Review roundup: Motorola Droid, Verizon's first Android handset - Page 4

Analysts don't point this out much but Apple gets additional dollars per phone, especially in the US, because unlike all the other handset makers, Apple does all the marketing, warranty support, and repair. And Apple has its own stores that sign up customers for AT&T. So even with multi-carriers, if Apple insists on and gets these same policies, it will still get more dollars per phone. (And it will have greater expenses per phone sold as well.)

Whether this shows up in the iPhone line or somewhere else in their revenue is unclear to me.

From what I'm reading, RIM could be in trouble.

RIM needs to step things up dramatically. This isn't three years ago. It's never a good thing when your competition is gaining on you by leaps and bounds. Apple will soon overtake RIM.

Yeah, I'll agree with ya on something finally. The latest blackberries are starting to seem dated.

But they are simple as hell to use, and everyone I know can't imagine living without one. THAT doesn't sound like they're doing too bad.

Their attempt at the storm was the same mistake many phone companies made. They tried to emulate what they thought was making the iphone great, and they completely messed up. They need to stick with what makes blackberries great. Listen to what their user base is asking for. There's always room for improvement, but when you've got a UI as straightforward and sensible as blackberry's, it's not something you want to rush to move away from just because of another phone's success.

Mark my words, the phone that trumps the iphone won't look like an iphone lol.

When has Gartner been right predicting a future 3 months in the past?

Its not that they are doing bad like other mobile handset and moble OS vendors, its that they arent doing well. Theyre increasing their unit sales but they arent making nearly as much money per unit as they used to. On top of that, RiM business model of selling Blackberry Enterprise Servers that connect to Exchange Servers and their $100 per unit per year fee for having email/calendar/contacts sent and synced has stagnated. These new phones have ActiveSync and with the recession its a good way to save a lot of money a year. To make matters worse, the iPhone is growing fast enough to overtake the BB unit marketshare very shortly (if not already) and the iPhone is well past the profit marketshare at this point.


I agree with this. Its why so few took Apple seriously when they decided to enter the well entrenched iPhone market.

Everyone keeps making these doom and gloom statements about, they aren't going anywhere. Their pushing around ten million headsets a quarter, adding 3mil+ subscribers every quarter I'd say they don't have much to worry about to be honest. No one expected apple to bum rush the industry like they did, but they are very far from being in hot water like palm and moto.

I will say the storm was a disaster, but it should show that BB isn't about being flashy or playing games, its about being the king in communications and rim is top dog in that respect. Security is king, all "essential apps" exist on the device, your not going to be playing tiger woods on the phone and I would have to say almost 40 million people don't care otherwise they'd be flying to iphones right? I know quite a few ladies that use bb because capacitive screens and nails don't work well.

Besides the browser most of what rim needs to do is rid themselves of silly limitations that they have that are unnecessary (4mb capped dl?).

Some folks are worth the warning or temp ban...

Nice. Yah for all you folks saying that AT&T suxxors, there are reasons why a good number of folks wouldn't touch Vz wireless with a 10 foot pole. I don't care how good their network is.

Doesn't matter what Verizon is or isn't it doesn't make ATT suck less. Their 3g coverage is poor only behind TMoble and their Edge network is beyond slow.

Actually very good points. I guess you can call the iPhones technically 3 models, as they all have different hardware, but run the same OS. But my thought is that Apple is still only a single company and the iPhone itself is still being developed in a vertical approach. There will still only be about 1 new model per year (basing off of Apple's current trend). Android, on the other hand, has pretty much an unlimited amount of models to release per year, depending on the number of manufacturers that decide to use it. Of course, things can change, as you implied.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but new iPhone models typically start in the US for a while and then make their way to the rest of the world. China, one of the largest population centers in the world, is just getting the iPhone now, after 2+ years. Android on manufacturers around the world won't have that problem. If the in-country smartphone company wants to have an Android-based phone, then they can go right ahead and start working on it.

Gartner's numbers might not, but you didn't consider that Android also has equivalents to the iPod Touch, "Tablet", and other electronics in the wild or in development. Theoretically, they can all have the same apps ecosystem like the iPhone/iPod via WiFi or cellular cards.

I personally believe that the Droid will be very successful. The entire way Google integrated its search cloud into Eclair and the new Navigation will definitely give it a strong hold on the market stateside. Android's finally got the hardware to run it right and people will notice and buy. Being on Verizon helps too. If they can make the Storm sell decently well, I'm willing to bet Droid will have no problems doing much better. Sony-Ericsson's X10 (or is it X3?) looks like a real winner to me as well for the rest of the world or unlocked here. The Rachael GUI is one of the better one's that I've seen. And when HTC finally decides to leave WinMo and port Sense UI onto Android (fingers crossed), well...

