On Friday, November 6, Verizon released their first phones running on Google’s Android 2.0 operating system: Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris phone. As I went to my local Verizon store I noticed that there were no long lines, in fact there were only two other people besides me who went in the store. Verizon has been heavily advertising this phone, as the “iPhone killer”, and mocking the iPhone for not having a lot of basic features that the Droid has. Is the Droid really an iPhone killer, and is it really worth it? Continue reading to find out. I got the Motorola Droid, so I’ll be reviewing that phone in this post.
Browser: The browser on the Motorola Droid is very nice, and in my opinion it beats the Safari browser on the iPhone. Just like the browser on the iPhone and on the Palm Pre, it uses the same Webkit engine. The Droid will get Adobe Flashplayer early next year along with the Palm Pre, while the iPhone won’t be getting it any time soon. You can double tap to zoom in or zoom out of a certain section on a web page. Unlike the iPhone or the Palm Pre, multi-touch is not enabled on the browser so you can’t pinch to zoom in or zoom out. The reason I’m saying enabled is because the Droid does support multi-touch but Google has not enabled it for some reason. I hope they do this in the next update. Scrolling through web pages on the Motorola Droid is very fast and smooth, unlike the iPhone there is no checkerboard background when you’re quickly scrolling through web pages. Holding down a link on a web page brings up a menu that shows you the URL the link leads to, and gives you the option of opening the link in a new window, bookmarking the link, saving the link, sharing the link through E-mail/Facebok/Gmail/Messaging, or just copying the URL of the link. Almost every website I go to today has a favorites icon that helps me identify which tab I have it open in, and the Droid’s browser displays the favorites icon for each website you visit. Neither the iPhone, nor the Palm Pre does that. When you open multiple windows in the browser, you can easily find and switch to the Window you want to go to. With the iPhone or the Palm Pre, you need to slide your windows left or right and find which one you want. The browser supports copy and paste, you can tap the “Select text” button from the menu, select your text, and it automatically gets copied to the clipboard. You can bookmark websites and save them to the Bookmarks menu or save them to your home screen. All the bookmarks in the bookmark menu display a screenshot of the website that you bookmarked and the title. The browser also has a “Find on page” feature that allows you to enter in some text and find a certain keyword you are looking for on a web page you’re viewing, unlike the iPhone. The browser also allows you to speak and search on Google without having to type what you’re searching for.
Multiple apps: One of the big features of the Motorola Droid is that it can run multiple apps. The iPhone can only run one application at a time. The Palm Pre can run multiple applications, but it lags whenever I have more than one application open. I was actually surprised when I opened multiple applications on the Droid, there was no lag and I was able to quickly switch between other applications without any problem.
Android Market: The applications store on the Droid is called the Android Market. You can download free applications without having to register an account, but you must register an account with Google Checkout in order to download paid applications. While browsing the Android Market, I downloaded the top Twitter application (Tweed) and noticed that the interface of it wasn’t that great compared to the interface that most of the iPhone apps use. The iPhone App Store has a lot of better applications than the ones found on the Droid, and it definitely has better games as well. If you are a games person, you definitely don’t want to get the Droid, there is no game on there that is worth buying in my opinion. Downloading applications from the Android market was a better experience than downloading applications from the App Store. I was able to download multiple apps without having to exit the Android Market application and I was also able to check how much percent of each application was downloaded. On the iPhone, I have to manually open the App Store application each time wanted to download a new app.
Keyboard: The Droid has a physical keyboard with a D-Pad and a virtual keyboard. Typing on the physical keyboard wasn’t easy at first because the keys are flat, but after trying it a couple times I am now used to it. I prefer to use the virtual keyboard though, it’s easier to type on that. I wish Motorola hadn’t included a D-Pad on the physical keyboard, otherwise the keys would have been a little bigger. Typing on the virtual keyboard was very easy, but I did tend to make more mistakes than I did when I typed on the iPhone. The iPhone’s virtual keyboard is still the best.
Camera: Despite the Motorola Droid having a 5.0 Megapixel camera, it’s camera is no better than the iPhone’s camera. It can take videos and pictures, but the quality of the pictures isn’t that great. The camera application also tends to be slow or even freezes at times. I’m pretty sure that this is a software issue and it will be fixed in the next Android 2.0 update.
Customization: You can easily customize the icons for the applications you download, the theme of your phone, or even add widgets. iPhone users don’t have much customization options without having to jailbreak.
Conclusion
As of right now, the Motorola Droid is the best and fastest phone running Google’s Android 2.0 operating system. I liked the Motorola Droid, and I’ll definitely be keeping it over the iPhone. Why am I doing this? It’s on Verizon’s network, which is far more reliable than AT&T, it supports multi-tasking, the browser experience is great and it will support flash, and the screen size of the Motorola Droid is bigger than the iPhone. As a previous iPhone user, I will miss the games that I downloaded and played but I will also be more productive. This post was just a quick review, without any screenshots/videos, so I highly recommend that you go to your local Verizon Store and actually try this out and decide if you like it or not. You can check out a full review of the Motorola Droid with pictures and video at Engadget. http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/30/motorola-droid-review/
