Verizon Droid by Motorola

Posted 02/15/2010 at 12:30pm | by Will Smith

iPhone-killer this is not, but it's a big step in the right direction

Motorola’s Droid is full of firsts: It’s the first smartphone on Verizon powered by Google’s Android OS, it’s also the first Motorola smartphone to use Android, and it’s the first phone in the United States that ships with version 2.0 of the Android OS. Unfortunately for Motorola, all of the good news about the phone is centered on the OS, while any ill tidings regard the hardware.

There’s a lot to like about the latest version of the Android OS. The ability to leave frequently used applications running in the background is a welcome change for long-time iPhone users. Whether it’s a Twitter client, instant-messaging app, or simply your email, this is the Android OS’s main competitive advantage over Apple’s product. Of course, you shouldn’t discount the value of a powerful API that allows app developers to tightly integrate their offerings with the phone. For example, Android’s default Facebook app automatically adds information from your Facebook friends’ profiles to your Contacts list—including phone number, current email address, and even their profile picture. This type of integration makes services like Google Voice even more useful than they are on their own—if you install Google Voice on an Android phone, you can choose whether to use VoIP or cellular minutes on every call, pick which phone number your caller sees, and even manage calling groups on the phone. In that regard, Android really is a revolution.

What's sleek, shiny, and has the worst keyboard we've ever had the misfortune to use? That would be the Droid by Motorola.

However, Motorola’s implementation of the hardware has some problems. The core phone functionality is sound: Battery life is acceptable (1.5 days under normal usage), the voice quality is excellent, and we love the haptic touch buttons on the phone’s front. Most of all, the 3.7-inch, 854x480-pixel capacitive screen is lovely—and welcome to anyone accustomed to the iPhone’s relatively low-res 320x480 screen. The omission of multitouch functionality, however, is a big letdown. No multitouch makes the onscreen keyboard much more difficult to use than it should be. We also find that the default Home screen application doesn’t make particularly good use of all those extra pixels—it includes room for just 12 app shortcuts (the iPhone fits 20).

Furthermore, the Droid’s hardware keyboard should be a huge advantage over both the iPhone’s onscreen keyboard and the tiny keyboards on the face of other smartphones. Unfortunately, the keys are too small and flat for most people to use without staring intently at the phone, and they’re lined up in a square grid instead of the more traditional offset layout used for most QWERTY keyboards. We don’t understand why Motorola devoted fully 15 percent of the space on the keyboard tray to an eight-way D-pad that you’ll rarely use when that space could have been used to make the hardware keyboard good. While the Android OS’s onscreen keyboard is decent, if Motorola is going to increase the size and weight of the phone to include a hardware keyboard, we want one that’s usable.

Android still needs a few additions to qualify for best-in-class—a better way to manage and automatically close open applications is desperately needed, for instance—but as far as we’re concerned, it’s the most exciting mobile OS today. That said, we highly recommend waiting for better hardware before making the leap to Android.