Motorola Droid RAZR vs Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Comparison of Specs and Features

Samsung released its newest Google smartphone, the Galaxy Nexus, Tuesday night. It is the newest competitor in a long list of smartphones, including the iPhone 4S and Motorola's Droid RAZR. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus comes with the newest Google OS, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Motorola also introduced their new Droid RAZR Tuesday.

Motorola and Samsung both seek to capture a share of the iPhone 4S' market, but how will the Android phones compete against each other? We look at the expected specs and features of the new Motorola Droid RAZR and compare it with Google/Samsung's Galaxy Nexus.

Design / Size

Motorola's Droid RAZR has been called an impossibly thin smartphone and it beats the Galaxy Nexus in width. It is 7.1 mm (0.28 inches) thick and weighs 127 grams (4.5 ounces). The RAZR is built on a stainless steel core with a gorilla glass screen resistant to scratches and a splash-guard protector on the inside of the smartphone.

Galaxy Nexus, on the other hand, is thicker: 135.5 x 67.9 x 8.9 mm and weighs more at about 135 grams.

Display

The Droid RAZR has a 4.2 inch screen, qHD resolution, paired with Super AMOLED touchscreen.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus sports a 4.65 inch (~316 ppi pixel density), 720 x 1280 pixels super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen.

Operating System

The Droid RAZR will use the Android 2.3.5 software, nicknamed Gingerbread. The smartphone will not be launched with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. However, the RAZR will come with a host of new software perks. The MotoCast app will allow users to share content, much like cloud computing, between computers and smartphones via Wi-Fi. Moreover, the RAZR seeks to compete with RIM's BlackBerry message system (BBM) and Apple's iPhone 4S' iMessage with a suite of business-ready features. The RAZR seeks to allure corporate and government employees with remote wipe, PIN lock, data encryption, and syncing programs.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus will run Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, which is a combination of Gingerbread and Honeycomb in one unit. Android Head of Engineering Mike Claren announced that the new OS is Google's most ambitious release to date. The newest features that have arrived with Android 4.0 include widgets in a new tab, a customizable launcher, Gmail with offline search with a two-line preview and new action bar at the bottom, better voice integration, improved copy and paste and a new tabbed Web browser that allows up to 16 tabs.

Processor, RAM, and Memory

Motorola's Droid RAZR features a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor. Samsung Galaxy Nexus is powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, TI OMAP 4460 chips.

Both Droid RAZR and Galaxy Nexus come with 16 GB of internal memory and 1 GB RAM. External microSD card slots have been included that support up to an additional 32 GB.

Network Capabilities

The Droid RAZR will be exclusively available on the Verizon Wireless' 4G LTE network.

The 4.65-inch Galaxy Nexus will run on high speed LTE and HSPA+ networks. It has not yet been announced which carriers will sell the Samsung smartphone.

Battery Life

While Nexus provides a Li-lon 1750 mAh battery, the Droid RAZR sports a Li-Ion 1780 mAh battery with stand-by up to 204 hours and talk time up to 12 hours and 30 minutes.

Price

The Droid RAZR will cost $299 with a two-year plan from Verizon Wireless.

The Galaxy Nexus will launch in November in the U.S., Europe and Asia (including China and Japan). The new smartphone's price has not yet been announced.

Camera

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus has a rear camera, which is 5 megapixels, 2592x1936 pixels, autofocus, LED. The technology is improved with Touch focus technology. Ice Cream Sandwich has also made additions to the device's camera with zero shutter lag. A new feature will also let users take panorama shots by panning the camera across a scene. A front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera has also been provided. The phone also features an accelerometer, compass, gyro sensor, light sensor, proximity sensor and barometer lurking in there as well.

Motorola Droid RAZR has an 8 megapixel, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash rear camera with video recording of 1080p at 30fps. The Droid RAZR has arrived with a secondary 2 megapixel camera that can also record videos at 720p.