Motorola’s Droid smart phone has attracted a fair amount of attention as possibly the toughest challenger for the iPhone.
It’s the first phone to run Android 2.0, the latest version of Google’s smart-phone operating system. It’s the first Android phone offered by Verizon, which is reputed to have the best wireless network in the nation.
And it’s the first Android phone in the United States that has taken the iPhone’s aesthetic into account in its design: The Droid is thin but sturdy and places its large touch screen front and center.
But as much as the Droid improves on previous Android phones, it’s no iPhone. Its hardware and software lack the refinement of Apple’s iconic device.
The first thing you notice about the Droid is that it feels solid. Unlike the myTouch 3G, the Android phone that came out this summer on T-Mobile, the Droid doesn’t feel like cheap plastic. But it weighs about an ounce more than the iPhone, and that difference was noticeable.
Unlike the iPhone, the Droid has a slide-out keyboard. The keys were small for my thumbs, but they give a satisfying sensation when you tap on them.
Unlike previous Android phones, the Droid doesn’t have a trackball or physical buttons on its face. It has four dedicated touch-sensitive buttons: back, menu, home and search. I found these hard to use. Because they don’t depress like physical buttons and don’t change color like virtual touch-screen ones, it can be hard to know if you’ve pressed them or not.
When the screen is turned off, I found myself missing having a big, front-facing button to turn it on. Touch the “home” button (as you would on the iPhone), and nothing happens. Instead, you have to press the tiny power button on the top of the device.
The software on the Droid includes some nice features. It’s one of the first Android phones to sync to Exchange right out of the box, so you not only can check your work mail, but download your work contacts and calendar. As with Palm’s Pre and the Motorola Cliq, it syncs your contacts with Facebook.
As you’d hope, given the Droid’s links to Google, its search feature is much improved from those on previous Android phones. On the myTouch, the search bar only performed Web searches. Now it will search the device as well. You can use it to locate and launch programs and look up contacts.
It’s not as good as the one on the iPhone, though. It doesn’t seem to include appointments in its search results.
The Droid has nice features you won’t find on the iPhone or that improve on what’s there. It has a 5-megapixel camera, compared with the iPhone 3GS’s 3-megapixel one. And, unlike the iPhone, it has a built-in flash.
Like other Android phones, the Droid will run multiple programs at once. That’s great for multitaskers and something you can’t do on the iPhone.
Also, the Droid’s built-in Google Maps program turns it into a GPS device, offering turn-by-turn navigation.
The Droid may not be as easy to use as the iPhone or Pre, but it’s the best smart phone available from Verizon, which has far fewer dead spots than other carriers.
The Android Market is a distant No. 2 to the iPhone’s App Store. But 12,000 applications is nothing to sniff at.
If I were on Verizon, I’d definitely give the Droid a look.
If you’ve got an iPhone, though, I’d stick with it.
(Originally posted : The Modesto Bee)
