Verizon Droid almost enough to give up iPhone
Verizon couldn’t have been more explicit about their hopes for the new Droid phone. Their commercials for the Droid say nothing about what the phone can do and everything about what they think the iPhone can’t.
Even the Verizon ads that focus on the Verizon network instead of any specific hardware are clearly aimed at potential iPhone buyers. When they spend all thirty seconds boasting of the superior 3G coverage of Verizon’s network versus AT&T’s, they’re really boasting about the 3G availability of the Droid versus the AT&T-exclusive iPhone.
AP
Over the past two years, many phones have positioned themselves as “iPhone-killers.” But within an hour after uncrating one of these phones, it’s usually clear to me that they weren’t really serious. “It’s an iPhone-killer” is just an efficient way to communicate to the media and to consumers that it’s a media-studly smartphone with a big screen, a touch-based OS, and a library of third-party apps.
The first Android phone (T-Mobile’s G1) was one of these. It’s a nice phone, but comparing it directly to the iPhone is unfair.
Not so with the Droid. It’s the very first phone that’s truly in the same class as the iPhone.
It will provoke serious complications in the lives of anybody who’s shopping for a new phone. It will inspire serious self-doubts in anybody who went out and bought an iPhone for the wrong reasons ... ie, buying it because “it’s what everybody has” instead of thinking the decision out rationally.
I love my iPhone. I rely on it completely. It’s my tricorder and my sonic screwdriver; it is that device in my pocket which fulfills any function that the plot requires at any given moment in my story. I couldn’t run my life and my business without it.
So when I tell you that I’ve barely touched my iPhone at all in the past week, you already know that Verizon’s new phone made one hell of a good impression on its first day. Most so-called “iPhone killers” are like “American Idol” auditioners. I listen to six bars of “Put A Ring On It” and I know from sad experience that this phone is definitely not going to Hollywood. Others phones are solid enough that I’ll carry it for a week or two alongside the iPhone while I learn about what it can do, and form my opinions.
Not this time. I’ve relied solely on the Droid for all of my mobile information, entertainment, navigation, and communication (except for incoming phone calls and texts, for which I kept my iPhone handy).
Physical Attraction
For a phone that seems to compete so eagerly with the iPhone, its physical form is the polar opposite of an Apple design. Like a Soviet ambassador of the late Seventies, the Droid is all about angles and hard edges, with not a single curve or soft bit to be found.
It feels heavier, too. But it’s hardly any larger than an iPhone, and its added thickness is merely a side-effect of its slide-out keyboard.
Let’s dispense with this feature straight away: the keyboard stinks. Normally this observation reflects the hard scientific fact (and here I wave a thick manila folder clearly labeled “Hard Scientific Facts”) that virtual keyboards like the iPhone’s and the one that was added to Android with Version 1.5 of the OS are more comfortable to use and faster to type with than a thumb board.
If you choose to argue with me, I will point out that I can type at least twice as fast on a virtual keyboard. Also, do remember that I’ve got this impressively-labeled manila folder. Here, I’ll even wave it again. You just can’t argue with a man who’s waving a thick manila folder, son.
But I’ve handed the Droid to several faithful (and thus clearly insane) proponents of smartphone physical keyboards, including some existing T-Mobile G1 users. None of them liked the Droid’s keyboard. These people prefer thumb boards because they can navigate across the keys by touch, and because they can feel a positive little dnk under their thumbs when they press a button. The Droid’s keyboard is flat and undifferentiated. It’s practically a touchpad.
The Droid’s physical build is top-notch. This is no toy fashion phone. It’s solidly-constructed and the keyboard snaps open and closed with authority. Unlike HTC’s G1 phone, Motorola was kind enough to provide us with an actual standard headphone jack.
Its buttons are sparse, as on the iPhone. They aren’t as well thought-out. The single most important button on both phones is the one that you must touch to wake it up and make it do something after sitting in your pocket for an hour. On the iPhone, this button is the size of an M&M and it’s found smack-dab in the center of the phone’s face. On the Droid, it’s a grain of rice mounted flush with the the top edge. Even after a week of nonstop, exclusive use, I still can’t manage to smoothly flick the button as I pull the Droid out of my pocket.
