The Motorola Droid was released last week in the U.S., and since then, critics have seen it as a replacement for the iPhone, but why? What is so special about the Droid?
After all, Motorola hasn’t been a big competitor in the market as of late.
As far as internal specifications are concerned, both devices are high-performing and run fast. Droid’s brain is a potent ARM Cortex A8 TI OMAP 3430, which is similar to the chips used in both the iPhone and Palm Pre.
‘The Droid makes a big leap in internal performance. Compared with its rather sluggish Android predecessors,’ reporters Kent German and Bonnie Cha said in a CNET article.
Max Baron, an analyst at Microprocessor Report, said the chips in the Droid and the iPhone are so alike that differences are more dependent on the operating systems the chips use and how the phone maker optimizes the OS.
Both phones use PowerVR graphics from Imagination Technologies, which is renowned for its amazing graphics performance. Other internal specs include: 3G capability, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
As far as its inner workings are concerned, the Droid is every bit the iPhone’s equal. So what sets it apart from the iPhone?
For starters, the Droid is set on Google’s Android 2.0 OS. Android 2.0 allows the user to use ‘quick contacts,’ which enables a user to select a contact and decide how you want to contact someone, either by Facebook, Gmail, text or call.
The phone’ also allows for a Bluetooth API, which enables application connectivity and the capability to deal with various screen sizes. It can also run up to six applications at once.
These are just a few perks of Android OS; it is still being updated and new features are expected.
While similar to the iPhone, the Droid is the first mobile phone to come packaged with Google Maps Navigation, a turn-by-turn navigation system. This is credited to a GPS receiver and an Internet connection that are linked together.
Android is capable of combining information from many sources onto a single display. To choose a destination, it can be manually entered, but the phone also provides a voice-recognition option.
The Droid can pull up images of turns, junctions and lane changes en route using Google’s Street View photo library. And because Droid’s GPS is always linked to the Internet, information is up-to-date.
Other specifications for the Droid include: a 3.7 inch 854×480 pixel display with a pixel density of 267ppi, 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash and video recording, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3.5mm headphone jack,and 16GB on-board storage with microSD expansion slot up to 32GB. It has a battery life of 6.4 hours talk time and 270 hours on standby.
The user has access to download applications from the Android Market, and media is played on the Android player.
The Droid is available on Verizon for $199 with a two-year agreement, or $599 without a contract.
