After several months of seeing rumors of a Galaxy S style device with a QWERTY keyboard, it almost comes as a relief to finally hold the Samsung Stratosphere in our hands. Coming to Verizon's 4G LTE network on October 13th for $149.99 with a 2-year contract, the Stratosphere certainly doesn't break any new ground when it comes to specs. It features Android 2.3 with TouchWiz on top, a 4-inch Super AMOLED WVGA screen, a single-core 1GHz Hummingbird processor, and a 5-megapixel camera. The real story is the full, 5-row keyboard, which seemed stolidly capable of pushing out text despite having relatively shallow and uninspiring key travel. Otherwise, build quality here seems completely in line with other Galaxy S devices: lighter than you'd expect but not so much so that it feels cheap. If you've been waiting for a horizontal slider to jump on Verizon's LTE bandwagon, this is your best (and only) option at the moment.

Find more photos and a hands-on video below.