Converge Weekly

Droid has sure become the talk of the town. Of course, that would happen if you directly hit on iPhone. Find below a review done by Techland, highlighting Motorola’s new Android phone.

By now you must’ve seen Verizon’s iDon’t/DROID Does campaign via various channels. The first commercial can be found here. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek and Verizon has admitted this, but it does highlight a handful of things that the iPhone clearly cannot do. It should also serve as a clear indication that any rumor of the iPhone moving to the network is now squashed. Or they’re confident enough that Apple won’t hold a grudge. The former scenario is more likely.Motorola’s DROID has a very industrial look and feel to it. Gone are the days of lightweight and dainty devices. You don’t have to coddle the DROID or shell out an extra $30 for a case. Wrapped mostly in metal, the DROID is chock-full of features that have become standard on ‘smartphones’ or whatever else you want to call these mini computers. Here’s a quick rundown on features and specs:

Network: Verizon Wireless (CDMA 1X 800/1900, EVDO rev. A)

Operating System: Android v2.0

Processor: Arm Cortex A8 processor 550mHz

Memory: 256MB built-in, ships with 16GB microSD card (expandable to 32GB)

Display: 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen (480×854)

Camera: 5-megapixel with dual-LED flash, auto-focus and image stabilization

Browser: Webkit HTML5, Flash Player 10.1 ready (coming soon)

GPS: aGPS/sGPS

Bluetooth: v2.1+EDR

Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g

Battery: 1400 mAh battery

Sensors: proximity, ambient light and eCompass

Size/Weight: 2.4 x 4.6 x 0.5 in., 6 oz.

DROID’s 3.7-inch display is the best looking capacitive touchscreen we’ve ever seen on any device. It renders images and text beautifully. Colors appear to pop right off the screen. In other words, you can read email, browse Web pages, read eBooks or comics for hours without suffering major eye fatigue. Touch response is good and most taps are registered with very little lag or issue. But the DROID is the only Android device running version 2.0, so it’s difficult to say whether or not it’s perfect. There’s very little evidence to dispute this claim, though.

Just below the screen are four touch-sensitive buttons: back, menu, home and search. For some odd reason, Motorola has excluded buttons dedicated to initiate or end phone calls. You’ll have to initiate the dialer from one of three home screens that you can use to populate various applications or widgets. The buttons are awkwardly placed and often times, we inadvertently tapped the search button when doing anything one-handed (right hand of course). A short tap of the search button will bring up Google Search and the virtual keyboard. A long press initiates Google’s Voice Search, which works amazingly well. The rest of the buttons are pretty self-explanatory. Home takes you back to the home screen and so on.

Underneath the screen is an offset full QWERTY keyboard and directional pad. Anyone used to a BlackBerry or Sidekick will feel at home with the DROID’s keyboard, but will quickly find that it doesn’t offer the same experience. The keys are a tad cramped and there isn’t enough tactile feedback making it difficult to know where your thumbs are without having to look down. It works and is by no means a deal breaker, but depending on how big or small your hands, you’ll want to check one out in person. The directional pad is great for navigating te-check=0
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Moving to the back of the device you’ll find the 5-megapixel camera and brown sugar colored speaker. The camera is horrible. Probably the worst of any phone on the market and there are a lot of bad camera phones on the market. Start up takes a long time, focusing takes even longer if it can even manage to focus and then you may as well pull out the La-Z-Boy while it takes the image. However, we’re confident that an over-the-air (OTA) update will remedy the situation as it doesn’t appear to be a hardware issue and mainly a software one. The jury is out until Motorola tries to fix this flaw.

First and foremost, the DROID is a phone, which is something people seem to forget when fawning over the latest devices. Does it make it phone calls? Yes. Will you experience dropped calls like your iPhone user friends? No. Verizon’s 3G network is the nation’s largest and it’s close to perfect. The caller and receiver sound crisp and clear. The speakerphone is loud and clear.

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