Motorola tonight released the full specifications and a photo gallery of the highly-awaited Droid phone on their public Web site, pre-empting the anticipated October 28 announcement of Verizon Wireless’s first Android smartphone.

According to the Motorola site, which was first noticed by the Boy Genius Report blog but then independently confirmed and loaded by PCMag, the Droid is a large touchscreen phone with a sliding keyboard. It’s 2.4 x 4.6 x .5 inches in size and weighs six ounces. That’s relatively heavy, but slim. Its color will be “licorice w/brown sugar accents.”

The phone has an unusually high-resolution, 3.7″ 480×854 touch screen; the iPhone’s touch screen is only 320×480 resolution.

The Droid’s OS is Android 2.0, as Verizon previously showed on their teaser Web site for the device. It is the first Android 2.0 phone.

The Droid has a 550 Mhz processor, according to the site, which didn’t describe the processor architecture. The architecture is important because most Android phones up until now have run on 528 Mhz ARM11 processors, which some users consider sluggish in some circumstances. The recently announced Samsung Moment upped the ante to an 800 Mhz ARM11. If the Droid runs a newer form of architecture, known as Cortex-A8, it could be faster with a lower clock speed.

More details and photos after the jump.

The Droid will come with a 16GB MicroSD card pre-installed, according to the site. It runs on Verizon Wireless’s CDMA EVDO Rev A network and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, but not GSM networks.

For multimedia, the phone will come with music and video players. It will capture 720×480 video at 24 frames per second – that’s unusually good – and will take 5-megapixel stills with image stabilization and dual-LED flash.

In terms of other software, the Droid supports Microsoft Exchange sync and comes with the QuickOffice Microsoft Office document viewer, Facebook, and lots of Google apps (including Google Search by Voice), but no IM program for non-Google protocols.

Motorola promises up to 270 hours of standby time and 6 hours, 25 minutes of talk time on the 1400 mAh battery. That’s quite good for a Verizon phone.

Verizon has made it clear that the Droid is their most anticipated launch of the year. They’ve been sending out an unusual amount of teaser information, culminating in a recent invitation to an October 28 press event.

Earlier this month, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said his company was making a major commitment to releasing many devices with the Google Android OS, including two smartphones coming this year. In wire service photos that day, he and Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed two phones, one of which was the Droid. The other looked a lot like Sprint’s HTC Hero phone, but with a Verizon logo.

The Motorola Droid Web site’s main page, at http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola-DROID-US-EN.vertical, was live at 8:30 PM ET on Thursday night but taken down by 9 PM. A tech specs page at http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola-DROID-US-EN.alt was still live at 9 PM.

Verizon’s official Droid site can be accessed at www.droiddoes.com.

Post by Sascha Segan

The Droid’s face is mostly a 3.7″, 480×854 capacitive TFT LCD touchscreen.

On the back of the Motorola Droid, there’s a 5-megapixel camera with flash.

Slid closed, the Motorola Droid is 2.4 x 4.6 x .5 inches in size.

The Motorola Droid is relatively slim for such a powerful smartphone.