We know some of you have been waiting for a high-end QWERTY phone on Verizon’s LTE network for months. It looks like that wait is finally (finally!) coming to a close, and we can expect to see Motorola’s DROID 4 show up in Verizon stores in the middle of February. A new leak at Droid Life shows how much you’ll be spending for the privilege: $199.99 with a new two-year contract, or $549.99 without any commitments. Verizon’s standard tiered voice, text and data plans will almost certainly apply to the latest DROID phone.

Assuming that the price in question hold steady, it’s a surprisingly good price for a new high-end phone. Motorola’s DROID RAZR and DROID RAZR MAXX will both run you $300 (though you can – and should – shave $100 off the price of the RAZR by getting it without a MicroSD card), as will the Galaxy Nexus and HTC Rezound. Placing the new DROID model at Verizon’s mid-range price seems odd, but clearly they’re setting it at a lower tier when compared with other phones, even though the DROID 4′s specs compete pretty evenly with them.

Speaking of specs: the DROID 4 is basically a copy of the DROID RAZR, with a smaller screen, removable battery and of course a slide-out keyboard. The DROID 4 comes with a 4-inch screen running the same 960×540 resolution, but sadly trades in the AMOLED panel for a more pedestrian LCD.   You still get a 1.2Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, 8MP camera and (sigh) Motorola’s Gingerbread with a custom UI and a locked bootloader. We spent some hands-on time with the DROID 4 at CES and came away impressed – everyone else should be able to in a week or two.