“I Could’ve Been A Contendah!” – Droid
Verizon’s iPhone contender, running Google’s Android OS is set to drop 11/06/09. Pros in a nutshell: .2″ larger screen with twice the resolution, microSD slot, browser Flash capability, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 2MP better camera with flash, interchangeable battery. Cons: no multi-touch (huge), flat & cramped keyboard with useless d-pad (they should’ve scrapped it and made the keys more spaced out), and style (Droid still resembles the blocky smartphones of old). The pros are very powerful decision points, but you play with an iPhone for a few hours and it becomes evident how crucial multi-touch is and how sad it is when you can’t pinch zoom.
UPDATE: Turns out the GSM flavor of the Droid that will be sold in Europe has multi-touch. Sad for Verizon, but good for the the rest of the world.
[verizon]
Comments
How important is multi-touch really? As long as zoom functionality is there, that’s all it really does. I’m more worried about the flat keys on the QWERT keyboard and relatively crappy media player.
Multi-touch is the most responsive way to zoom and pan hands down. It’s just faster and more accurate. Totally agree about the flat keyboard. People looking for a slide-out want it because they want a tactile keyboard that feels better typing. Making it flat and cramped defeats that purpose. Hopefully the media player will improve as Google’s OS continue to but they need to stop relying on third-party hardware manufacturers and cut everyone out like apple did. Then you get the real innovation. Otherwise they’ll perpetually be dealing with desperate handset makers stuck in shock in a post-iphone world, playing catch up and coming up short every time.
oh man, it’s like they’re reading my mind….er blog
Google-branded phone coming early next year?