The Droid you should be looking for

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (LIN) - At the outset, you should know that this is an in-depth review.  I tried to cram as much information about the Droid as possible. I've bolded each section where there's a change in topic.

Verizon Wireless is widely regarded as having one of the best networks in the United States. In a recently launched series of commercials touting their network, Verizon was not shy about saying their network was the best .  The Droid was announced with the "iDon't" commercial series , taking direct aim at competitor AT&T and the device exclusive to its network, the ubiquitous Apple iPhone. Credit the ad department, because another great commercial was yet to come.  Stealth let everyone know the drop date for the Droid would be Friday, November 6th.

Forgive the Star Wars reference in the headline, but I saw this picture and had to share it. Credit to Stefan , who has a great series going on there that you should check out.

But back to the point, this is definitely the Droid you should be looking for. Forget R2 and C3, the Motorola Droid is the one. This is the most complete phone that I've seen since the iPhone. The Droid is by no means perfect, but it comes as close as any phone ever has to the "WOW!" factor that the iPhone gave me. I made a habit of telling my friends and coworkers that were Verizon customers that the Palm Pre was the device that they should be salivating over. As a Sprint user myself (I know some of you are gasping, but it's worked for me), I wrote a review of the device that I owned, and recommended the Palm Pre with great zeal.

I'm not telling my friends to wait anymore. There's a better device at their disposal, the Motorola Droid. It even had a few surprises packed inside.

So what makes a Droid? Here are the tech specs straight from the Verizon release:

DROID with Google™ by Motorola
Talk and Standby Time: TT: 385 mins/6.4 hours SB: 270 hours/11.25 days
Form Factor: Capacitive Touch; Full Qwerty Side Slider
Band/Modes: 800/1900, CDMA EVDO rev A
OS: Android 2.0
Weight : 169g/5.96oz
Dimensions: 2.36" x 4.56" x .54"
Browser: Webkit HTML5 based browser
Email Support: IMAP and POP, Macmail, Gmail, MSN Hotmail and AOL
Battery: 1400 mAh
Connectivity: Bluetooth v2.1+EDR2, 3.5mm Headset jack, USB 2.0 HS
Display: 3.7”, 480x854 WVGA
Display Resolution: WVGA display houses 400,000 pixels, up to 16 million colors
Messaging: SMS/MMS, Full HTML5 Browser
Audio: AMR-NB/WB, MP3, PCM/WAV, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MIDI, OGG
Video: Advanced Video record/playback at D1 resolution (720x480) at up to 24fps, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264
Camera: 5.0 megapixel, AutoFocus, dual LED Flash and image stablization
Memory: 16GB card included in phone
Location Services: aGPS, sGPS
Extras: 802.11b/g, 3-axis accelerometer

Hardware:

When I slid open the Droid box that the Verizon rep hand delivered to me, I was immediately impressed. The phone just looked good. My taste may not be the same as yours, but I found the Droid to be striking. It sports a large 3.7" screen, and a body with sharp features. This phone could definitely be the antithesis of the rounded features of the iPhone. Check the pictures for yourself, and if you're interested in getting the phone, definitely check it out in the store first to see if the aesthetics match what you want. Under the hood, the Droid runs an Arm Cortex A8 processor running at 550MHz. It provides plenty of processing power to run the things you're going to want to.

The junk in my trunk

The Droid is a full Qwerty slider, and is actually the thinnest slider on the market. It's about 1.5mm thicker than the iPhone and also outweighs it by 1.2 ounces. It's also heavier than the heavier than the Palm Pre, but noticeably thinner. I have had my hands on the Droid for a week now, walking around with it in my pocket and it wasn't noticeably different than the Pre. In fact, it was actually a little bit less noticeable because it was slim by comparison. Now, I've never walked around with an iPhone in my pocket (never owned or reviewed one), but compared to the iPod Touch it wasn't bulky.

