Walking into any carrier’s store is an interesting experience. The walls are lined with devices that all have roughly the same descriptions of features on them, with one or two critical differences. They exist in all different shapes and sizes. There’s a certain anxiety attached to talking to one of the salesman, and for all you know they could just be in it for the commission, right? How can you be sure the device you are being sold is really the best one? Over the next few days Geek.com will be answering that big “best Android phones” question for each of the four carriers. Today, we’re talking about Verizon Wireless.

The Best

Verizon Wireless has created their own branding for their headline Android phones, which they have dubbed “Droid”. The Droid line of phones has historically been the best Verizon offers at that time. Keeping with tradition, the top Android phone on Verizon is the Droid X by Motorola.

The Droid X offers a larger touchscreen than most at 4.3-inches, the largest in their phone lineup. Coupled with the only 8 megapixel camera they offer, the phone was built for capturing high quality video and images. Add to that a powerful processor and 8GB of built in storage and the ability to add up to 32GB to that, and you have a great portable entertainment system. The Droid X is currently running Android 2.2 with an upgrade to 2.3 coming whenever Motorola tweaks their customized user interface.

At $149.99 on a new contract it’s cheaper than the Verizon iPhone or the more recent Droid Pro as well.

The Runner Up

Verizon offers a pretty wide variety of devices running the Android operating system. Choosing the “best” wasn’t so hard, since the Droid X kind of stands out. Choosing its runner up was a little more difficult. After careful consideration, the Samsung Galaxy S Fascinate stood out.

The Fascinate offers a screen that is currently unique to Samsung’s Galaxy S line of phones. Using a high quality 4-inch “Super AMOLED” screen and a Gorilla Glass cover, the Fascinate’s screen works great in direct sunlight and is nearly indestructible compared to other cell phone screens. Running Samsung’s impressive 1GHz Hummingbird processor and sporting a 16GB micro SD card, it’s a more than capable device. The phone is powered by Samsung’s visually optimized TouchWiz user interface on top of Android. This social-focused user interface is on every Galaxy S device, including their tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

What’s to Come

I always chuckle a bit when I hear someone say that they are waiting for the “next big thing” as though it will be the last “next big thing”, as though something better won’t be out next month. Still, it doesn’t hurt to plan for that big thing coming up around your next upgrade time, right?

If you read up on mobile technology at all, you have probably heard of the HTC Thunderbolt. Slated to be a 4G LTE device capable of bringing incredibly fast Internet speeds to your devices, this 4.3-inch Android phone is not quite like any other device I have held in my hands, having had that opportunity at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. The release of this device has been widely speculated, but I think I will wait on something official from Verizon before I say anything.