The Motorola Droid is a bit odd but a beautiful device.
I've been testing one for about a week and I can say there is much to like about the Droid as well as a few annoyances.
I've organised this review into six categories which I think are most important when talking about a phone. Each category is explained a bit in the section itself. I use these categories to judge a phone and these categories shouldn't be confused with any other industry standard phone rating systems, if these actually exist.
Design
When assessing design, I look at how a phone looks, how it is built, and how it is functionally put together. The Droid excels in this area in every way. It's a solid phone with a rubberised backing that feels very solid in your hand. The slide-out keyboard is tight and precise with no play or looseness whatsoever. The display, the thinner of the two pieces, slides off the thicker keyboard rather than
the other way around.
On the back of the phone, the battery cover fits perfectly in place. Easy to remove if you want to, yet it's not likely to fall off by mistake. The front of the phone is covered with the typical large glass touch screen, but this one has a slot cut in it for the earpiece.
Overall, I'd have to say that the Droid is the most solid and best built phone that I have seen come out of Motorola in quite some time. Motorola has a long history of producing high-quality phones, but
seven or eight years ago the company switched its focus from quality to cost-cutting, and after that point, their phones looked and felt cheap. If Droid quality is any indication of what's to come from
Motorola in the future, it appears the company is well on its way for a strong return.
User Interface
The user interface is how we humans interact with a device like a phone. The Droid has three forms of text entry; a slide out lighted physical keyboard, a vertical touch screen keyboard and a horizontal touch screen keyboard.
As with other slide-out keyboard phones like the Droid, typing on them is typically easier than typing
on the touch screen, but the Droid's very flat keyboard combined with an excellent touch screen, make typing on either the vertical or horizontal layout touch screens actually easier than typing on the
physical keyboard. It seems a shame that Motorola worked so hard to include a keyboard in this phone when many people won't use it, but it's a matter of taste and they've covered all of the bases.
The Droid display is big and bright, with auto backlight brightness. The touch screen is quite responsive, almost to the point of falsely triggering with every slight wipe of the hand. The touch screen provides haptic feedback for the four capacitive buttons on the bottom of the screen, but what is missing is scrolling feedback. I find myself scrolling text on the browser or through the settings, not realising I was either at the bottom or the top. Feedback is needed in such cases.
The Senses
The senses of the phone are the inputs that it receives from its sensors, and in the case of the Droid include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a compass, an accelerometer for screen rotation, a light sensor, GPS, and a 5 megapixel camera. This is in-line with the best smart phones available today.
Complexity Index
The complexity Index is a measure of how easy or difficult a phone is to operate for a new user in a short period of time. This criteria is often overlooked but is very important with matching a phone to a user. A phone can be simple to use, or complex to learn, or land somewhere between the two, and while it's related, complexity shouldn't be confused with functionality, although most phones that are complex also have lots of functionality.
In terms of this scale, the Droid would definitely lean toward the complex side of the index, as it possesses many options, some of which are quite hidden. The Droid has no fewer than 15 main menu items in its settings display, and under the Sound & Display settings there are another 15 options. For example you can turn off orientation control (I'm not sure why you would) and even set the "SD card notifications" whatever that is. To just change the backlight settings you have to
click "Settings," then "Sound & Display" scroll and click on "Brightness," turn off "Automatic Brightness" if it's on, then move a slider. If you don't turn off auto brightness you don't even see the
slider.
There is nothing wrong with a complex phone for those individuals that like control and tinkering, or have lots of time on their hands to play with settings. But for those who want a phone that is easy to
get up and running with fast, with a minimum of learning, then the Droid is probably not for you.
Layout
Layout assesses how all the pieces work together: the keyboard and touch screen and physical parts of the phone along with the software that operates the device. In this area I have mixed
feelings about the Droid. Although the Droid runs the highly touted Android 2.0 operating system, for the most part, it functions in a very similar fashion to a typical Blackberry, or iPhone, or even
Windows Mobile OS. On the Droid, you have "Favorites" screens where your favorite icons are placed and these scroll horizontally. Then you have a vertical blind, if you will, which contains ALL your icons and this scrolls vertically. This vertical blind always contains your icons in alphabetical order, where your favorites can be arranged in any order. Overall it does work, but it is a bit overly complex. The favourite screens are handy for everyday tasks, but you occasionally must still scroll through the main alphabetical screen to find lesser-used items which is a bit of a pain. But this feature can also be used as a holding area for icons while you move them from one favorite area to the next. In typical Droid fashion, this arrangement is very functional, yet a bit complex unless you have lots of icons to manage.
The Overall Assessment
Overall I would call the Droid a very well-built, highly capable device, which has every feature or option you could ever want. This certainly isn't meant to imply that the Droid is for everyone. If you are not in the power-user crowd or a gadget-freak, the Droid may be more phone than you need or are willing to live with on a daily basis. But if you are the kind of person who loves gadgets, and enjoys configuring every option just the way you like it, the Droid may be the perfect phone for you.
So now for the inevitable question that every phone review must include, how does it compare to the iPhone? The easy answer is that the iPhone and the Droid are quite different beasts although both
provide similar functionality, and both are fundamentally a platform for their respective applications stores.
The iPhone is a model of simplicity keeping its screen and settings as uncluttered as possible, accomplishing its tasks with little fuss, and incorporating the best browser to date of any phone on the planet.
The Droid is the Swiss Army Knife of phones, ready for every situation with every option known to man, and over time, as more applications become available, it should only get better. I have no hesitation recommending the Droid to those users that want the fun of handling it.
Motorola is yet to announce distribution of the Droid in Australia.
If this article was of interest, be sure to check out In-Stat's "Worldwide Smartphones".
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