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SAN JOSE, Calif.
—
Motorola's
new Droid smartphone has attracted a fair amount of
attraction as quite possibly the toughest challenger yet
for the iPhone.
It's the
first phone to run Android 2.0, the latest version of
Google's
smartphone 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 available 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 still no iPhone. Both 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
in your hand. Unlike the myTouch 3G, the Android phone
that came out this summer on
T-Mobile
, the Droid doesn't feel like it's made of cheap
plastic. On the other hand, it weighs about an ounce
more than my iPhone, and that difference was noticeable
as I held it in my hands surfing the Web or typing
e-mail.
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 any physical buttons on its face. Instead,
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,
particularly if the phone is running slowly for some
reason. This kept happening to me repeatedly.
And when
the screen turned off, I found myself missing having a
big, front-facing button to turn it back 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 be able to sync to
Exchange right out of the box, so you can not only check
your work mail, but download your work contacts and
calendar. Like Palm's Pre and the new Motorola Cliq, it
also 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
still not as good as the one on the iPhone, though; it
doesn't seem to include appointments in its search
results.
The Droid
does have some nice features that you either won't find
on the iPhone or that improve on what's there. It has a
5-megapixel camera, compared with the 3-megapixel one
that's in the iPhone 3GS. And, unlike the iPhone, it has
a built in flash.
Like
other Android phones, the Droid will run multiple
programs at once.
So, you
can listen to a radio station on Pandora while
downloading an application from the Android Market and
checking your e-mail. That's great for multi-taskers
like me — and something you can't do on the iPhone.
And
unlike the version on the iPhone, the Droid's built-in
Google Maps program turns it into a GPS device, offering
turn-by-turn navigation.
Google
Maps Navigation works well; it plots directions quickly,
keeps track of your movements in real time and rapidly
re-plots your route when you stray from its course. Best
of all, it's free.
But
Android still feels unrefined compared with the iPhone
— or even the underappreciated Palm Pre, whose WebOS
software is even better than the iPhone's. Unlike those
phones, it supports few gestures; you can't pinch to
zoom in or out of a picture, for instance. And closing
or switching between programs isn't nearly as simple or
intuitive.
Still,
there's a lot to like about the Droid and Android. It
may not be as easy to use as either the iPhone or the
Pre, but it's probably the best smartphone available
from
Verizon
, which has far fewer deadspots than either
AT&T
or
Sprint
, the carrier partners of Apple and Palm, respectively.
The
Android Market is a distant no. 2 to the iPhone's
App Store
in terms of available programs. But 12,000 applications
— a number that is growing rapidly — is nothing to
sniff at. You'll find versions of many of the most
popular iPhone programs on Android; using programs I
found in the market, I was able to listen to Pandora,
send tweets to Twitter and play a tower defense game.
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.
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