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Motorola Droid RAZR HD hands-on: a 720p Android ICS update with 2,500mAh battery life

The curtains have finally been pulled back on Motorola's Droid RAZR HD, revealing little in the way of surprise. Abysmal attempts at secrecy aside, the Verizon-bound handset pushes the line forward with an incrementally larger 4.7-inch screen, 720p display, dual-core 1.5GHz S4 CPU and, most importantly, a 2,500mAh battery to temper LTE's juice-sapping ways. So does this less-than-wafer-thin device live up to its predecessor's legacy? Follow along after the break as we deliver our first impressions.%Gallery-164426%

The RAZR HD is Motorola's attempt to build as big a phone as they could in a space no larger than the current RAZR. As such it's just 8.4mm thick and measures 68mm across and 132mm tall, but packs a 4.7-inch display. That panel is a 720p unit and, based on our quick glimpse, it looks to offer good quality and brightness -- but we can't be sure until we get it out of the highly controlled lighting environment here and try it in the real world. Also, we're hearing it's still PenTile, which is a bit of a disappointment to say the least.

The styling is overall much the same as we've seen before, with the soft-touch Kevlar backing that we've come to enjoy, and a nicely tapered shape that fits well in your hand -- but it's less pronounced than in the previous RAZR. In fact, putting this phone back-to-back with the MAXX and it's surprisingly difficult to tell the difference between the two! Makes one wonder if Moto even needed to make the HD.

The Kevlar back now wraps around to the sides of the device, terminating in a titanium-colored ring that runs all the way around. There are two ports, micro-HDMI and micro-USB, so you won't have to rely on an MHL adapter, and then of course the volume rocker, power button and 3.5mm headphone jack.

The overall feel of the phone is like that of a brick -- but in the "this is really solid" sense, not "this is massive and heavy and I could build a house out of this." It's incredibly stout and perhaps a bit on the heavy side, but it definitely conveys a feeling of quality more so than a feeling of unnecessary mass. Basically, it feels good, and we look forward to spending much more time with it ahead of its release sometime before the end of the year.

Ben Gilbert and Joseph Volpe contributed to this report.