The Droid – A New Generation of Cell Phones
The iPhone is here to stay, no doubt. It would take millions of marketing dollars and years of building a recognizable brand to do any real damage to the iPhone user base. The iPhone is to today’s tech savvy twenty-somethings that color TV was to their parents or grandparents. The iPhone was everyone’s introduction to smart phones. It was also a natural upgrade from the iPod. Plus, Apple’s extensive selection of killer apps and awesome games makes other company-backed phone application stores look like a boring, dull wasteland of apps nobody seems to want (hmm, I’m looking at you, Blackberry)
Droid is a play on the word “Android”. Android was the moniker used by Google to brand its mobile phone operating systems that it eventually licensed to manufacturers and cell phone carriers to use. But here are three simply reasons the Droid is going to dominate Android-based cell phones: hardware, interface usability, and network reliability and power.
First, the Droid is an joint venture with Verizon Wireless and cell phone manufacturing powerhouse Motorola. Though in recent months many cell phone service providers have upgraded their network service to third generation (3G) coverage, Verizon was the first to do so. Before AT&T began offering 3G coverage, lack of reliable service was one of the biggest reasons people were clinging to their Blackberry’s and Verizon’s excellent network speed and reliability. Plus, Verizon has announced it is hard at work in developing an even more impressive 4G network with the ability to squeeze more bandwidth into their service. This is great news because this means Verizon’s future 4G network can support streaming video – real video, not the choppy sometimes grainy video currently found when using AT&T’s network. And as Verizon boasts of its soon-to-be 4G network, they are already developing applications to be ready to use once their new network is launched. That sure beats the hum-hawing and knuckle dragging displayed recently by Apple with their inability to deftly manage their application store content. Recently Apple has been causing quite a ruckus with mobile phone application developers. One day they remove their applications for sale for obscure reasons and the next day they are back online for sale, for even more obscure reasons than before. Hmm, doesn’t seem like a way to nurture today’s most popular smart phone application gateway.
Besides, the iPhone doesn’t let you run applications in the background, change batteries, or host live widgets on the cell phone homepage. There is no open development for Apple’s smart phone operating platform – something Google is the kind of, open source technology and the transparency that techies are looking for today.
The biggest win for the Droid is the amazingly simple interface and strong hardware, surpassing even previously released “Android” phones. To illustrate the ease of the Droid interface, here are the steps to upload a video to YouTube:
- Record video
- Type title and description
- Click “upload”
That easy. Seriously. Doesn’t get any easier than that. Plus you can zoom in and out right from the video screen on a handy on-screen icon. A touch screen that – imagine that, Apple.
Plus it syncs your Facebook contacts, its web page speed loading time rivals (if not crushes) the iPhone 3G capabilities, email works like real email, and the Microsoft Exchange compatibility is built-in. No more strange design elements that change dramatically from one type of application or software interface to another. Said someone working closely on the Droid before its release and hailed by many after its introduction: “The whole user interface feels slicker … feels like it was painted with the same brush.”
The days of iPhone vs. Blackberry might be over thanks to Verizon’s Droid smartphone. With the best of both worlds, the Verizon Droid is something behold.
Oh, and did I mention it has a slide-out physical keyboard? Enough said.