A mechanical rocker adjusts ringer and playback volume. There’s a dedicated camera button which operates inconsistently. Pressing it ought to mean “Stop whatever you’re doing and take a photo right now” but it often doesn’t work.
It works like a true camera shutter, though. Press it halfway to lock focus, press all the way to take a photo. The camera is a full five megapixels, with an onboard super-duper-bright LED illuminator to brighten up dark scenes.
The Droid camera’s specs certainly exceed those of the iPhone (three megapixels, no flash). But do its photos? On the whole, I have to say no. It’s all down to the software that builds an image out of the flurry of numbers that stream in off of the image processor. To my eye, the Droid’s photos are “flatter” and contain more signal noise than the iPhone’s. The Apple camera isn’t afraid to include shadows if that’s what was in front of the lens.
I desperately missed the iPhone’s “tap to focus” feature, too. If there’s one bit of the image that you specifically want to be properly-exposed and in focus, tap it in the preview image and the iPhone will adjust itself accordingly. The Droid has no such feature and its many menus are tricky to navigate.
Overall, the iPhone interprets scenes like a traditional camera (what you see is what gets recorded). The Droid acts like a cameraphone. It tries to tease out as much detail as possible, whether it leads to a natural-looking image or not.
Image quality is subjective, o’course. Visit my Flickr stream to see a gallery of side-by-side images and judge for yourself.
The network
The Droid is a CDMA phone, which represents a slight disadvantage for heavy travelers. GSM is the wireless standard used by the majority of the world’s handsets, including the iPhone, and it crosses international borders extremely well. That said, the Droid is hardly isolated. My iPhone was a constant companion during my Asian jaunt this summer, but Verizon tells me I’d have had no trouble using it in China, Korea and Japan.
Verizon makes a big deal about its 3G network. In fact, they’ve made such a big deal about its “five-times broader” 3G coverage that AT&T is now pursuing legal action to keep them on their toes.
Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” ads – which, by the way, is now the source of a lawsuit – would leave you convinced that AT&T subscribers spend a lot of their time hunting for payphones. Well, I drove and walked through three New England states this week with the Droid. As with every phone, there were times when I didn’t get 3G speeds and times when I even entered a complete dead zone of coverage.
You should care about whether or not you’ll get solid coverage in the regions around your home and your office. When I went house-hunting last year I asked about asbestos and radon only after opening my iPhone and verifying that I could get at least three bars.
Beyond that, I consider coverage to be a non-issue. It shouldn’t be a deciding factor in your choice between Verizon or AT&T. I opened a series of webpages on both phones and sent a series of emails with large attachments, I couldn’t reliably detect that either phone was pushing and pulling data faster than the other when they were on 3G.
That said, it’s demonstrably true that Verizon’s network has wider coverage and offers 3G data speed in more US cities. I am forced to relate what happened to me on Monday. I was zipping down I-95, thinking about my upcoming Droid review and mentally composing the paragraph you’ve just read, when my car died. I safely pulled over to the side of the road, chanted the appropriate curse words, and then fished out my iPhone to call AAA. Why the iPhone? I wanted to make sure the callback number was my “real” phone number and not that of Verizon’s loaner.
No signal.
I pulled the Droid down off of its car mount and had no trouble calling for help. The irony of this situation might indicate that Verizon is actually God’s chosen mobile network, but there are no reliable benchmark apps for this supposition. I leave this as a debate amongst people who’ve earned both their MCSE certification and a D.Th.
A phone’s call quality is such a subjective category that it’s impossible to properly review. But I can definitely say that the Droid boasts a proper speaker. Even while standing by the side of a busy highway, I had no trouble understanding the other end of the conversation. It’s loud enough to wake me up in the morning and also loud enough for nightstand podcast-listening as I doze off to sleep. The iPhone’s speaker is only so-so by comparison.
