on July 15.

Verizon said the phone will cost $200 with a rebate and two-year wireless service contract.

The Droid X runs Google Inc.'s Android software and has a touch screen that is 4.3 inches diagonally and an 8-megapixel camera with a dual flash that can also record high-definition videos. It will also have an HDMI port so you can connect it to a TV and watch content stored on the phone on a bigger screen.

Verizon said that later this summer Droid X buyers will get the newest Android software, version 2.2, as well as Adobe's Flash Player 10.1 for watching flash videos.

The Droid X is part of Motorola Inc.'s cell phone comeback plan — the beleaguered handset maker had struggled for several years, failing to put out a successful follow-up to its popular Razr cell phone. More recently, the Schaumburg, Ill., company has focused its turnaround efforts on phones that run the Android software.

Verizon's announcement comes a day before Apple is set to start selling its newest iPhone, which has already seen a surge of interest. Apple and its partner companies started taking iPhone 4 orders on June 15, and the next day Apple said they received more than 600,000 orders in 24 hours — the highest number it has ever seen.

Demand was so high that the companies quickly stopped taking orders for shipment by June 24