Droid Hands On

2009-11-23 17:16 ☼ post

I got my first up close look at the new Verizon Droid smartphone today when a faculty member (and former Blackberry owner) brought his in so that I could hook it up to campus email. A blocky, but solid (literally and figuratively) smartphone all around,it didn’t blow me away by any means, but it’s progress on the Android front. The hi-res screen was nice, but was not that much better than an iPhones for the everyday tasks I was performing. I didn’t bother with the physical keyboard as the virtual one seemed similar to the iPhone’s. Mounting the flash drive via USB is hidden and completely unintuitive (you have to drag the menu bar/tiny usb icon, and press a couple virtual buttons from the control panel that appears.

Final verdict: If you’re a Blackberry owner set on your hardware keyboard this is a nice upgrade, but for most user’s without smartphone preconceptions they’ll be happier with an iPhone.