My pretty pixels

A phone is more than it's outward looks and appearances though, and in that regard the Droid delivers again. Hiding inside that 3.7" screen is a 480x854 resolution. Compared to my Pre and the iPhone, with 320x480 resolutions, it's not even close. The Droid packs 409,920 pixels on to the screen. Meanwhile, the Pre and iPhone have a dramatically fewer number of pixels, coming in at 153,600. The extra pixels make a big difference. To me the extra resolution is most noticeable in text and icons on the home screen. Both my Pre and the Droid use globes for launching the browser. The globe on the Droid has more "punch" in the image and I'd have to say it's because of the extra pixels. Similarly, text on the phone is easier to read for the same reason. This is especially apparent on the Droid's browser.

You can touch me if you want

The Droid's screen

is a capacitive touchscreen, which means its best used with your finger. The screen is actually glass, unlike some of its plastic screen competitors. I prefer the glass, it feels nicer to the touch and in my practice has been more scratch resistant. In my time with it, the Droid shared a pocket with keys, chapstick and coins, and withstood the onslaught. If this was my personal device, I may invest in a screen protector, but I don't know that it'd be needed. Also, since you're going to be touching the screen all the time, it's nice to know that it's easy to get the fingerprints off. In my practice, a quick rub of the screen on my sleeve turned the phone from a fingerprint-laden device into a fresh-out-of-the-box device.

I found the Droid's touchscreen to be perfectly responsive, but take note: it is not a multitouch device. This means no pinching to zoom in on webpages, photos or anything else. That would be the one knock against it that I would give. I miss the touchscreen gestures that are available on other devices. To zoom, you double-tap the screen, which while do-able is less practical and useful than pinching in to zoom the precise amount that you want. It didn't detract terribly from my use with the device, but it would have been nice to have.

A quick note about the Droid's hold screen. Similar to the iPhone and Pre, there's a drag aspect to unlocking the Droid. Except it also has the added functionality of silencing the phone by dragging it the other way.

Plug me in or let me be wireless

The Droid sports a standard MicroUSB port, which means if you already have a car charger for a MicroUSB phone, you won't have to get a new one. If you have a spare wall charger, you can use that in your office. I much prefer the standard nature of the MicroUSB ports on the Droid (and the Pre, for that matter) compared to the propriety port on the iPhone. Other connectivity options are available as well, WiFi and Bluetooth v2.1 (which synced fantastically with my car for both phone calls and music).

I'm hiding something

For some smartphone users, a physical keyboard is not an option, it's a requirement. In that sense, the Droid delivers. In another sense, it doesn't. The world is full of qwerty keyboards, sliders and non-sliders. Does the Droid stack up? Well, I certainly think it makes a good effort. Compared to its profile brethren, it's not my favorite keyboard. I have always been of the opinion that RIM makes the best keyboards in the world for its BlackBerry devices. The Droid does not change my opinion in that matter. Its keyboard does not best the BlackBerry Bold, but it does best the Bold and other BlackBerry keyboards in this respect: The Droid has dedicated period and "@" keys. In a world where Twitter is becoming more popular, and the use of the "@" is already rampant enough in email addresses, it's a nice feature to have.

I did take issue with one aspect of the Droid keyboard though in comparison to a desktop keyboard. Next to the "l" key it chose to put the question-mark key instead of the semi-colon key. I would have preferred consistency to a traditional keyboard, especially because the device has a forward-slash key that could have been easily paired with the question mark.

In addition to the keyboard, there's also a directional pad complete with center button. For the ROM-running Android users, it's a welcome addition I'm sure.

Physical keyboard aside, there's also a touchscreen keyboard for both vertical and horizontal modes. In what would be the most obvious statement ever, the horizontal software keyboard is more spatious than the vertical software keyboard. The extra room added to my ability to type on the phone though. In the vertical mode, I was constantly hitting the wrong button, but in horizontal mode I found it more forgiving to my typing style. It's nice to have the software keyboard as an option while browsing the web, so that you don't have to flick open the keyboard to punch in a quick search.

Smile or don't, I'll still take your picture

On the spec sheet, the Droid sports a 5.0MP camera with dual LED flash and takes video at DVD resolution (720x480). In real life, the Droid will not replace your 5.0MP camera or your video recorder.

