November 18 – the date that Verizon will be holding an event to announce the re-launch of the HTC Droid Incredible and, more impressively, the launch of the much awaited HTC Droid Merge (the Droid branding by Big Red is new). Also known as the Lexikon, the Merge was first seen back in September. However… if you’ve seen or own the HTC Desire Z (called the G2 by T-Mobile) then hinged keyboard aside, you’ve seen the Droid Merge – because apart from having a more traditional sliding QWERTY the Merge is pretty much identical to the Desire Z. Saying that, if you’re a fan of stock Android OSs, and I am, then its worth noting that the Merge comes with HTC’s rather sticky Sense UI where as the G2 is standard Froyo (Android 2.2). Another puzzling move by HTC is the inclusion of Microsoft’s Bing as default search engine.
With new operating systems, near-field comms and 4G LTE handsets just around the corner, there are lots of very exciting things happening in the mobile world right now – but if you just can’t wait to have something new and shiny in your hands right now then the HTC Droid Merge is a damn good choice.