The Samsung Fascinate will start selling for $199 this week, is the underdog in an Android lineup dominated by HTC and Motorola. On Verizon, those makers who have Droid phones steal the show, got benefited from aggressive marketing and popular branding. In terms of features it has a midway point between HTC’s Droid Incredible and Motorola’s Droid X. That’s mostly because of the 4-inch screen, compared to 3.7 inches on the Incredible and 4.3 inches on the Droid X. The Fascinate also has 2 GB internal storage and 16 GB on MicroSD, which is more than the Droid Incredible’s 8GB/2GB combination and less than the Droid X’s 8GB/16GB. The Fascinates 1500 mAh battery, compare in real-world terms should be better than the Incredible and either on par with or slightly less efficient than the excellent Droid X.

Unfortunately, it’s not peachy when wireless carriers and handset makers start messing with the stock Android experience. The search widgets that will be the only way to remove Bing is by hacking the phone. Because this tends to come up when I talk about new product launches, I’m not reviewing the Samsung Fascinate, I’m just pointing out how it differs from an already strong lineup of Verizon Android handsets. The Fascinate through its paces, we’ll know for sure whether Samsung’s underdog can really take on the Droids.

NEWS SOURCE: www.pcworld.com