For what it's worth, I found this article very interesting:
http://gizmodo.com/5397215/giz-expla...yline=true&s=x

It's lot some links to non-smartphone Android products in development.

There are several reasons why they are going to have problems:

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/...=RIM&st=Search

And here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125734874286028237.html

No way Android devices outnumber iPhone OS devices in a couple years. No. Way.

I'm going to have to side with solipsism here on this bet. Android is not just a phone OS. It just happened to get its appearance to the public in the smartphone world. It's an relatively free OS that can be put on nearly anything electronic and be shaped however the manufacturer wants. That's the key here.

A few sections down on this article links to others that show just where the Android web has spread out to.
http://gizmodo.com/5397215/giz-expla...yline=true&s=x

To clarify, I mean quarter-to-quarter sales of devices with respective mobile OSes, not installed base, that will take a lot longer with the amount of time the iPhone and iPod Touch have been on the market.

Yes, but as an interchangable flash card you can swap it out for one of any number of other 16GB or larger cards to support a massive library of music/videos/music.... if you so wanted. That seems like an extreme use of microSD cards, but you don't have this option with the iPhone

Not even with every man and his dog and their phone company betting their future on the Android platform? Motorola are betting their survival as a company on the Android platform and has said they have more than 10 different phone models coming in 2010 based on Android. Holy crap. That's not just a niche market, we're talking an avalanche of Android based phones, and not to mention other Android based devices (eBook readers like Barnes and Noble etc) coming within the next year.

Within a year practically every mobile phone carrier in the US will be selling Android phones, including AT&T.

Thats true but its definitely a fading argument.. The 8GB and 16GB iPhone seem to be a sweet spot for a lot of people these days and there is still a 32GB model for those so inclined. In a year, maybe two, well have 64GB.

Also, the NAND in the iPhone is faster than other NAND according to some reports comparing the Pre to the 3GS. I dont think a microSD would as fast, either, but that is speculation.

Besides that, how many people carry multiple SD cards? More than people that carry extra batteries? The iPhone doesnt have these but these arent something most people even carry about.

The most troubling aspect of the microSD situation in the Droid is the lack of space for 3rd-party apps. I have a localized version of Wikipedia on my phone when Im outside the US that takes up 2GB. I also have over 100 apps on my phone that take up more room than the Droid has. Sure, I might be the exception but it seems like a small amount of space for a platform with 12k apps and growing. I hope the Droid wont have the update barrier that the HTC G1; likely stuck with v1.6 forever.


PS: A bit of a segue, but I hate the size of the SIM card in phones. It takes up a lot of room for the amount of data on them. They need to revise the specification to make a smaller SiM card. Its just a waste of space on logic boards in modern phones.

We're talking about phones though. The rest don't matter to this conversation.

It's like saying that Linux distro numbers are greater than Windows installations.

That may be true, but only if you include the 99.99% that are used in embedded equipment.

I had that with my Treo. It isn't as much of an advantage as you think. The phones get confused when cards are exchanged. You're forever changing cards to get the right stuff in the phone when you want it.

And like phones on other OS's, most will be crap. And most won't sell well.

There will be maybe a half dozen that will do well, meaning a few million a year each. The rest will do what most other phones do that aren't really cheap for the mass market, which is to sell in the hundreds of thousands a year.

Apple may sell 35 million phones in calender year 2010, and maybe 40 to 45 million in 2011. More if the recession is gone.

That's a steep road to climb for Android. It will take a few years before they are in that bracket.

I expect this will change in coming updates and you'll be able to install apps to the microSD card, because you're right - this is a severe limitation right now. Most Android apps use the microSD card for data storage though. So in the example of your Wikipedia app, the app itself (if there was an Android equivalent), would with the current approach be installed to the internal memory and the data files would be on the microSD card. Imagine the flexibility with this approach - I assume if you have a localized copy of the apps data then you might also be interested in supporting different localized versions in other languages. With the the flash card approach you could swap out the card and have support for multiple languages easily and cheaply without filling your internal memory...

It works well with the Sony PSP. I have many Pro Duo cards that I use for different purposes - some have same games, some have game demos, some have MP3s... Looks like Sony's going solely with this approach as well, with the gradual phasing out for the UMD disks, now everything will be delivered OTA and stored on memory cards...

Ok, so in that case all iPods (essentially iPhones minus the phone app) running the same OS don't count either, even though they're part of the whole ecosystem. Nor the rumored "Tablet" device.

