What does Droid do? Besides giving Apple’s wildly popular iPhone a run for its money, it does what you would expect out of a full-featured smartphone.
Adjust your suspenders and pocket-protector; it’s phone review time.
The Motorola Droid, which holds the claim of being the thinnest smartphone with a QWERTY sliding keyboard currently available, comes with Google’s Android OS version 2.0.
Having a large screen and being packed with features, the Droid’s battery life is still respectable. It features a removable battery, so extras may be carried along on longer trips.
The Droid’s 3.7 inch, 480×854 capacitive touchscreen display is bright and crisp. YouTube videos viewed in high-quality mode are surprisingly sharp.
The Droid has support for HDMI output, so you can plug it directly into your fancy new HDTV and play videos.
The device feels heavy for its size. The keys on the physical keyboard are flat along their surface, which takes some getting used to and does not allow for much distinction between keys when moving your thumbs across it.
The Droid comes with an in-car navigation app that looks and functions just like a stand-alone car GPS with the addition of Google maps satellite image overlay and traffic data for areas that GPS brands like Garmin don’t support, both of these features are impressive.
On major highways, traffic is represented by the road color: green for normal traffic, yellow for slow traffic and red for standstill.
The satellite image overlay and smoothness of the animation of the in-car navigation is something that has to be seen to be appreciated.
Driving 130 miles with the display, GPS receiver and 3G radio operating simultaneously for the duration of the trip used less than half of the Droid’s battery life.
The HTC Eris comes with Android 1.5 and is smaller than the Droid with a 3.2 inch 320×480 display, which is also a capacitive touch screen.
The device feels comfortable in your hand and lacks a physical keyboard, but has a useful trackball.
Mapping and navigation on the Eris isn’t as full featured as on the Droid, but will still direct you where you need to go. You have to choose a single map overlay, either satellite, traffic or the standard road view.
The Droid will display them all simultaneously.
The Droid uses micro-USB for charging and data, which the Open Mobile Terminal Platform forum chose as the new standard for phone connectors.
This is a welcome change from the multitude of charger options on various phone brands. HTC has not yet adopted this standard.
Both devices have a five mega pixel camera with auto-focus and the Droid includes a flash.
Video recording on each device was smooth and easy to use. Both phones also have a standard headphone jack.
The Droid and the Eris have the option of enabling haptic feedback on their touch screens. This is a fancy way of saying the phone vibrates briefly when you tap the screen. It helps bring back more tactile feel to otherwise non-tactile touch screens. Android has a well-thought-out predictive and auto-correcting text input system.
Returning to my iPhone’s minimalist, yet very user-friendly interface was frankly a little disappointing.
I got used to having more options, and even though Android is more complex, it remains intuitive and easy to use.
The Android app store currently contains over 16,000 apps.
An abundant selection indeed, but it is still a long way from the 100,000 available from the Apple App Store.
Android’s window shade notifications bar is very clever and useful. Everything from text messages to updated apps to friend updates via Facebook are presented in a simple list accessible by swiping down from the top of the menu bar.
Phones intended for the Android OS have standard buttons along the bottom of the device: home, menu, back and search.
Once you get used to this system, it makes for a very easy to navigate interface.
Android 2.0 comes with native integration with Flickr, Twitter and Facebook.
It uses your Facebook friend list as the basis of the phone’s contact list and links phone numbers which friends store in their profile.
HTC includes an app on its devices called People which links Facebook friends’ profiles to contacts in your phone and will automatically display that person’s profile picture and status in the phone’s contact list.
The People app also puts Facebook notifications and friend updates in Android’s notifications bar. It’s unfortunate the People app isn’t available on non-HTC devices.
Oddly enough, the ability to tag friends in Facebook photos was absent on both devices, though that functionality will probably be available soon through an update.
The Android platform is feature-rich, customizable and easy to use.
It is also intuitive enough for a non-technically savvy user to be able to enjoy while maintaining the complex features expected from a smartphone.
The two Droids are solid, well-made devices and are amazingly advanced compared to the smartphones and PDAs from just a few years ago.
Oh, and they’re good for making calls, too.
I give both phones four robotic overlords out of five.