The most awaited smartphones apart from Apple Inc.'s iPhone 5 are the Samsung Galaxy S 2 and the Motorola Droid Bionic. The Droid Bionic is finally available in stores, more than eight months after the device was unveiled. Meanwhile, Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S 2 smartphone, or what some have dubbed the iPhone Killer, has made it to the United States, quelling anticipation, and is set to compete with the Motorola Droid Bionic for the market share.

Droid Bionic was hyped for months when it was originally announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev. in January. The 4G LTE, dual-chip phone had been delayed for months as Motorola made numerous changes, allowing it to compete with the high-end phones of the industry.

Specs on the Droid Bionic are impressive. The phone comes with a 4.3-inch HD screen featuring the Corning Gorilla scratch-free screen, two cameras: front-facing for video chat and 8-mega-pixel back camera, Adobe Flash preloaded, 32 GB of memory and a slim frame. It has a dual-core 1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM and runs on the Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread operating system.

It comes with cloud-friendly app Zumocast, which lets users bring videos, music, pictures and documents stored on their computers to their handset via remote access. In the U.S., the Droid Bionic is available for $299 on a new two-year contract with Verizon, or $599 at full retail.

Galaxy S 2 comes to the U.S. after selling a record five million units in 85 days in Europe and Asia and is the best-selling Samsung phone ever. Samsung’s phone rivals the rumored specs of the forthcoming iPhone 5. Apple has accused Samsung of slavishly copying its own iPhone, saying the design and features infringe upon Apple's intellectual property.

Galaxy S2, which runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS and sports Samsung's TouchWiz UI, comes with an 8-megapixel camera with flash and can record HD video in 1080p offering the richest video content on a smartphone. The phone also has the front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video chat.

All the versions of Galaxy S 2 will get 4G treatment, offering data speeds up to four times faster than what is expected in Apple's forthcoming iPhone 5. In the U.S., Galaxy S 2 will be carried by AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, whose version will be called Samsung Epic 4G Touch.

Samsung Epic 4G Touch is now available for pre-orders with Walmart for $99 while it is priced at $199.99 on a new two-year contract with Sprint.

Samsung’s phone is not the only smartphone to receive a cheaper price tag option. Even the Motorola Droid Bionic will be offered by Costco for $279, plus $160-worth accessories for free. Droid Bionic will be available at Costco from Sept. 13. The accessories include a standard bionic dock, in-car navigation dock, extra battery and battery charger.

One of the most interesting things about the Costco deal is that it comes in the form of 90-day return window.

In what seems to be a twist in the tale, Verizon is not offering Samsung Galaxy S 2, effectively making Motorola Droid Bionic the ultimate phone to receive all the attention in the days to come.

Both Android devices from Samsung and Motorola offer quite a blazing performance at the hand of dual-core processing power. But there are enough differences between the two that could make you choose one over the other.

Here is a comparison between Motorola Droid Bionic and Samsung Galaxy S2:

Operating System: Both the phones have Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system. Also both the smartphones will take full advantage of features like the notification bar, cloud synchronization, wireless syncing, iMessage, Twitter integration and Widgets.

Size: Samsung Epic 4G Touch on Sprint comes with a 129.5 x 68.6 x 9.6 mm dimension and weighs 129 grams, while the T-Mobile version, fondly known as Hercules, has 131 x 70 x 9 mm dimension. As the AT&T version retains 4.3-inch display, it is expected to feature 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5 mm and weighs 116 grams. Motorola Droid Bionic comes with 127.5 x 66.9 x 11 mm and weighs 158.8 grams.

Processor: Samsung Galaxy S2 comes with dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 Mali-400MP GPU Exynos processor with 1GB RAM. Droid Bionic will come with 1 GHz dual-core TI OMAP4430 processor.

Camera: Droid Bionic sports an 8 megapixel auto-focus camera with flash with 1080p HD video capture and a front-facing camera for video chat over 4G LTE, 3G or Wi-Fi. Samsung Galaxy S2 also has a 8MP camera with autofocus and 2MP camera in front for video calling.

Display: T-Mobile and Epic Touch 4G version of Sprint has 4.52-inch display screen whereas AT&T version retains 4.3-inch screen of original Galaxy S2 version sold worldwide. The Galaxy S2 Epic Touch 4G comes with 4.52-inch (~206 ppi pixel density) 480 x 800 pixels Super AMOLED Plus capacitive touchscreen display.

Motorola Droid Bionic comes with 4.3 inches (~256 ppi pixel density) 540 x 960 pixels TFT capacitive touchscreen. The smartphone features qHD support which is a quarter of the full HD resolution.

Storage: Motorola Droid Bionic has 16GB internal storage and another 16GB microSD card pre installed, which can be expanded up to 32 GB. Galaxy S2 boasts 16GB internal storage and can be expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card. Both phones have 1GB RAM.

3G/ 4G: There is Rev. A, up to 3.1 Mbps support for both Droid Bionic and Epic Touch 4G. But they differ when it comes to speed. With Droid Bionic featuring Verizon’s 4G LTE support, it holds speed advantage over Samsung’s phone as Epic Touch will feature Sprint’s 4G.

WLAN/Bluetooth/USB: Samsung Epic Touch offers Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot; WiMax, Bluetooth version 3.0+HS and microUSB version 2.0.

Motorola Droid Bionic has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth version 2.1 with A2DP and EDR along with microUSB version 2.0 support.

Battery: Motorola Droid Bionic has Li-Ion 1735 mAh battery giving up to 10 h 40 min talk time and recent test revealed that the phone could last close to 8 hours on 4G LTE, which is a big plus point for Droid Bionic as previous phones using LTE support faced issue with battery drainage.

Also for users who want to take full advantage of battery power, there is an optional battery support being released for Droid Bionic with whopping 2760mAh battery. Some users have reported that even with some data consumption and heavy use, the battery managed to last 24 hours.

While Samsung Epic Touch 4G has Li-Ion 1800 mAh battery support, which will offer more than 10 hours of talk time, while AT&T versions retain Li-Ion 1650 mAh battery found in original Galaxy S2

Pricing: Droid Bionic is priced at $299 with a two year contract at Verizon. On Sprint, Epic 4G Touch will cost $199.99 with a two-year contract. AT&T version is also expected to be on the same lines in the range of $250 to $300, while T-Mobile hasn't announced pricing or availability details.

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