Motorola Droid 2 Appears in Leaked Verizon Catalog

Verizon is supposedly prepping another new smartphone for its very popular Droid series -- the Motorola Droid 2 appears in a product catalog that has leaked out of this carrier.

Unconfirmed reports of this model have been leaking out for some time. As its name suggests, this will supposedly be an enhanced version of the original Motorola Droid.

A copy of Verizon's Summer catalog has leaked out early, and the Droid 2 appears prominently. According to this source, the smartphone will have a 1 GHz processor, 8 GB memory card preinstalled, a 5 megapixel camera, and Wi-Fi hotspot software.

The catalog doesn't say when this model will be released beyond the vague note that it's "Coming soon".

Preview of the Motorola Droid 2
In many ways, the successor to the best-selling Android OS-based model isn't changing -- like the original, it will be a slider with a 3.7-inch WVGA display and a landscape-oriented keyboard. The locations of almost all the buttons and ports remains the same.

However, the Droid 2 will replace the D-pad on the sliding keyboard with a set of directional keys, giving room to make all the keys larger (see a comparison). They are also being made convex, rather than flat like the keys on their predecessor. This modification has likely been made in response to wide-spread criticism of the current Droid's keyboard.

The shape of the entire device is being changed a bit, with the hard corners being smoothed. In addition, the screen is being more centered over the keyboard, getting rid of most of the "chin" on the original Droid's right side.

It's not clear yet whether the Droid 2 will launch with Google's Android OS 2.1 or version 2.2. The decision about whether to include Motorola's MotoBlur alternate user interface also supposedly hasn't been made yet.

The original Droid comes with a 16 GB microSD memory card, while its successor will reportedly have 8 GB of internal storage and an 8 GB memory card.

The Droid 2 will almost certainly include many of the features of its predecessor, such as a GPS receiver, 3G (EV-DO Rev. A), Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.

This Motorola model will allegedly hit the market next month, possibly on August 23.

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