I ’ve heard a lot about the iPhone the last few years and a friend of mine swears by it and feels there’s no way he could ever live without it. That was before he played with the Motorola Droid. He felt that the Droid was the closest thing to the iPhone.
I wasn’t crazy about the fact that the Droid was a little on the heavy side and a bit cumbersome. While it is heavy, it certainly gives you a great feeling in your hands that you just don’t find too much these days as handsets continue to get thinner, lighter and smaller.
The Droid is oozing with incredibly cool features. There’s a 550MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor, separate PowerVR GPU, 256MB of RAM, Wi-Fi, GPS, a digital magnetometer, accelerometer, proximity sensors, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash, notification LED, four touch-sensitive navigation buttons, a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, 3.5mm headset jack, microUSB port and more.
The 3.7-inch touchscreen, which powers an 854×460 resolution image, is crisp, sharp, vibrant, bright, and really, really responsive. The directional pad on the right is a little awkward at first, but it doesn’t hamper your typing too much. Something that’s a little annoying is the proximity of one key to another key, but all in all I haven’t had much of a problem typing up emails, texts, and other forms of text entry on the hardware keyboard.
The Droid sounds great as a phone. Calls with the handset over Verizon’s network sounded clear and the phone application itself performed really well. Google Voice obviously works flawlessly and the phone application is quick!
Battery life with the Droid is excellent. With push Exchange configured, Facebook, and a linked push Google account (Gmail, contacts, etc.), I had no problem lasting a day and a half of usage. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were disabled, but it’s still a pretty amazing performer as far as the battery is concerned. It does have a user-replaceable battery, butI wouldn’t count on it 100 percent.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the iPhone and its multitude of apps, but the Droid had me hooked for at least a little while.
Motorola Droid
$199.99 with 2-year agreement and $100 mail-in rebate
www.verizonwireless.com/droid
• 3.7-inch touchscreen
•550MHz Texas Instruments
OMAP3430 processor
• 256MB of RAM
• Wi-Fi
• GPS
5-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash
My battery after 20 days is almost lasting 6 hours. Google mags was created by the oil industry. If finds the longest possible routes to a place. the best was an 82 mile trip when I was only 37 miles away. Texting is a nightmare and you cannot text to groups. You have to add each person individually. My droid is going back.