The Motorola DROID for Verizon Wireless is the very first Android 2.0 “Eclair” device to be launched, and is only Motorola’s second Android phone ever (its well-received CLIQ for T-Mobile goes on sale today).

The DROID features a huge, high-resolution touchscreen display, a 5 megapixel camera, and a full QWERTY keyboard. Good specs all around, and an impressive first Android effort for Verizon. I spend some time with the DROID to see if it is everything its amusing advertising campaign claims it is.

The Motorola DROID is a big & is quite heavy, It weighs 170.6g (6.0oz) and measures up at 116mm x 60mm x 15mm (4.6in x 2.4in x .6in) in size.

On the front it has a 3.7-inch display, close to the power switch they have placed 3.5mm headphone jack. The uncovered micro-USB port is on the left side, while the volume rocker and gold colored camera shutter are on the right.

Motorola’s first device that runs on the latest Android OS dubbed Motorola DEXT internationally, except for the USA where it will be sold as CLIQ. This smartphone is the first high-end device coming out of Motorola labs for quite some time.

Moto DEXT has a sliding hardware QWERTY keyboard and large 3.1″ capacitive touchscreen display of HVGA resolution (320 x 480 pixels). The handset seems to offers multitouch functionality.

The DEXT gears up most of the latest technologies such as GPS enhanced with a digital compass, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 3.5mm jack, a 5MP autofocus camera with geo-tagging and video recording in HVGA@24fps resolution. There’s also quad-band GSM/EDGE connectivity and tri-band HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps.

Motorola CLIQ runs the latest Android OS v1.5 (Cupcake) and is powered by a Qualcomm MSM7201A platform with a 528MHz processor. The new Moto has 256MB RAM, 512MB ROM and 1GB of user storage supports up to 32 GB microSD cards.

The Motorola DEXT boasts some top-notch modern features not to mention Motorola’s latest social networking oriented custom homescreen UI called MOTOBLUR that will run on top of the vanilla Android OS.

MOTOBLUR syncs via push with Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, MySpace, Yahoo, Last.fm and other services and similarly to Palm’s Synergy and HTC Sense UI, Blur aggregates all your contacts from these communities into a single phonebook. MOTOBLUR also offers a remote wipe feature and GPS tracking of the phone from a desktop computer similarly to Apple’s MobileMe.

Motorola CLIQ is going to be available in Midnight Titanium and Winter White colors and is expected to hit the market October in Europe and December in the USA.

Motorola CLIQ has been briefly spotted by the Engagdget team over at T-Mobile website for a price of 400 US dollars without a contract, while other sources suggest a price of 200 euro.

Motorola as always is late with this too. It has announced that it will be launching its Android based smartphone on the 10th of September. Many mobile makers such as HTC have introduced more than one Android devices while HTC Hero is presently the best of the lot in the market right now. Motorola too had joined the group of mobile phone manufacturers who will be introducing Abdroid devices. Let’s see if Motorola has learnt its lessons.

If there’s one mobile company that urgently needs some serious PR help along with better products then it’s Motorola. It’s been ages since we talked about any Motorola phone and that’s pretty obvious because they haven’t made any phone lately that made us “wow.” As if their inability to launch neat and better products wasn’t enough they have now resorted to stupid marketing gimmicks to sell their phones.

Motorola has announced to bring a newer version of their Aura mobile phone. The new version will be called Motorola Aura Celestial Edition. Motorola is celebrating the the 40th anniversary of first moon landing by Neil Armstrong and his crew.

This bears special relevance to Motorola because the wireless transmitters made by the company were used for communication by the astronauts on Moon.

Motorola Aura Celestial Edition will have special clips and images captured during the historic feat. There will also be a laser made inscription and 9 post stamps on the handset to commemorate the mission.

The phone will be launched this month and it is expected to be priced a little more than the Aura. Aura was priced at $1,967. You can actually buy a car with that much money in India. Nice try Motorola but we are over it.

Verizon Wireless and Motorola announced the launch of the new Motorola A455 Rival, a compact QWERTY messaging phone that supports an array of Verizon’s value added services, including GPS navigation, Visual Voicemail, V CAST Music and both personal and corporate email.

The device will definitely appeal to LG Rumor/Samsung Rant fans, but has a smaller form factor and a compact but well laid out 4-row QWERTY keyboard that worked extremely well. The keyboard even has a dual-mode backlight system that lights the numbers and symbols in green when the function key is activated.

The Rival features a number of touch sensitive controls that add a bit of a twist to the typical user interface found on phones like this. The touch sensitive softkeys light up when available, which makes them easy to find in both landscape and portrait modes. When opened up in landscape mode for messaging tasks, the on-screen button at the bottom of the display can be activated by touch or by clicking on the d-pad’s center button. The touch keys seem a bit unnecessary, perhaps, but at least they provide haptic feedback in the form of vibration pulses. The full touchscreen can only be used when in the dial-pad mode, for entering numbers. Motorola seems to be trying to allow touchscreen use only when necessary, which has kept the UI experience pretty close to that of similar non-touchscreen phones.

Other features of the phone include a 2 megapixel camera that can also record video clips, and a music player that can take advantage of 3.5mm jack equipped stereo headphones as well as wireless Bluetooth stereo headphones. The built-in microSDHC card slot supports cards as large as 8GB in size (not included), which will provide plenty of room for photos and music.

