Motorola and Verizon are springing the new Droid 4 next week on Dec. 8 just five months after the launch of the Droid 3.

Technology blog Droid Life posted leaked product shots and a chart that compares the Droid 4 with the Droid 3 and the Droid Razr. The pictures show a Droid 4 that looks similar to the recently released Droid Razr . Both the Droid 4 and Droid Razr have a large touchscreen with angled edges and a slim back with a section that has the 8 mega pixel rear-facing camera and LED flash. However the Droid 4 will still have its predecessor's slide-out keyboard for those who love their QWERTY buttons.

The Droid 4 will also include a faster 1.2 Ghz dual-core processor than the 1 Ghz processor of the Droid 3. It will have a front-facing HD camera capable of 1080p HD video recording, 16 Gb of onboard storage with a microSD expansion slot, 1 Gb of RAM, HDMI output capability and support for 4G LTE networks. The Droid 3 will also have the Droid Razr's "Smart Actions" which turns off certain features automatically to save battery life. There is also support for Motorola's Webtop docks. Both the Droid 3 and Droid 4 will run on the Android 2.3 system.

So why is Motorola and Verizon releasing this new phone so soon after the Droid 3? The only big difference between the Droid 3 and 4 is the 4G LTE support. Motorola also probably wants to have a high-end phone that will appeal to those users who are hankering for a keyboard.