Verizon’s upcoming smartphone, the Motorola Droid Bionic, is in for a surprise as the new Samsung Stratosphere QWERTY smartphone with 4G LTE is expected to join the party soon.

There were reports that Verizon was not going to feature the Samsung Galaxy S2 version in its network. But according to a report from Pocketnow, the Samsung Stratosphere SCH-I405 was spotted in the wild, and is most probably heading to Verizon. Also, a few weeks ago, there was a report about how Verizon’s Web site had placed some redirect pages in advance of the phone’s release.

Many tech enthusiasts expected Motorola's Droid Bionic to be the first dual core phone featuring the 4G LTE support.They thought it would hold the crown for some time, but Stratosphere is expected to see a release as early as this week, alongside Droid Bionic and BlackBerry Curve 9370 Apollo. Quite a few tech Web sites also claimed that the rumored Samsung Droid Prime was expected to arrive on Verizon later this year with 4G LTE support and dual core support.

Samsung Stratosphere's rumored features are Super AMOLED Plus 480 x 800 pixels resolution display, 1GHz single-core processor, Android 2.3.4 preinstalled, 512MB of RAM, 1800mAh battery, 2GB internal storage and 5-megapixel rear along with 1.3-megapixel front cameras. In fact, the display size is not yet certain, but by looking at the leaked pictures, the phone appears to feature a 4-inch screen similar to Sprint’s Samsung Epic 4G, a QWERTY Slider from Samsung launched in September 2010.

Meanwhile, Motorola Droid Bionic has powerful features like 4.3-inch qHD display, Android 2.3.4 OS, dual core 1 GHz processor, RAM upgraded to 1 GB, 1735 mAh battery, 16 GB storage and 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash support.

Although the Motorola Droid Bionic specifications look superior to rumored Stratosphere, Samsung may have made the wise move to feature a lower spec phone to support the 4G LTE network. If history is taken into consideration, HTC Thunderbolt suffered poor battery life (1400 mAh) performance as it couldn’t handle the powerful 4G LTE which powered down the battery life to less than 4 hours. As of now all these remain rumors, and this time around it may be a different situation as Motorola Droid Bionic is expected to perform bette, since it has undergone modification for almost nine months.

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