That being said in my practice, I was much more impressed with the video taken by the Droid than the pictures. Switching between the two modes is quite easy on the phone, as it's an on-screen option that you just flick to the other side. You'll find some examples of the pictures taken by the Droid in the gallery. Compared directly to my Palm Pre, I did like the setup on the Droid more, but not the performance. If you press the camera button half-way it will turn on the flash and get a white balance, and then take the picture when you press it all the way. When it comes to speed though, it seemed to be lacking. The process of taking a picture and moving on to take the next one was noticeably longer on the Droid than on my Pre. For a cell phone

setup, the Droid's performance is certainly not awful, but in terms of a camera replacement the Droid just is not there yet. It's definitely a worthy option as far as cell phone cameras go.

In terms of video, I thought the recordings were pretty good. In the videos I took of my daughter running around the room, the camera was able to track movement pretty well. Again this isn't going to replace your handheld camera, or even a Flip camera, but in terms of a cell phone recording video, I was pretty impressed.

If I need more power just switch my battery

The Droid is powered by a 1400 mAh battery, which is interchangeable. It may not be a make-or-break issue for everyone, but it's nice to have the option to swap out the battery. In my case, I don't put a crushing amount of drain on the battery every day, but did try to put in a heavy amount of usage. On day one, I picked up the device at 1pm and used it constantly in a heavy usage setting, I had to plug it in after about five hours of use. To kill the battery as fast as possible I listened to music on Pandora, used the browser, played games and watched videos on YouTube. In a normal day's usage, I was never able to kill the battery. I considered "normal use" playing some games, browsing the web a bit and listening to music.

The Software

The Droid is a device that has a lot of obvious features in the hardware department. In the software department there's a certain refinement that's present in the Android 2.0 software that Droid runs. I've previously had my hands on Android phones, having reviewed a G1 when it came out. The Droid is a definite upgrade in the software department and there are some things that just seem more intuitive than they did back in the 1.0 days.

The Droid, like other Android devices, is best used if you already have a GMail account. GMail is my personal preference, and I've been using it as my primary email service for years. There are some features on the phone that require you to have a GMail account to use. Obviously, the GMail option, Google Talk, contact sync with Cloud, Latitude (a feature of Google Maps), calendar and the Android Market. GMail accounts are free, so there isn't an added charge for setting one up.

When you turn the phone on for the first time you'll be greated by an activation screen, run through the steps, set up your Google Account and you should be good to go. You can choose whether or not to let location services access your device. This is a personal preference of course, but I chose to let them use it for better search results and anonymous location data. You can also have the Droid backup your settings up with Google, a nice feature.

After you've gone through the process of setting the phone up, you're greeted by the home screen, which is how you'll interact with your device most. From here it's up to you to make the device what you want. The home screen is three pages wide and is customizable with apps and widgets, shortcuts and folders. The different widgets that they have available include the Google Search bar (which I deleted, because it seemed redundant having a search bar at the top and a search button on the phone). There was a Facebook app that you could see status updates in. There were also widgets for the music player and Pandora. My favorite widget was actually the power control one. It gives you control over all of major power drains on the device, including WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and phone brightness. There was also a fifth option on the control which I believe was turning off the push aspect of email, but I'm not sure because I didn't turn it off.

After setting up the home page to my liking, the next stop was the Android Market. I wanted to populate my device with as many apps as I could.

I'm more than nuts and bolts

The Android Marketplace is advertised as having more than 10,000 apps inside. Apple just announced that the AppStore has more than 100,000 now. My Palm Pre's AppCatalog has exactly 320 as of this writing. That's a large discrepancy between the three. The Android Marketplace is maturing nicely, there are several thousand more apps now than there were last year, and while the number is dwarfed by the immensity of Apple's AppStore, I was still able to find dozens of apps to download for free. Some of my first selections were games, followed by Pandora, and a Twitter application. The ability to download free games is a nice thing on a cell phone. For a very long time, users were forced to paying $5 for a game to kill time with. That's not the case anymore, as I easily downloaded puzzle, action, strategy and casual games all for free. One of my favorites was a very simple tower defense game. You had to build your defenses along a path and prevent bubbles from getting from point A to point B. For review purposes, I stuck to the free portion of the Marketplace, but there are plenty of for-pay apps that add even more diversity to the device if that's what you need.

