Motorola Droid 4 to Launch on Friday: It's Official

Verizon Wireless has just made it official: the Motorola Droid 4 is going to hit store shelves at the end of this week. This will be the first entry in this popular line of Android smartphones to include 4G LTE.

The carrier also announced the price: the Droid 4 is going to sell for $200 with a two-year contract. That's $100 below the price Verizon charges for some of its more cutting-edge models.

Motorola Droid 4 Preview
This smartphone is going to have a 4-inch qHD (960 x 540) capacitive touchscreen. Unlike most of its competitors it will also sport a large 5-row QWERTY keyboard.

The Droid 4 will debut with Android OS 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) running on a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, but Motorola and Verizon have promised that an upgrade to the much newer Android OS 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) will be released at some point. 

The device will have 1GB of RAM and 16GB of on-board memory. A microSD slot will allow customers to add more storage.

Its support for 4G LTE will give it download speeds of 5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS will also be included. Other items on the list of features are an 8MP rear-facing camera with 1080p HD video capture and a second front-facing HD camera.