Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > November > 20 > Entry
Final thoughts on the Motorola Droid
This morning, I mailed back the Motorola Droid phone that Verizon Wireless had lent us to try out for a few weeks.
I always know it’s past time to mail something back when it’s been a few days where the device sits around, unused, nearly all curiosity about how it works and what it does satisfied. As it stood, the Droid’s battery was depleted from sitting idle, unused for most of this week.
But for the first two weeks after the phone’s splashy roll-out, it was in my hands constantly. Curious co-workers and Twitter buddies had lots of questions, the inevitable one being, “Is it better than the iPhone?”
Yes and no. For a phone seemingly built from the ground up to answer all the nagging issue people still have with Apple’s wonderphone, it succeeds in some areas that those who’ve rejected the iPhone won’t be able to resist. It’s on Verizon’s wireless network, which I find to be more reliable and robust. As an iPhone user, I’m used to dropped calls, low signals and the occasional AT&T 3G/EDGE network data blackout. It’s a testament to the strength of the iPhone that so many of us put up with these issues.
On the Droid, such issues all but disappear, but others take their place. For one thing, the phone is simply not as sleek, light or attractive as the iPhone, even with a slightly bigger, brighter screen (3.7 inches). I’ve said it before and I’ll stand by it — the Droid feels like two slabs of flat, black metal of different sizes slapped atop each other. The Droid isn’t homely, exactly, but its weird gold accents and insistent rectangular shape aren’t much to admire. The Droid is interesting-looking, in the way that a giant metal sculpture of a spider might be interesting. You might even admire the design, but it’s not something you’d want to cuddle up with.
The phone’s desktop is spacious and you have several screens to put your widgets and icons, but you’re more limited in that on-screen real estate than on the iPhone and it’s very easy for these areas to look cluttered and disorganized. And, to several people I showed the phone to, it wasn’t obvious that all the apps that aren’t on the desktop can be accessed by dragging across a separate window that reveals them all. There’s something a little clunky about the way that’s all organized, though some of the widgets themselves (like the ones for Facebook and Google Calendar) are impressive and useful.
That said, I did love the phone’s ability to multi-task apps, its supremely tight integration with Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts (which only require you to log in; all the sync work is done wirelessly, no PC/Mac required). I still love the way the Android OS unobtrusively handles e-mail and calendar notifications (with a nice strip at the top of the screen that can be dragged down for instant access). Apps are much improved since the last time I played with an Android phone and Android 2.0 map navigation is stellar, the best I’ve seen on any phone.
The physical keyboard will be a selling point to those who abhor the iPhone’s touch-screen typing, but I found it useless, even with its horizontal layout. The keys are flat and, even with all that space, i found it impossible to type on it without lots of typos. The Android dictionary seems more extensive than the one on the iPhone, but even with that, I still found myself reverting to the Droid’s on-screen keyboard option. This one will depend on your preference, but I’ve found it’s worth the time to get used to a virtual keyboard. I just type faster on it.
I found the camera on the Droid, despite having a higher resolution than even the iPhone 3G S to be flaky. It had a hard time autofocusing whenever I used it (an issue I’ve read has since been fixed) and the images and video I took with it didn’t strike me as any sharper or better-looking than ones I’ve shot with an iPhone.
Though the Droid has access to Amazon’s MP3 store, i didn’t find getting music or videos onto the phone particularly easy. You can mount the phone as an external drive (which requires more steps than it should), but if you don’t already have music on the phone, you have to manually create a folder and drag content to it on your computer. There’s software available separately that will help you do this, but it should be much easier to load up your phone with content than it is on the Android platform. This is where the iPhone wins with its iTunes application.
And on that score, the apps on the iPhone are simply more diverse and many more in number than for Android. I was a bit stunned by a recent Newsweek column in which Dan Lyons suggested that, “…over time, a lot of iPhone apps will become available on Android, too. So Apple’s advantage will diminish.”
Really? You think so? Unless sales of iPhones slow significantly, that is simply not true. Most app developers are developing for the iPhone first, Android perhaps second and BlackBerry, Palm, Sybian and WIndows Mobile a distant third, fourth, fifth and sixth. With limited resources, budgets and time, developers are going to keep leaning on iPhone/iPod apps first (don’t forget the iPod Touch is part of that giant audience/ecosystem, too), and I don’t see that advantage going away anytime soon, no matter how excited geeks are about Android as a platform. Those economics will not change anytime soon, even with a good phone like the Droid as an alternative. Especially if the iPhone ends up on Verizon’s network next year (or even 2011).
And that’s the word I keep coming back to when describing the Droid: it’s a good iPhone alternative. The iPhone is not perfect, but it’s slightly more perfect than the Droid, as hobbled as it sometimes seems by AT&T’s network woes.
My thinking on the Droid has been that if there were no iPhone or I was suddenly unable to keep my 3G S, it’s the phone I’d be most likely to buy in its place.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment Categories: Gadgets, Phones, Shopping
Comments
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By Omar Gallaga
November 23, 2009 5:17 PM | Link to this
Clussman -- I think we agree with each other, sort of. One giant app developer just decided not to do Android anymore because they weren't getting ROI: http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/major-game-developer-abandons-android-ship-652887
But I think we both agree that Apple's App Store will be dominant for a while longer.
John -- the photos don't really tell the whole story. Pick one up in your hand.
Pam -- I do have an HTC Hero I'm playing with. Haven't used it enough to form an opinion, but it seems like a good, cheaper little phone.
By John
November 21, 2009 11:07 AM | Link to this
Omar, I hear you about all the weaknesses of the Droid. But when I see that amazing picture at the top of your article, I WANT A DROID!!! It's just so darned geeky and sexy.
By Pam in Missouri
November 21, 2009 9:30 AM | Link to this
Have you looked at the HTC phone running Android? How does it compare? Switching from Verizon to ATT is not going to happen so I'm looking for the best iPhone alternative on Verizon.
Thanks.
By Clussman
November 20, 2009 6:04 PM | Link to this
Major apps and app developers will release on both because they'll see ROI on Android, so that will close the app gap for some users. But the next version of Adobe Flash CS4 will actually be able to export as native iPhone apps, so smaller studios will be able to create iPhone apps very cheaply. That will cause an explosion in niche apps for the iPhone and that will be an app gap that I don't see any competitor overcoming for quite a while.