The display
Its screen is a true marvel: a super-high-density 854x480 pixels, compared with the 480x320 screen found on the iPhone. Physically, it’s longer than the iPhone’s, but a little narrower. I missed the extra screen width, particularly when reading books.
I was astonished by the screen’s level of detail. I found myself taking macro photos of the screen with my Nikon and blowing up the images. The overall effect is more like printed paper than a live screen; even the “fine print” at the bottom of webpages was crisp and readable.
I’m eager to see a new generation of apps that truly exploits this increased resolution. Today, the screen shows off its oomph only sporadically (such as when displaying a spreadsheet file).I’m concerned about the screen’s durability, however. I’ve just cleaned all of the grease and thumbprints from it and have noticed a small scratch in the glass. I treated the Droid no differently from my iPhone. I tried to take good care of it, but I never put a screen protector on it and sometimes tossed it into a pocket with other items. There isn’t a single mark on my iPhone’s screen after four months of similar abuse.
Connectivity and specs
Charging and data sync are handled through a bog-standard micro-USB connector. 16 gigabytes of storage are included in the $199 phone, and it comes in the form of a MicroSD card that you can swap out for infinite amounts of storage. It’s a pity that you need to pull out the battery to get at it, isn’t it?
Onboard memory is all you get with the iPhone. And it uses a custom dock connector (though it can do more than just provide power and data).
Four buttons are common denominators to the Android user interface: Back, Menu, Home, and Search are available at any time in any app. In the Droid, they’re four backlit touch buttons at the base of the phone, underneath the screen. They’re equipped with haptic response. A little vibration confirms that you want to go Home.
Android 2.0
The Droid is my favorite Android device and it isn’t due to the presence of Version 2.0 of the OS: it’s thanks to a massive upgrade in processing power compared to previous Android phones and heldhelds.
These earlier Androids have been woefully underpowered and thus they’ve undersold the user interface. On an iPhone, the UI is as responsive as a movie prop. I never saw “Minority Report” but I imagine that when Tom Cruise was manipulating that futuristic gesture-based computers he never held his fingertip in place and sighed theatrically as he waited for the OS to catch up to his input. He sure would have if he were using a T-Mobile G1 phone, doubly-so if I had been cast in that part instead of Tom.
The performance gap is still notable in the Droid and Android 2.0. The sighing is gone, though. Scrolling through lists is no longer like dragging a box of rocks down a cobblestone street. When I tap a button, I know I’ve tapped it. I felt as though I was using Android for the very first time.
The speed increase — and 2.0’s multitouch support — boosts the Droid’s virtual keyboard to a new level of performance, too. It’s still not as swift as the iPhone’s, but it’s certainly Good Enough. That’s a dealbreaking feature in a phone with such a weak mechanical keyboard.
User interface
I tend to harp on and on about “elegance” in my reviews. It’s an important feature in any piece of hardware and software; you tend to find it in every Apple product.
I shouldn’t give short shrift to “good enough,” though. Android 2.0 is by no means an elegant user interface. It’s never pretty. The Droid’s screen often feels cluttered. The experience as I move from app to app is inconsistent. Often I see something that brings out the tongue-clicking critic in me.
Like this “Search” button. It’s a terrific idea: at any given moment, tap this everpresent button and it’ll perform a search that’s consistent with the context of what you’re doing at the moment. If you’re in the browser, it’ll perform a Google search. If you’re in the application launcher, it’ll start you off by searching installed apps. You quickly learn to rely on this button. So it’s a little annoying when you glance at the screen and see three of them…often stacked on top of each other, as when the magnifying glass for the search feature is directly underneath the magnifying glass that you use to zoom in on a webpage.
You’re missing several obvious creature comforts, too. If you want to insert some text at a specific point on an iPhone, tap in the vicinity of the place and hold your finger there for a moment. A magnified view of the area will pop up above your finger and you can “drop” the cursor precisely where you want it to go.
