Motorola Droid Razr HD and Razr M: Motorola's New Android Smartphones for Verizon

Sept. 5, 2012 — -- It is now phone announcement month. While Nokia released details of its Lumia phones this morning and Apple sent out invites Tuesday to its iPhone launch, Motorola took the stage this afternoon in New York City to announce its future handsets -- the Razr HD, Razr HD Maxx, and Razr M. All three phones run Android 4.0 and will be available at Verizon.

The Razr HD is a follow-up to the company's thin Razr phone, introduced last year. The new phone has an even bigger 4.7-inch screen, but has the same sized body (it isn't any wider or longer). Motorola has been able to stretch the HD display to the edges of the phone's face. The phone will have fast LTE speeds, a dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and an 8-megapixel camera on the back.

The Droid Razr Maxx HD has the same features as the HD but more battery life -- hence the word "Maxx." Motorola promises the bigger battery in the Maxx will provide 27 hours of streaming music.

For those who don't want the bigger display, there's one more phone: the Razr M. The phone is more compact, with a 4.3-inch, high-resolution display. And smaller doesn't mean less powerful: it still has a dual-core processor, LTE, and 1GB of RAM. The phone will be available at Verizon this coming week for $99.99 with a two-year contract. Motorola didn't release pricing on the Razr Maxx or Maxx HD, but did say it would be available before the holidays.

Motorola's new CEO, Dennis Woodside, introduced the phones and said the devices were representative of the new Motorola.

"We are here to tell you the new Motorola starts today," Woodside said. Motorola was acquired by Google last year. Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt, kicked off the event by talking about Motorola's long history and expertise in the mobile industry.

Even though Motorola is now owned by Google, though, the phones still run Google's Android 4.0, which is behind the latest Android 4.1, or Jelly Bean, operating system introduced in June. Woodside said all the phones would have the latest operating system before the end of the year. All the phones will come preloaded with Google's Chrome browser.

But industry analysts are still wondering what exactly Google's ownership of Motorola will add to the company, since it wasn't all that apparent with these new phones. "Now that Motorola and Google are together, Moto needs to heavily lean into Google to get access to some of their special innovation sauce," Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights, told ABC News. "In today's launch that sauce wasn't apparent."

The Razr phones will go head to head with Apple's next iPhone, plus Samsung's Galaxy S 3 and Galaxy Note 2 during the heavy holiday buying season.