Every app you download

will go into your menu alphabetically. This was nice to me because while I do want to access everything at some point, I may not want everything on the home page. Getting apps on to the home page is easy, tap your finger, hold down and drag. If you want to get rid of something, it's just as easy. Tap it and drag it to the trash that pops up. In all there are four rows with space for four apps on each row. The widgets each take up a different amount of space depending on what they do. For instance, the power management widget takes a row, the Facebook widget 2 rows. The widgets provide a reasonable amount of depth, as much as could be expected because they're not intended to be a replacement for actual apps.

The Android Marketplace plays David to Apple's Goliath. It may not be as big, or fearsome, but it can easily land a couple of shots. Android Marketplace also stomps the Pre's AppCatalog like a bug. Each will continue to grow, for certain, but at this point Android Marketplace isn't being held back by limited numbers, where I really feel the AppCatalog has some more growing to do for Palm.

I'm not a stand-alone GPS but I tell you where to go

Android 2.0 introduced a feature that was previously absent in Google Maps: turn-by-turn voice navigation. This was a pleasant surprise when I opened up the mapping program. I've used turn-by-turn navigation on my Pre and I love it. I don't own a standalone GPS because I already have it built in to my phone. Now, with the Droid users will have that same functionality. Additionally, with Google Maps, the navigation has the ability to add in restaurants and hotels as layers over the map. That means, while you're driving, you can see little icons of food, gas and other needs all in proximity to where you are. You can also search near your location, or along your route for other locations you desire. In my use, the turn-by-turn directions were spot on and I didn't have any trouble with it, but I also didn't stress it too much. I had pretty basic destinations and wasn't going anywhere complicated, still for it to get me to each location was nice. Additionally, when you arrive at your destination it will pop up a Google StreetView picture of where you're supposed to be. One of my destinations was a Halloween party, and I showed the host his house on the StreetView and he thought that was pretty cool (I did too).

Better than the Postal Service

Because it's a smartphone, email delivery is very important to the Droid's success. I synced it with both my GMail account and my work's Exchange email account. The push features for both GMail and Exchange work great. Syncing of the calendars is similarly effortless. If you have your accounts setup to filter messages to folders, they will go where they are supposed to and won't bother you. This isn't the case on a BlackBerry, where you're alerted for every email, even if it's supposed to be in a folder.

In that same regard, the fact that I have my folders in Exchange and Labels in GMail is fantastic. You can choose how far back the device syncs folders. The shortest sync length is one day, but you can also set it to grab all of your email if you so desire.

Messaging on the phone is also pretty fantastic. Your messages are threaded per user and kind of look like an instant message conversation in the list.

This is the "real" Internet

The Droid provides a fantastic mobile Internet experience with very few caveats. In fact, the lack of multitouch is the only hindrance I've found while using it as a browser. Holding the Droid horizontally gives you a stunningly wide view of page you're looking at. You can double tap to zoom in and if you do so on a column of text, the zoom will be the appropriate width. The Droid renders using an HTML 5 engine. It delivers a crisp, clear image of the "real" Internet that you may have heard about in iPhone commercials. With the Android 2.0 software, the Droid steps into my favorite mobile browsers along side Mobile Safari on the iPhone and the WebOS browser on the Pre. On software alone, I'd rank it behind those two, but because the resolution of the Droid is so much better, it's hard not to rank it along side.

Let me look at my schedule

The calendar features of the Droid seperate your Google Calendar and Corporate Calendar. There is no integration between the two as you may have seen on the Palm Pre. This doesn't bother me too much, because I don't use the calendar a tremendous amount. But if you're someone who relies on using multiple calendars to balance both work and business you'll have to use both. The corporate calendar synced perfectly with my Exchange account. Additionally, events that I set on the phone could be emailed to other people, just like in Outlook. Both calendars work well, but lack the depth offered by having multiple calendars integrated into one menu. It's still a capable setup though.