No such creature comforts in Android. Even after a week, I’ve come to simply expect that I’ll need to use the Delete key to move the cursor precisely, and then re-type whatever had been A-OK to begin with.
It’s a long list and the basic point is that the Android OS shows severe signs of a product team whose motto is “It works; let’s ship it and go home.”
But somewhere on Day Three of relying on the Droid as my sole handheld computer, I didn’t notice these things so much. It’s not elegant, but it’s certainly Good Enough. I “got” the entirety of the iPhone UI after just twenty minutes. It took me a few days before I was really comfortable with Android, and its quirks became second-nature.
I did eventually become comfortable with it. Shouldn’t I underscore the fact that “its quirks became second-nature” and acknowledge the fact that three or four days is a reasonable amount of time to learn the basics of a new OS? The iPhone’s simplicity and elegance are a serious stroke in its favor, but it doesn’t make up the entirety of someone’s buying decision.
Let’s also acknowledge that many of its “quirks” are actually a fine way of doing things. I’m correct to complain that there’s nothing on Android’s notification status bar to indicate that I’m supposed to tap and hold it, and then drag it down, to reveal system notifications.
Good. Then I must move forward and admit that once you learn how to do that, you appreciate that the status bar is a hell of a fine idea. Particularly in an OS that allows many third-party apps to run simultaneously. At this instant, rolling down the status bar reveals that Pandora is currently playing “On The Town” by Madness; the ebook “My Man Jeeves” has finished downloading (click to read it); updates are available for three installed apps (tap to download them); I received 7 new emails and there’s a new Direct Message in my Twitter client (I can read these messages with just a tap). Pretty slick.
When I examine the formal list of changes delivered by Android 2.0, I’m surprised that it’s so short and so many of these features are so esoteric. Apart from the vastly-improved virtual keyboard, the browser (based on WebKit, the same core found in the iPhone’s Safari browser) has received a major and most-welcome overhaul. The best way to describe it is to say that it’s a lot more like Safari; not at all a bad move on Google’s part. I vastly preferred this browser to all previous editions.
And the Droid is the first device to ship with Google Maps with Navigation, delivering a very credible turn-by-turn car navigation app with voice control for free, free free. It deserves a full, standalone review and you can read it here on Suntimes.com shortly.
Notable is the Droid’s “Car Home” app. When launched (either by tapping the icon or simply setting the Droid in a specially-designed car mount) it reduces the OS to five big icons that should be easy to find and hit during 42 seconds at a stop light. You’ll have access to maps, navigation, contacts, and system search.
Um ... doesn’t anybody at Google listen to music while they drive?
The biggest surprise is that the Droid offers no real support for multitouch. The OS’ ability to track the movements of multiple touches enhances the user experience in ways that go beyond simple zooming in and out on photos and webpages. Even when you’re operating the iPhone with one finger, multitouch makes your keypresses more fluid and accurate.
I continue to worry that an Android phone can’t sync to any desktop contact database or calendar directly: you must use a Google.com account as a conduit. 2.0 adds support for Microsoft Exchange as an alternative, but the fact remains that if you want to buy a Droid and you’re skeeved out by the thought of keeping this most personal of information on a big, public server ... well, you’re just going to have to lay in a large supply of anti-skeeve pills. There’s developer support for alternative conduits, apparently; I haven’t found any actual alternatives.
An iPhone User In Droidland: Smugness And Envy
So noted: to someone who tries every OS and phone on the planet, the Android OS isn’t as refined or simple as the iPhone OS.
Did that fact truly get in my way?
Crimeny. No. No, it certainly didn’t.
Apps
I was able to sync up my iTunes library to the Droid — playlists intact — with Salling Media Sync, a fab little utility you can download from salling.com. The Droid was my dashboard entertainment. I missed my commercial GPS utility and its unique feature set, but Google Maps With Navigation got me where I needed to go with as much style and grace as a man driving a car with 107,294 miles on it can muster.
I configured the built-in mail client with my usual accounts. I downloaded Twidroid for Twitter support. I installed Aldiko for book-readin’ and DataViz’s Documents-To-Go for viewing and editing Microsoft Office docs. I was pleased to find that there was a Pandora client.
