Much has been said about Verizon’s latest addition to their smarthphone arsenal, the Motorola Droid, some good and some bad. I decided to pick one up and decide for myself. It’s been a little less than a week that I’ve spent with my Droid and I must say, I’ve actually come away quite impressed. Now by no means am I saying the Droid is the best looking device on the market, nor is it the perfect smartphone — that simply does not exist. But what we have here is a very solid effort by Motorola. Sure Apple is at the top of the game in regards to UI, ease of use, speed, etc… but they have to play some major catch up with the release of their next iPhone — namely on display, notifications, and multitasking.
For the full run down follow me after the break!
Display
I want to start with the first thing that really pops out when you turn the Droid on — the display. I will admit I never had issues with the screen on my iPhone… until the Droid came along. The Droid’s display has a resolution of 480×854 and is 3.7-inches of pure delight. So much so that after using the Droid for almost a week now when I look at the screen on my iPhone everything on it comes across as being blurry.
Apple, we all beg of you, please make Rene’s dream of an iPhone HD come to life by giving us a better screen on the next version of iPhone. Pretty please…
Notifications
The way the Droid handles notifications is not something new but rather a staple of the Android OS. Like many of you, I feel the iPhone does a very poor job with any sort of push notification whether it is a incoming text message or a sports score. So poor in fact that if I receive a sports score and then a text message right afterwords I have no way of knowing the sports score ever came through! On the Droid I can get all the scores pushed to the device and have email, text messages, etc and a simple swipe down on the screen reveals every single notification. I’m not sure about any of you but how the iPhone handles push notifications is getting pretty old at this point.
Multitasking
According to our poll of what Droid feature would you like to see on your iPhone, many of you would like to see the ability to multitask 3rd party applications. Apple’s response to your request has been that multitasking will kill your battery faster than you could ever imagine. Are they correct? Yes and no. Multitasking will have a negative effect on your battery but it’s not as much as Apple claims it to be. Apple needs to let the consumer decide for themselves. If they’d like to take a hit in the battery life department to be able to multitask 3rd party applications, why not let them? Give us the option and make everyone happy.
Conclusion
So what does this all mean for Apple, and for me? Will I be ditching my iPhone for the Droid? No. I could never leave all of you behind. But I will be keeping the Droid as it definitely has my attention. I can’t say it’s the Verizon network as AT&T service is top notch where I live, but the three things I discussed above have me hooked and good. The Droid really is Apple’s wake up call in a sense. It’s finally a competitive enough device that it should force them to step up and greatly improve upon the iPhone next time around. While I would never tell any of you to do away with your iPhone I will tell you this, if you have a chance to pick one up and give it a whirl, do so as you are sure to enjoy it.
If you are interested in learning more about the Droid be sure to check out Android Central’s full hardware review as Casey knocked it out of the park. And if you’ve already tried the Droid, drop us a note in the comments and let us know what how it treated you.
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
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