I'm multi-talented

One of the favorite things I did while reviewing the Droid

was when I useed the navigation of Google Maps and Pandora simultaneously. I had synced the Droid with my car. While driving to my destination, music was playing through the speakers, but when I approached a street I needed to turn on, the Droid dimmed the music and told me to turn. It was fantastic.

It's that kind of thing that I appreciate in a device. I want to be able to play a game, and then switch to respond to a tweet on Twitter when I get one. It's more natural to be able to switch what you're doing without actually closing down the program, as you would have to do on the iPhone (unless it's an Apple program like the music player).

You can manage your six most recently run apps by holding your finger on the home icon. It'll pop up a little box that let's you switch. I find the multi-window nature of the Pre a bit more friendly and it's nice to flick between running apps, but the switching on the Droid is adequate.

I make noise

As a media player, the Droid falls in snuggly behind the iPhone and iPod touch. It's just not as enjoyable of an experience comparitvely. The process of getting music on to the Droid is antiquated. You plug the Droid into the computer, mount it, and drag files over. It's not even approaching as nice of a system as the iPhone has with iTunes. Even though many people consider it underhanded on Palm's part, and Apple goes so far as to block it everytime it's reenabled, the Pre's iTunes sync feature is nice. Hopefully, some sort of official sync feature will be introduced, but as of right now, there's nothing.

That being said, once you have your music catalog on the phnoe, it's not to bad of an experience. Songs are sorted by artists, albums, songs and playlists. In once instance, when I tried to play an album, specifically "The Airborne Toxic Event" the Droid rebooted itself. It was one of the only errors I ran into. Upon the second attempt to play the album, there were no problems. The Droid is compatible with media files in a broad spectrum. The release says the following should work: AMR-NB/WB, MP3, PCM/WAV, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MIDI, OGG.

You'll be able to use your own headphones too, because the Droid sports the 3.5mm jack that should be standard on every phone that wants to play music.

As a video player, the screen's brilliance really shines through. The added pixels make watching movies a great experience. When I dropped my standard test movie on it (Serenity, for those asking), I was amazed by the clarity of the picture. Of course, the quality of the file you put on it will determine the experience. The Droid is compatible with WMA, MPEG-4, H.263, H-264 for video according to the release.

The Droid pales in comparison to the media capablities of the iPhone and the iPod Touch. It's one are of the phone that could use some extra polish. It's decent, but not great.

I'll make sure you get the message

Notifications on the Droid are handled through the notifaction bar on the top of screen. With a flick of the finger, you drag the bar down to reveal your notifications. Some examples of what shows up here: new messages, texts and emails; notifications that programs are installing or have finished installing; or new tweets from Twitter.

It's a good setup, and not intrusive. You can choose to ignore things and leave them in the notification bar and flick it away. Alternatively, you can hit the clear button. If you get another email or tweet it will notify you again though.

I'm still a phone, right?

The Droid packs a lot of features, but at it's heart it's still a phone and a good one at that. In the review on Engadget, they said "The sound on the DROID is second to none -- really." I have to say, I agree completely. In my talking, there wasn't a hiccup. Everything was crisp and clear. I tried the Droid's speakerphone, and the same can be said there. When connected to a Bluetooth device, be it a headset or car, it was fantastic. Motorola didn't forget when they were making the Droid that at its core it was still a phone. Additionally, it's a phone that provides 3G coverage in more places than any other. I said this before, but it bears repeating, this was based on the testing that I did while in a good coverage zone. With Verizon, there are more "good coverage zones" than other carriers, but you still have to try it out for yourself. You may have great coverage in one area with one provider, but if you were in the same area with a different provider, it could be a completely different experience.

Because it's an Android device, GoogleVoice integration is fantastic. I linked my own GoogleVoice account with the phone and everything worked fantastically. Calls through the GoogleVoice service showed up as they should to people I was calling. It's just another great feature of the device. To read more about GoogleVoice you can check out the website.

There's a map for that

I linked Verizon's commercial's earlier, so I won't do it again here, but I was never out of my coverage zone