I’ve experienced the iPhone, and personally, I do not like it. It’s got a great touch screen, and the way you zoom in and out is nice too. Aside from that, the droid has everything the iPhone does and MORE. Apps, and a lot of them FREE.

Downfalls to the iPhone is that Apple/Microsoft is pretty dead set on keeping their layout AS-IS and not letting you change much. No background to fit your personality outside of the lock screen. This shouldn’t really count against the phone for what a phone is supposed to be used for, but I do like customization. The iPhone is terrible with reception. At least, any time I’ve used one. Mind you I have been in a “full service area” at the time of use. The sound quality when the phone was turned up to maximum level was terrible. Could be the person on the other ends phone, but not two or three different times.

The Droid has the new 2.0 OS and naturally, a new operating system technology will have kinks here and there. But, I have used the prior Android phones (such as the G1) and it’s definitely a big improvement. iPhone’s contact portion lets you save their address and you can get a map from your location to the address, but Droid and google has teamed up to do exactly the same.

Droid is fully customizable with backgrounds, and even different themes. These come with different icons, colors for your navigation area, and even the browser can be changed. The calls come through perfectly and I have no missed call complaints from anyone. I receive texts (as well as MMS) lightning fast. iPhone made me wait anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours. It was a total guessing game.

—
Is the iPhone a BAD phone? Not for smart phone users, no. It does have email access, good internet, and the texting isn’t always horrible. Do I think it will have a better chance on their merger to other companies… Yes. Minus the customization. I go with Verizon hands down, and so far, I’m thinking Droid is the winner. Even once the iPhone switches over. I simply think this because they claimed that the LG Voyager was iPhones competition and… I don’t like the Voyager one bit.

Quickly as to why:
Slow internet and the checkerboard screen while scrolling through the sites.
No accelerameter (sp?) and the touch screen keyboard on the web is hard to use. So IF your screen on the inside breaks, you’ll be spending a looooootttt of time trying to get somewhere on the web with just the touch screen. (Chances unlikely)
and EVERY time I got a new Voyager from Verizon that was “tested” by LG and Verizon, it’s shut off randomly at any given time. With little to no use outside of texting.
Also, the corners of the touch screen peeled away. Mainly the bottom left-hand side.

-D

People try to compare them all the time. There have been a couple great side-by-sides on YouTube, but in the end they are not on the same network.

If you want a pretty gadget that does a lot of stuff other than making great phone calls, then go with the iPhone and the spotty AT&T network. If you want a phone that is not as pretty, but does (or at least will do) more stuff than iPhone in addition to making great phone calls, then go with the Droid or Droid Eris on Verizon.

On Bluetooth: I have not tried out any Bluetooth functions yet, but I see there is a free app called Bluetooth File Transfer. It allows you to send contacts and files

By the way, I found your article while searching for battery life info. On that, the battery is tough to get used to. I came from a Palm Treo 650 and that battery lasted a week of heavy usage. My Droid doesn’t make it through the day. Then again, my Droid does a ton of stuff that my 650 did not. If I’m comparing the Droid battery life to my laptop (which it functions more like), then it’s great. If I’m comparing it to my Treo, it’s laughable. Good thing that a second battery is only $40 bucks.

I don’t expect my 5D Mark II to make great, clear phone calls and I don’t expect my Droid to take great photographs. I expect it to hold a call and stay connected when using navigation or 3G. And the Droid does that exceptionally well.

Z

Bottom line is it only costs $30 bucks a month to add the unlimited data and e-mail package to your family plan.

Also, it is cheaper if you order online. Overnight shipping was free. I got my Droid last week for $99 bucks from Verizon through their web site. Use your New-Every-Two.

But that is not why I’m writing.

I want to address the camera portion of your review because I think you have an expectation that matches many other consumers which may be unrealistic.

First, as you know, something that is purpose built to do one thing will usually do it better than something built to do multiple things and digital still cameras (DSC) are no exception.

But above and beyond design, there are some laws of physics we should become familiar with as they relate to optics.

- First of all: Imager Size – Low light sensitivity of any imager is governed pretty much by one thing only — the size of the pixels. The bigger the pixel, the better its low light sensitivity. It’s just like a telescope, the larger the lens, the deeper out into space it can see. This is why the telescope at the Griffith Observatory can see things your little 10″ Schmidt-Cassgrain purchased at Walmart can’t. Imagers that are in DSCs tend to be 1/2.5″ or at the smallest 1/3″. Compare that to the imager on your Droid or any other phone which tends to be 1/4″ or even 1/6″ format. So right off the bat they aren’t as light sensitive as your DSC. And, as we add more and more pixels to those imagers, the pixel size gets smaller still. A 5 megapixel imager will have pixels half the size of older 2.1 megapixel imagers. All of this translates into worse low-light sensitivity.

- Iris – For a purpose built camera, you can focus the lens and adjust the iris as you need to. For camera phones, the iris and lens are locked down. The reason for this is rooted in a concept known as the Circle of Confusion, You can Wikipedia that later if you want to understand the physics, but the elevator speech about CoC is that the smaller the iris, the larger the depth of field. Depth of field is the near-to-far range of objects remaining in focus. Since with a phone camera there’s no lens to adjust, the Depth of Field must be as large as possible, and the only way to achieve this practically is to close the iris down as much as possible. That translates into a HUGE restriction of light hitting an already small-pixel’d imager.
The long and short of all of this is that for the forseeable future, phone cameras will never provide the same performance as a purpose-built DSC. Sure, the technology will get better and shrink the gap, but as I think I’ve explained, there are some immutable laws of physics when it comes to optics that will always make DSCs perform better than camera phones.

Hope this helps.

-Jason Spielfogel

It seems that the current crop of BT file transfer apps aren’t Droid-ready, but that’ll change soon.