Friam

Droid X vs. I Phone 4 on Verizon

Classic

List

Threaded

2 messages Options

George Duncan-2

Droid X vs. I Phone 4 on Verizon

Your thoughts on relative merits? Any experience?

Thanks, Duncan

George Duncan
georgeduncanart.com

(505) 983-6895
Represented by ViVO Contemporary

725 Canyon Road

Santa Fe, NM 87501

Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward.
Soren Kierkegaard

Robert Gehorsam

Re: Droid X vs. I Phone 4 on Verizon

I'm a lurker here, but happy to give my two cents:

I'm a Droid X user, more or less alone in a sea of iPhone 4s and the occasional Blackberry. Previously a BB Tour (world phone) user.

Neither the iPhone 4 nor the Droid X are world phones, and I'll avoid buying a non-world phone again unless — as is often the case — Verizon only offers mediocre world phones.

Other:

Form factor – Droid X is large and for some a little bulky. I think this is something you either accept/like or don't. The weird camera bump on the back is definitely an aesthetic faux pas for me, but I've come to like the form overall and at this point the iPhone seems puny, especially for the soft keyboard and the screen in general.

Battery — not great, doesn't really last a full day even with an app killer installed and regularly used. I don't hear much better from iphone users. That complaint aside, I'm probably going to go one step worse and upgrade to the Bionic or its HTC equivalent this summer. I wonder how long a battery for a dual-core phone on an LTE network will last???? 4 hours? 4 minutes?

Screen – very nice. Size advantage to Droid, web-browsing easy and good. Accelerometer stuff is also good. I'm a happy ipad and ipod touch user too, and I'm not noticing a lot of difference.

UI — I am starting to think I like the HTC UI better than the Droid, neither are necessarily as tight as iOS. I think the analogy might be a better-than-Windows vs. OSX from a user perspective. Of course, that comparison is true on many levels.

UI speed — Droid is zippy but occasionally the screen is unresponsive, usually due to sync activity, but not always. Never seen that on an iphone. That said, it never freezes.

Camera — never really use it. Doesn't seem that great even at 8MB. UI is a little clunkier than iphone.

Soft keyboard — I prefer the Droid. In part that's because you can rotate to landscape mode and have larger keys.

Call quality — very nice. My guess is comparable to iphone on Verizon. Never had a drop. I also use Skype on it often.

Apps — in a year I think it will be impossible to distinguish between the range of selection between Android and Apple. However, it's also true that there is less curation that goes on in the Android market, so quality and discoverability are still an issue. Again, I think it will diminish.

Music -- ain't no iTunes on the Droid.

Exchange integration. Pretty seamless. Five minutes to set up. Neither compares to blackberry, though Enterprise Activation on the bb can take more than a few cups of coffee to get done.

When I first got the Droid (because my colleagues use them) I thought I'd made a mistake. Then I lost my Blackberry and had to rely on the Droid. Once I changed the case (get the clear plastic one not the rubberized one) honestly, my whole attitude changed. I much prefer the size of the phone to the iphone and while the rest of my gear is Apple, at this point, I am going to stick to Android (be it Droid or HTC).

Honestly, I wouldn't be either right now. I'd check out the HTC Thunderbolt which is an LTE phone, or wait for the Bionic and invest in whoever their battery supplier is :)

Hope this helps.

Robert

From: George Duncan <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 11:35:22 -0600
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Droid X vs. I Phone 4 on Verizon