Verizon’s New 4G QWERTY Phone: Motorola DROID 4

Verizon Wireless has added another big hitter to its lineup of 4G phones with arrival of the Motorola DROID 4.

First unveiled at the CES electronics show earlier this year, the DROID 4 is billed by Verizon as the thinnest, most powerful 4G QWERTY smartphone ever at less than half an inch thick.

The new 4G LTE slider phone comes with a 4-inch, a 960×540 resolution qHD display with scratch resistant glass, 8-megapixel camera (with 1080p HD video capture) and 1.3-megapixel front video chat camera with a large 1,785mAh battery to keep you going on that 4G highway.

Although the DROID 4 ships with Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, Motorola & Verizon say the phone will get an update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in the second quarter of this year.

Under this particular Droid hood you’ll find a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 16GB of internal storage. In addition to 3G network coverage as a backup the new DROID gives access to Verizon’s 4G LTE network which currently covers 200 million phone users in 195 markets and allows for download speeds of 5-12 Mbps and upload speeds of 2-5 Mbps.

One of the main attractions of the new Motorola for those of us that like the feel of a physical slide-out keyboard over its virtual equivalent is the five-row QWERTY keyboard with edge-lit keys for ease of typing in the dark or low-light.

Business users are also well catered for with government-grade encryption (FIPS 140-2) for email, calendar and contacts data as well as the option to make presentations from the phone by connecting it to an HDTV or by using the optional Lapdock 500 with its 14-inch display, full-keyboard and full mobile office suite and web browsing experience.

The pre-installed MotoCast app can also stream documents, videos, music and pictures other work or home computers to the DROID 4, meaning documents and other files can be viewed and edited on the smartphone without needing to be transfered or synced to the device.

Like many other Verizon 4G phones, the DROID 4 has a built-in hotspot feature allowing connection sharing between up to 8 other Wi-Fi-enabled devices.

DROID 4 Price
Official DROID 4 price is $199.99 with a two-year contract but Amazon currently has the smartphone at just under half that on the same contract deal.