Bernard Meisler

Summary:

Both the Droid and the iPhone are excellent portable internet devices/mini-computers, but I give the edge to the Droid because of the better network. Droid is a much better phone, but not as good a media player. So it depends on your needs – if, like me, you’re more concerned with the phone and coverage than with general user experience excellence and need for a media player, the Droid is the clear winner.

The Three Parts of a Smartphone

A smartphone (or, as David Pogue dubbed them in his Droid review last week, “app phones”) are, like Gaul, divided into three parts, though I don’t often hear the discussion put this way:

1. phone

2. internet device/portable mini-computer

3. media player/ipod

So let’s take it point by point:

1. Phone – better than iPhone

Droid is the winner hands down. The coverage of the Verizon Network is much better than AT&T, especially in SF (and NY too they say). I was able to make and receive calls in my office today, huzzah! But there’s more too it than that. The Droid has more volume, both for the phone and the ringer – I could actually hear it ringing in my pocket, when I often couldn’t with the iPhone. Simply put, Droid/Verizon is a runaway winner here. Seems funny to me that this aspect is often given short shrift in review articles. Isn’t the phone the true killer app of a smartphone?

2. Internet Device/Mini Computer – equal (at least) to iPhone

Droid was better than I expected. Some cool Droid features:

1. Can have multiple applications open at the same time. There’s a dedicated “back” button on the Droid, so for example you can be reading an email with an url, click on that url to open the browser, scroll down several screens while reading a blog, then click another url in that page to launch the YouTube dedicated app. After you’re done with the video, you can click the back button to go back to your browser page exactly where you left off, even in the middle of a page, impossible with the iPhone. Another back button click and you’re back where you left off your email app! Very cool.

2. Word completion. Instead of the fascist Apple method (”suggesting” the correct spelling, and foisting it upon you as the default), Droid offers up a row of suggestions based on what you’ve typed so far, that gets more accurate as you continue typing. Very user friendly.

3. Auto-sync with gmail, Google calendars and contacts, etc. If, like me, you’ve been moving towards gmail and other Google apps, this is great. I add a contact on my Droid, open up my contacts on my desktop later, it’s already been synced. If I make an update to my calendar, it will instantly get updated on my wife’s copy of my calendar on Outlook. So this is very nice for mixed Mac-PC environments. I also gotta say I’ve been disappointed with Apple’s Address and iCal apps for a while. They’ve also been finicky about syncing sometimes. It’s great not to have to sync at all!

4. Screen resolution on the Droid is 2x that of the iPhone. Great for reading blogs and web pages.

5. Maps rock. Voice directions with GPS. Very cool.

6. I have to repeat myself, but…it’s all about the Network! iPhone on WiFi is pretty great, but maps are useless if you can’t get a signal. I got a response to my first post from a friend who said, “I never use the phone anyway, it’s just email and text for me 90% of the time.” Sure, but I couldn’t get email or text on my iPhone when I was in my SF office either! You’ve heard the joke about how bad the ATT Network is, right? “There’s a map for that!” (Meaning you need a map to see where you can get service, playing on the iPhone “there’s an app for that” campaign).

7. Let’s not forget that the Droid will – “soon” – support the Flash plug-in. So you’ll be able to visit sites like Hulu, or AddictingGames.com. (The downside of course is those pesky banner ads!)

Here’s where the iPhone wins:

1. General user interaction/”slickness”. C’mon, Apple is the gold standard for UX. I’m getting used to the Droid’s four dedicated hardware buttons, but the Droid interface can be confusing. The iPhone only has one button, and it’s usually obvious how to use it. Apple has got the “it just works” thing in the bag. This is not trivial! The browser “feels” right, while it’s occasionally clunky on the Droid.

2. Touch screen. Droid doesn’t scroll as smoothly and also doesn’t do “pinching” and “spreading” – just expands on a double-click. Every once in a while, the screen seems to scroll by itself. The Droid screen is also a bit frustrating in that it doesn’t feel as accurate as the iPhone – I’ve clicked on the wrong url any number of times now. Maybe it’s just going to take getting used to – I hope so!

3. Apps, of course. The bad news is I’m missing about half of the apps I used to use daily. The good news, to my surprise, is that half of them do exist! And I actually like the Droid version of the Facebook app a lot better. Of course there will be tons more of these coming down the pike. This is not nearly the issue many reviews are making it out to be.

Not relevant to many folks, but important to a geek like me, is that Android apps are written in Java, which I greatly prefer to Objective C (which requires manual garbage collection and uses pointers – the two biggest hassles in programming that Java gets rid of. Not to start a Java vs. C discussion here, but although C is more powerful, 99.9% of the time you don’t need that power and it just gets in your way). I also believe you can program your own apps and just pop them on your phone! Submitting to the Android Marketplace is optional! I’ll post more about this in the future as I explore it.

3. Media Player/iPod – iPhone wins

Well, the iPhone is, as Steve Jobs said, the best iPod, so of course it wins here. If you’ve bought a lot of music or video from the iTunes store, remember, due to Apple’s evil DRM policy, you can’t play that stuff on any non-Apple devices! It’s as if a CD put out by Sony would only play on Sony stereos. Boo Apple, boo!

The surprise here was how good the Droid was. I downloaded a free utility, doubleTwist, that makes syncing a breeze. (It’s such a useful app I understand people are using it with iPhones too!). One of the things that really bothered my about iTunes was a couple of versions ago, they started forcing you to put songs into playlists to sync. You could either automatically sync your entire library, manage it manually, or aut0-sync playlists you created. DoubleTwist allows you to drag-and-drop albums as well as playlists, so I’ve been discovering music I’d forgotten about ’cause I’d never gotten around to turning it into a playlist!

Bottom Line:

The Droid is an excellent phone and portable internet device and a serviceable media player. If you live in an area with good AT&T coverage and have an iPhone, you should probably stick with it. But if your phone/network coverage is spotty, and you’re tired of carrying around a glorified answering machine, and/or your iPhone contract is up, I think you, like me, will be very happy with your Droid. “It’s the second best smartphone around, on the best network around“.