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Something for everybody. That's the business strategy behind Google's Android mobile operating system, and in many ways it's a marvelous thing. You can get an Android handset on the carrier of your choice, from a variety of manufacturers. You can pick one with or without a physical keyboard. Big spenders can spring for a phone with the latest technologies; bargain hunters who are willing to commit to a contract can get a less cutting-edge handset for free. It's a radically different situation than with Apple's iPhone 4, which is just one phone — albeit a pretty spectacular one — and which is available only on AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

In the case of Motorola's new Droid Bionic, what an Android phone is offering is not so much something as everything. The latest model in Verizon Wireless's Droid line, the Bionic is probably the most potent smartphone on the market in terms of raw horsepower and bountiful features. (If history is any example, it'll soon be trumped by an even more souped-up model, which will itself have only a short reign at the top.)

As always, it's dangerous to pay too much attention to specs: The iPhone 4 provides a much smoother, slicker experience than any Android phone, and its App Store handily beats Google's Android Market for both quantity and quality. But the Bionic's potent parts do make a difference. While its 4.3" display is not unnaturally spacious by current standards, it packs more pixels — 540 by 960 — than most phones with screens that big. Inside, the phone has a 1-GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, which keeps Android responsive even if you're running lots of apps at once. Its rear camera can do respectable-looking 8-megapixel still photos and 1080p video, and there's a front camera for video chat in Google Talk and other apps.

The Bionic's standout feature is its support for Verizon's 4G LTE network, currently available in 117 markets and easily the nation's speediest. When I ran Ookla's Speedtest.net benchmark in the San Francisco suburbs, the phone typically downloaded data at around 10-Mbps, roughly ten times as quickly as my everyday handset, an iPhone 4 on AT&T's 3G network.

You might see different results in your neighborhood, but there's no doubt about it: The Bionic is one fast phone. Web pages that take seconds to load on most phones snap into view, and it's one of the few mobile devices I've seen that does a decent job of streaming Flash video. Motorola also bundles an app called ZumoCast that lets you stream video, music, and other files stored on your home PC across the LTE network and onto the phone. And unlike Verizon's older 3G network, LTE lets you talk on the phone while using the Internet at the same time.

At the moment, however, the still-new LTE technology both giveth and taketh away. I haven't had the Bionic long enough to perform a methodical test, but when I used it with its default settings, I could practically see the battery meter draining as I used it, especially when I indulged in power-hungry activities such as watching videos. I'd worry about getting through the day without plugging it in at some point. (It may be an ominous sign that Motorola offers a little plug-in station that lets you power the phone while simultaneously charging a spare battery.)

The Bionic does let you tweak settings to squeeze more time out of a charge; there's even a clever option that goes into a power-conserving mode at night when you're less likely to notice if your e-mail doesn't show up immediately. But for most people, the most logical way to deal with the piggish behavior of the Bionic and other current 4G phones is to wait until hardware makers have refined the technology. (A half a decade ago, the earliest 3G phones were power-hungry, too — but later models got much, much more efficient.)

More than most manufacturers, Motorola likes to outfit its smartphones with a generous range of optional accessories. There's a charging dock that lets it act like an alarm clock/photo frame, and a car dock that's useful if you use Google Maps' turn-by-turn directions as your navigation system. And then there are three different add-ons that let you use Motorola's Webtop, a feature which lets the phone masquerade as a PC by allowing you to connect it to a full-sized display, a keyboard and a mouse. You can run both oversized versions of the Android apps on the phone and the desktop version of Mozilla's Firefox browser. (The Webtop uses Firefox 4.0.1, even though the current version of the browser is 6.0.2.)

The Webtop is the software that empowers Motorola's lapdock, a unique gadget that looks like a sleek rival to Apple's MacBook Air. It's not a full-fledged laptop, though — it's really just a "dumb" shell for the Bionic, which sits in a rumble seat on the back and provides the lapdock with its brains and Internet connection. When the lapdock premiered last February with Motorola and AT&T's Atrix, AT&T originally charged a daunting $499.99 for it; the Bionic's version is a more plausible $299.99, with a $100 rebate if you sign up for a 4G data plan that costs at least $50 a month.

