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IPHONELESS MOBILE OPERATOR Verizon has outed Motorola’s successor to its Android powered Droid handset.

The creatively named Droid 2 will be launched on Verizon’s network sometime next week and will see both Motorola and Verizon try to build upon the success of the original Droid. That handset has become the most popular Android phone and is still highly rated almost a year after its launch.

Since then Verizon has embraced the Linux based Android operating system, putting out a number of well-received phones such as the Droid X. However the Droid remains popular among business types who want a hardware keyboard to input large swathes of text.

It seems that Motorola hasn’t changed much in terms of design, though the colour scheme Verizon has chosen makes the Droid 2 look a little Mickey Mouse. Nevertheless, the aggressively styled ‘lip’ still remains, although the device seems to have softer edges.

Since Verizon runs a CDMA network, a change of radio will be required before the Droid 2 heads over to Blighty. In the past that trip resulted in the Droid being renamed the Milestone and it’s likely that a similar name change will also happen this time around.

Confirmed specifications of the Droid 2 are scant, however the US retailer Best Buy has revealed that it intends to flog the device for 9 (£125) when signing up for a multi-year contract. It is expected that the device will go for about 0 (£380) without Verizon’s subsidy.

Rumours abound that the Droid 2 will tip up next week, though it is not known when the device might turn up in the UK. µ

There’s a divergence in the smartphone world. Some devices are either maintaining or shrinking overall size in an attempt to become more convenient to carry around. Although it’s not what you’d expect, we have seen a few devices go in the opposite direction. As nice as it is to carry a small phone, it’s far more productive to have a bigger one. They’re easier to type on, better for reading web pages and generally more useful when you’re actually trying to get something done.

HTC was first in our labs with a member of this new breed of larger smartphones with the EVO 4G. While we found the larger screen nice, the lackluster OS performance and poor battery life weren’t exactly great selling points. Now it’s Motorola’s turn.

The Droid X is the spiritual successor to last year’s Droid. While the original only had speed going for it, the X adds size as well. Speed comes in the form of the OMAP 3630, TI’s first 45nm SoC based on the ARM Cortex A8 core. In essence, this is TI’s answer to the Apple A4. And the size is due to the Droid X’s 4.3-inch screen.

But unlike the EVO 4G, you don’t sacrifice performance or battery life. As a matter of fact, you end up with the best battery life of any Android phone we’ve reviewed. And TI has put together an SoC that finally rivals and exceeds Qualcomm’s Snapdragon.

Read on for our full review.

We've been playing around with two OMAP 3430 based phones for a while now – the Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid. Though they aren't the newest smartphones to come across our bench, both are important baselines and still very relevant devices, each for totally different reasons: The Motorola Droid is the phone that launched Android into maturity with 2.0. The N900 is Nokia's latest internet tablet turned smartphone running Maemo – which will evolve into MeeGo through joint Intel-Nokia collaboration and run atop Intel's Moorestown platform.

These are two phones that were both all the rage before their release, and we're visiting them now, a little over midway through their life cycles, to see how they're doing and how they compare against everything else we've reviewed.

Read on for our comprehensive comparison and review!