I did miss many features that are part-and-parcel with the iPhone’s built-in apps. I wish the Droid came with built-in document and media viewers, for example. I had to download a lot of apps from the Android Marketplace before I truly felt settled in.
I sure didn’t miss the malarkey that comes with the iPhone’s closed file system. You connect the Droid to your desktop via USB and it mounts as a mass-storage device. You can drag music, movies, books, and documents onto it as if it were a flash drive.
You can’t do that on the iPhone. iTunes acts as the sole and supreme arbiter of what can go onto the device. This scheme keeps things simple, but it just as often gets in your way.
Take the Documents-To-Go suite of mobile Office-compatible apps, sold in both Android and iPhone editions. It’s far more useful on the Android. If my editor sends this column back to me for changes and I happen to be out enjoying a celebratory burrito, I can simply tap on the email attachment, open the doc in Word To Go, fix it up, and then email it back to him.
On the iPhone, the Mail app and Docs-To-Go play in separate sandboxes. To roundtrip the document, I’d need to engage in a complex scheme that mirrors the classic puzzle of getting a fox, a duck, and a bag of grain across a river in a boat that can only carry one thing at a time.
And during my week in Droidland I could enjoy true multitasking! Regular iPhone users forget about how weird the “only one third-party app at a time” limit is.
On the iPhone, I can run my car navigation app and enjoy music playing from Apple’s iPod player while I drive. Fine. But on the Droid I can listen to music furnished by Pandora instead. Yes, friends, I was breathing the sweet air of freedom, wondering how the devil I ever put up with Apple’s malarkey in the first place.
Speaking of malarkey, two bits of news this week come to mind while we’re talking about these phones and their apps. Apple rejected an Macworld electronic book from the App Store: a superguide to the iPhone. Why? Because it had the word “iPhone” in its title, that’s why.
You can only install iPhone apps from one source: Apple’s own iTunes Store. And over the past year, the company has rejected apps for the barmiest of reasons.
Meanwhile, Android is the wild west. Google does have their own Android Marketplace app on the device, which makes it a snap to locate, purchase, and install commercial and free software. But if you simply point your browser to an independent Android developer’s site and click on a download link for an “unapproved” piece of software, the Droid will merely pause a moment to offer a curt little warning about installing software from untrusted sources. Then it’ll throw its hands in the air and let you install the software.
I’m sorely tempted by the benefits of Android’s open development system. My grail accessory for the iPhone has always been a folding, touch-typeable keyboard, for when I want to write full articles or columns. There’s no point to any developer even trying to build one. It can’t run without putting special drivers or apps on the iPhone, you can’t do that unless the software is in the App Store, and it’s unlikely that Apple would ever approve it.
On the Android? Someone just needs to write a Bluetooth keyboard profile and put it on a website. Done.
That said: nobody has actually stepped up and done so. It probably has to do with the utter dominance of the iPhone App Store and the brain drain it’s inflicted on the development of apps for other phones.
It’s impossible for any iPhone user to truly envy another phone’s application environment. It can’t be a coincidence that Apple chose this week to announce that they’ve added their 100,000th selection to the App Store. Android has “thousands” of apps; Windows Mobile? Mere hundreds.
The numbers aren’t as important as the apps themselves. Nothing comes close to the range and quality of apps available for the iPhone. The overall developer community sees the App Store as a true gold rush and it’s the true fulcrum of mobile application development. They’ll get to the Android eventually. The first edition of their cool new app will be written for the iPhone because that’s where the money is.
The PogoPlug device that makes my hard drive accessible via the Internet? They made an iPhone app for it: I have about a terabyte of virtual storage available to my phone. An app to connect to my Verizon MiFi mobile base station and report on its battery level and signal strength. Not just “a” list or task manager, but my choice among dozens.
And you can forget about gaming on any other phone.
