Though, the new smartphone is virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor, this update to the 10-month-old popular Droid slider phone says that it has a slide-out keyboard.

With a slight difference in order of the four function keys, which this time are fixed, the Droid 2 is nearly the same size as an iPhone 4. A half-inch shorter and about a quarter-inch narrower than the original Droid, the Droid 2 is the first one to ship with Android 2.2.

One may however feel troubled when trying to search for the on-off switch, which in case of the Droid X was possible by just pressing a physical button. The rectangular shape of the new phone altogether adds to the problem.

The Droid 2 does not have the square pad like the previous one, instead it has inverted-T cursor keys and even the keys are more domed.

Slightly heavier than the Droid X, the keyboard of Droid 2 though is not as refined as a BlackBerry's, yet it is better than its predecessor.

Some sort of an improvement over its 550-MHz predecessor would have ensured that the smartphone did not look underpowered, this has however not been done.

As the original Droid gets too old, Droid 2 is sure to fill in the gap and come out to be more advantageous to Verizon Wireless and Motorola than to their customers.