But when it comes down to brass tacks, the Rival is about messaging. The text messaging system provides a IM-like threaded view, and the actual IM client works with AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! instant messaging services. Email support for both personal and corporate Exchange support is also available.

The Motorola Rival is available in black/purple and white/silver color schemes starting today from Verizon Wireless for US$99.99 with a two year contract after a $50 rebate.

The Motorola QA1 Karma first leaked around the web sometime back in February with only screenshots of its User Interface available. Now, we’re seeing another leakage from BGR, showing AT&T’s rebate sheet with the Motorola QA1 on it.

But despite that, little is still known about this device, which includes 3G connectivity and probably 240 x 320 pixels of landscape display. It comes as a slider phone with a full QWERTY keyboard, so probably this will cater to those who are on a budget for a messaging device. There are also rumors that the screen will be touch-capable, but it would probably look kind of unusual since the screen looks really small.

Well anyway, there’s really no official announcement about this device until now and the rebate sheet also doesn’t show its release date though it is expected to arrive to AT&T between this May until June.

Motorola announced the MOTO W7 Active Edition, a 3G-enabled slider packing plenty of features that might appeal to those who live an active lifestyle. For starters, the MOTO W7 Active Edition features an accelerometer that not only doubles as a pedometer and ties into the Personal Trainer application, but also works with games that are designed to get ones body moving by dancing and jumping around. Okay, it sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s clear that Motorola put quite a bit of thought into this handset, and its accelerometer integration goes beyond exercise and gaming. For example, simply flipping the W7 over will mute an incoming call, snooze an alarm or pause music. Shaking the MOTO W7 will open a user-customizable application and flicking it from side to side makes for simple navigation between music and image galleries.

As for the inner-workings, the 49mm x 99mm x 15mm / 105g device features UMTS / HSDPA connectivity alongside quad-band EDGE, a 2.2-inch QVGA display, 2 megapixel camera with front facing VGA camera for video calling, FM radio, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, YouTube support, 30MB of internal memory and support for a microSD card of up to 8GB. The MOTO W7 Active Edition will make a Q2 debut in Asia and Latin America in Licorice and Alpine White, but the presence of dual-band HSPA (850/1900MHz) seems to indicate that this thing might very well show up on either Rogers or AT&T’s doorsteps one day in the not too distant future. Hit the jump for a couple more pics.

Motorola is currently working on their first QWERTY iDEN phone which they dubbed as the Motorola i465. Though it seems kind of strange to have the all the rage QWERTY keyboard on an iDEN phone, iDEN users would perhaps rejoice with it as they would finally have something stylish and trendy.

Looking at the leaked photos would tell that this is not appealing and rather odd. And since most QWERTY keyboard phones we have these days hold high-end features that operate Windows Mobile or any other smart phone Operating System do not expect this to hold the same function.

The Motorola  i465 will come with Bluetooth 2.0 although users who regularly use their mobile phones to take photographs could be left disappointed by the basic video graphics array camera.

Well other important features and as well as the release date and pricing remain undisclosed as for the moment. This may not be an interesting phone to some but this is definitely a decent handset for iDEN users.

Verizon is offering another QWERTY device, the Motorola A4500 (which was also known as Napoleon). The handset looks nice, though not as great as one would expect, especially when compared to the BlackBerry 9630 Niagara, which is reported to come with the operator in July as BlackBerry Tour.

The new Motorola A4500, the same as Tour, is reported to be a world phone and will come as a simple QWERTY option from Verzion. The handset has been already approved by FCC, according to the news, and it sports a design resembling both the maker’s older Q-series and RIM’s BlackBerry devices.

The specification list shows CDMA, EV-DO and GSM (quad-band) connectivity, along with Windows Mobile 6.1 as the operating system, a QVGA display, the mentioned QWERTY keyboard, GPS capabilities, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, TV out, a fingerprint scanner and a 2-megapixel photo snapper, not to mention the memory card slot for additional storage space.

No details on the availability of the phone are available at the moment, nor on the price tag it is expected to feature. Hopefully, the Motorola A4500 will hit the shelves in the near future, especially since it has been spotted for the first time about a year ago.

In addition to the new phones it intends to launch, Verizon is also reported to plan on releasing a firmware update for the BlackBerry Storm. The new software version is said to finally come in May, after a long wait we might add, and it seems that the version is not 4.7.0.113, as believed until now, but 4.7.0.141, unheard of before.

Moreover, the BlackBerry 9630 Niagara is expected to become available in May, and Boy Genius Report says that the price tag for the World Edition phone has been set at $199. The news also points towards a replacement for the Voyager, the VX11000, which should come as the enV Touch. And finally, it seems that the operator is thinking about raising the 5GB cap on its data plan as soon as LTE starts rolling out, as it expects subscribers to consume more.

Motorola has another addition to their W series, which is the W7. And since it comes under the W-series, you know this would again be another of those entry-level devices and from the looks of it, it really is indeed a low-end handset.

Well actually, this is targeted for the sporty individuals since this is built as a sports-oriented, water-resistant device. Its features include a 2.2-inch QVGA display, music player, FM radio, 2-megapixel camera, a secondary camera for video calls and a microSD card support. These are actually enough for such, knowing that this is a low-end model.

We’re not sure if this will have 3G since it is said to come under China Unicom’s 3G network. But anyway, this device is really not something to look forward to, except of course for those who are inclined to sports, particularly water sports.