Sadly, I still found myself wanting to like the lapdock more than actually liking it. The whole experience is sluggish in a way that the phone isn't when it's being a phone — the cursor, for instance, seemed to huff and puff to keep up with my finger on the touchpad. When I tried to play Facebook's Bejeweled Blitz, I got a message saying I needed a newer version of Flash Player. I attempted to install one, and gave up after being confronted with cryptic messages by Linux, the nerdy operating system that powers the Bionic/lapdock combo. As an idea, the Webtop remains cool; here's hoping that Motorola continues to plug away at the concept.

With the Bionic, as with most smartphones, the simple question "How much does it cost?" is surprisingly tough to answer. It lists for $589.99 with a 16GB storage card, but if you sign up for a two-year contract, it's $299.99. And if you qualify for a contract and currently have a Verizon "basic" phone rather than a smartphone, you qualify for a $100 rebate.

Of course, it makes no sense to obsess over the cost of the handset itself: it's dwarfed by the price you'll pay for two years of wireless service. In the case of the Bionic, you'll spend $129.99 a month if you want unlimited calling and text messaging plus 5GB of Internet data.

Or you could spurn the Bionic and Verizon altogether and take your business to Virgin Mobile, a division of Sprint that specializes in prepaid wireless. With Virgin and other prepaid carriers such as MetroPCS and Cricket, you plunk down your money for the month ahead rather than the one that just passed. There are no commitments, contracts or credit checks, and service is vastly cheaper than postpaid service from Verizon or AT&T.

Prepaid plans have traditionally appealed to folks with tight budgets and/or shaky credit. But you don't need to be in dire financial straits to find the proposition appealing. At Virgin, unlimited everything — calling, Internet, and messaging — is just $55 a month.

What's the catch? Prepaid carriers don't subsidize your phone if you sign up for a contract, since there are no contracts. You pay full price — an economic model which tends to dumb down the smartphones these carriers offer, since people who are trying to slash their phone bill are even less likely to shell out $500 or $600 for a handset than the rest of us are.

Still, prepaid smartphones are getting better, and Virgin's new Android flagship, the Triumph, is a case in point. Like the Bionic, it's from Motorola and goes for $299.99. But in this case, that's the full price. It's nearly 50% cheaper than an undiscounted Bionic.

At first blush, the Triumph looks like the Bionic's skinnier, boxier fraternal twin, in part because it's got a 4.1" display that's nearly as roomy, although with fewer pixels. However, it's really more comparable to Motorola's Droid X, a phone that was up-to-the-moment when it was released way back in the spring of 2010. It runs Android 2.2 Froyo — a version that dates from the Droid X's era — rather than 2.4 Gingerbread, the current version for phones. It has a single-core processor and half the Bionic's RAM, so it feels merely adequately fast, not downright zippy. Its rear camera does middling 5-megapixel stills and 720p video. (I also found its shutter laggier than the Bionic's.)

Rather than running on Sprint's 4G network, the Triumph only does 3G. What you lose in speed, however, you might gain back in battery life: When I charged up both phones and used them for a few hours on their default settings, the Triumph was still at 50 percent when the Bionic started begging me to plug it into a power source.

Overall, the Triumph isn't exactly a triumph, and it won't appeal to hardcore phone geeks who know by heart exactly which version of Android they've got. But if you crave a smartphone and are allergic to contracts and three-digit monthly wireless bills, it's a good value for the money, and its arrival is welcome news. Maybe they should have called it the Motorola Sensible.

McCracken blogs about personal technology at Technologizer, which he founded in 2008 after nearly two decades as a tech journalist; on Twitter, he's @harrymccracken. His column, also called Technologizer, appears every week on TIME.com.

• Harry McCracken