When Apple chose “…There’s an App for that” as an iPhone slogan, they chose wisely. Any time you wish your iPhone could do something, it’s always worth firing up iTunes and performing a search. Chances are excellent that yes, there is indeed an app for that.
The success of the App Store serves as a reminder that sometimes, freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The harsh way to describe the difference between these two worlds is to compare Apple to a benevolent dictator that traps its subjects inside an enormous glass dome…but with abundant food and water, gleaming streets, freedom to achieve any dream that doesn’t require a dome-exodus, and a thriving arts community.
At times, the Android app scene is like a hippie commune whose residents can do anything they want. And none of them seem to want to put in a long, hard day of installing toilets.
I kid. There are plenty of fine apps for Android.
But even after a year in business, it’s still a “take what you get” proposition. The iPhone is closer to the ideal of a single device in your pocket that can potentially do anything you could ever ask of it.
Final Conclusions
I truly went cold turkey for a whole week. I didn’t realize how deeply I immersed myself in the Droid and Android 2.0 until yesterday, when I needed to move some “iPhone Versus Droid” sample photos from my iPhone to Flickr. It was the first time I’d spent more than a minute with the iPhone. I was able to use it with fresh eyes.
Everything looked so big. The buttons, the menus, the icons. The screen looked spare and devoid of information. But as I launched the photo app and browsed my photos, I quickly caught on that the iPhone OS isn’t stingy with its user interface. It’s merely selective. In operation after operation, it didn’t clutter the screen with any data or functions that I didn’t need at the moment.
The buttons were big, which meant that the phone was much easier to use. Transitions from one function to the other were cued with animation that was fluid, dynamic, and (yes) akin to what you’d see in a movie prop. It wasn’t just pretty to look at: these animations kept you mentally rooted with a sense of where the app was and what it was up to.
I had been a bit troubled the other day when I was still a fulltime Droid user. I knew there would come a time when I’d need to box up the phone and send it back to Verizon. Would I miss it? Will I be faced with a tough choice when my current AT&T contract expires?
Hmm.
If it expired this month ... no.
It actually expires a year from now. If the Android OS and its hardware makes as much progress from 2009 to 2010 as it did from 2008 to 2009…damn. I can really see myself making a switch.
I don’t want to mislead you. Yesterday reaffirmed my love for the iPhone. I’ll be pleased to go back to relying on the iPhone and its apps for my day-to-day business. I missed it a lot.
Okay? Let’s put that on record. As a user, I think the iPhone is vastly superior.
As a technology columnist who has just spent a whole week getting used to the Android and appreciating it for what it is, however, I must say this: The Droid is as good as an iPhone.
Not “in every way” and not “for every user.” But the two phones are emphatically in the same class. Its few stylistic and philosophical differences are all that separate a potential iPhone buyer from a potential Droid buyer.
Buy the iPhone if you prize power but not at the expense of simplicity and elegance. Buy the iPhone for the App Store and its monumentally-valuable library of solutions.
Buy the Droid if you feel you must have a mechanical keyboard. Buy it if you prefer Verizon’s 3G coverage. Buy it if you prefer an open file system and an open app distribution scheme as a matter of principle. Don’t allow those two things to shape your thinking if you expect them to come with a great many practical advantages; they won’t.
Personally, I think the App Store tips the scale solidly in the iPhone’s favor. But the Droid and the iPhone are pretty damned close. If none of the above advantages sway you, you could buy either phone and be equally happy.
This would have been an unfathomable statement a year ago. The iPhone was so far ahead of every other media-driven smartphone on the market that every other maker had formally resigned themselves to a battle for second place. There was the Blackberry for heavy-duty email and the iPhone for nearly everybody else.
It goes to show that the whole tech industry should work like the phone market. Things move so quickly, and user’s expectations keep shifting so steadily, that the competition for the top spot has turned into a huge playground game of “King Of The Mountain.” No one company can expect to sieze the top position ad keep it forever. This latest generation of Android hardware and software is Apple’s worse nightmare. They’ve discovered that over the summer, the sickly kid with asthma grew five inches and put on thirty pounds of muscle.