By the end of November, Verizon may have the three best Android smartphones ever created all to itself. The HTC Rezound is one of those three, boasting next-gen specs, Beats by Dre audio enhancements, 4G LTE connectivity, and one of the first 720p HD screens even seen on a mobile device. On paper, this phone might be better than the DROID RAZR and Galaxy Nexus, the two phones it will compete directly with. In real life use though, can it use its sound-inspired name, HTC Sense skin, red accents, and spectacular design to come out on top of this epic end of the year battle? It’s going to be tough, but we have spent enough time with it over the last week to at least provide our opinion on that matter.  

This weekend, after more than a week with the DROID Bionic, I felt it was finally time to put my thoughts on the device together in one of our standard reviews.  Since most of you know the story of the Bionic, there is no need to rehash all of those bad times, so instead, I will just jump right into this.  This device was supposed to be game changing.  Is it?  In some ways it most certainly is.  But is it game changing enough for you to buy it now instead of waiting the month to see what may be the beginning of an era of smartphones that we never dreamed would come.  Let’s find out.  

As you all know, we try to give new phones a thorough run-through of at least a full week before posting up a review on it.  We definitely do not do the 1-day press review as that seems completely unfair to both readers and to the device itself.  With that said, we know that the DROID Bionic is a hot topic right now and also that many of you are waiting to hear our thoughts on it before jumping in and buying one.  Since our full review is still some time away and many of you are contemplating whether or not you should pick one up this weekend, we thought we would toss out a few quick thoughts, bugs and other stuff that we have experienced with the phone.   

And a DROID Bionic is in our possession.  I obviously haven’t had enough time with it to do a full review or anything, but can give you my first impressions on a device that has been 9 painful months in the making.

So what do I think of Verizon’s first dual-core and 4G LTE device?  All good so far.  I am loving the feel in hand – the build quality lives up to Moto standards.  It’s a heck of a lot lighter than I expected it to be.  Is thinner than I expected it to be.  Is definitely snappier than the DROID3 even though they have almost identical specs, aside from the doubling of the RAM of course.

“But what about the screen?  Is it PenTile Matrix?”  Yes, unfortunately it is.  However, it’s not completely killing my eyes at this moment.  You can definitely see some black pixels and some not-so-straight lines, along with it struggling to produce green.  This will be a problem, but we are going to try our best to not focus just on that as one of its downfalls.

Again, so far I am really liking the phone.  With that said, let’s not jump to any crazy conclusions until we have some real time with it to decide if it should be your next device or if you should pass on it for the HTC Vigor or Nexus Prime.

Gallery after the jump!  (Video added)

Our keyboarded friend has returned as the DROID3 by Motorola.  With a set of specs straight out of this year (dual-core processor, front and rear cameras, and a “qHD” screen), this phone could be the best yet from Verizon in 2011.  We have been waiting as patiently as we can for them to bring us something current, and this is the first device that at least on paper, looks like it could deliver.  This phone has us hoping that Big Red will cut off all of last year’s tech and start dropping some all-in-one packages.  So D3, can you bring Big Red up to speed with the rest of the Android crowd?  

With the dual-core chipsets from Texas Instruments (OMAP), NVIDIA (Tegra) and Samsung (Exynos) all making their way into devices and our hands in the last couple of months, we wanted to see how each compared to each other in a series of Android benchmarks.  We pulled the results for the Galaxy S II and DROIDX2 from this post that we ran a few weeks back and have now included results from the DROID3 to round out the comparison.  The DROIDX2 is running NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 clocked at 1GHz, the Galaxy S II has their Exynos at 1.2GHz, and the DROID3 is running an OMAP clocked at 1GHz.

Here are the results…  

We finally got a hold of the brand spankin’ new DROID3 and have had just enough time with it to put together some first impressions, a quick video walk-through, and a fancy little gallery.  Overall, we’ve been really impressed by it after our first few minutes.  Motorola has done some major improving upon Blur to make this device feel like nothing they’ve produced before – and that’s a good thing.  The performance is stellar with the dual-core processor, we’re not hating the qHD screen by any means yet, and the keyboard is something we’re beginning to enjoy again.  So far, so good.  

The Samsung Galaxy S II has easily been one of the most anticipated and talked about Android devices of all time.  When it was first introduced back at MWC earlier this year, we all started counting the days to its U.S. arrival after seeing the specs that Sammie was claiming to have included.  The problem is, that we are still waiting.  There is no telling why it has been left off of our shores, but that’s the unfortunate story.

So since all of the U.S. carriers and Samsung seem to be dragging their little feet on this one, I decided to grab the unlocked version, which works on AT&T’s HSPA+, to see if this device could really live up to all of the hype.  I also wanted to give you all a preview ahead of its U.S. release, just in case you were trying to decide whether or not you should pick up the DROID3 now, wait for this, or skip them all and head straight for the DROID Bionic.

Let’s dive in and see if it could live up to our high standards – something very few devices have been able to do over the last couple of months.