It may be a steep road to climb, but I believe that with Android having a starting base around the world (instead of in the US and then outwards months or even years later). Seeing as the non-US manufacturers release 3 or 4 models apiece yearly, it isn't an impossible road to climb. Of course, this assumes that Android catches on very well, which it seems to be doing.

Unless you have some inside knowledge, don't "expect". These are limitations of both the OS and the hardware spec'd on what the OS is capable of.

The PSP is a much simpler machine than either the iPhone or the Touch. Or any other modern smartphone for that matter.

The only iPod to run the same OS is the Touch. The touch doesn't count as an embedded device any more than does the iPhone itself. Neither would the tablet.

An embedded device is like my microwave, or my Tv. Both use microprocessors with embedded OS's. The one in the microwave is very simple, while the one in my Tv is a Linux distro.

Neither allows me to add programs, or to accomplish any function that isn't already programmed in the hardware. I had film and paper processors in my company that also used embedded OS's. They wouldn't count either.

But, neither the Touch, nor the tablet, from what we know of it, would be classified as phones, unless the use of Skype or Vonage, which works on the Touch through WiFi, would qualify them. The same thing would be true for any devices based on Android (or the upcoming Chrome).

I don't doubt that Android devices will prove popular, but their initial momentum will be to limit Win Mobile. RIM will also be heavily affected. Also from Symbian. It will take from the iPhone as well. But the question is which of those will be most heavily affected.

The iPhone has a pretty big lead, and it's not as though Apple won't be coming up with an improved OS and hardware the middle of next year. At some point, it's likely they will offer effective third party multitasking. The didn't rule it out. Actually, they pretty much said it would happen when they thought they had it ready. For those who are making the biggest deal about not wanting the iPhone because of that, once it comes, they will succumb. This is essentially what happened with C/paste and MMS.

Right now the major disadvantages to both the Pre and Android is the lack of local, computer based, backup, storage, OS updating, and purchasing of all kinds, apps, music, etc. I know that both Palm and Google are trying to make people conform to their own way of doing things, but it's too early for that. I prefer Apple's open way of using a Mac or PC for that. Ever try to buy a big program from your phone? Or search the store on an Android or Pre device? Forget it. Even on the iPhone or touch, which is much better at searching the store, as well as actually buying something, it's a poor reflection of the way it's done from a computer.

Well I got to play with a Droid last night as my friend and his wife both showed up with one. Here is what I noticed during the play time and with the company assembled.

-The physical keyboard doesn't have to be perfect by any stretch, it just has to be there and for reasons guys might not think about too much. It is all about the nails. You have a capacitance touch screen and you can still get around with a knuckle, but typing, not so much. Several of the ladies there noted that was exactly why they were carrying blackberrys. The droid was the best of both worlds in this regard. The point wasn't whether the onboard keyboard was more accurate or whether the physical keyboard had x amount of travel. The main point was... you can use it with nails.

- The browser was very, very serviceble. I say this as someone who was sitting right there with my iPhone and my friend who purchased it has an iPod touch. The browser is certainly good enough. The Droid Eres already has multitouch on the browser and the screen supports it so this is going to be a matter of applying a hack likely out of concern for some Apple patents that Google doesn't care to go to war over right now. The loading was quick. The representation was accurate. Scrolling was very quick as well.

- Notifications were awesome and I was instantly noting a huge iPhone hole to be filled. First it does have the little notification light to let you know if something has come in. Second, it was pure bliss to be able to be in your browser, tap a little icon to deal with every notification that had come in, be it SMS, email, chat, application downloads completing, etc. You could also clear all of them away with the push of one button. You could address them and go right back to the web browser or other apps in the background. It felt.... very right and you could definately see the chink in the Apple armor here more than in any other area.

- The wife, who had never owned a smartphone or iPod touch, was downloading plenty of apps the whole evening from the Android app store. She already had Facebook and Pandora on her phone that I saw.

- I hope there is an option to reduce the flash from two LED's to one at certain times. The flash was too bright in close quarters and most of the pictures were of the "Who the hell let a train in to sing Karaoke" persuasion due to the brightness.

- It being late into the first day of running it, my friend was concerned about battery. He was down to about 15% by 11 PM and turned off Wifi and Bluetooth to try to conserve.

- The four keys on the bottom do take some getting used to at first and the whole multitasking like book pages thing takes some getting used to as well. In this respect the iPhone is simplier but more rigid. The Droid felt fluid but possibly more confusing. I'm sure it won't be hard to anyone new to an experience or who is not going through several older conceptual models in their head to learn something new. It reminds me very much of back when the early first person shooters came out and watching people learn how to process it in their brain. The steps are different but pretty quick.

That is all for now.....this won't kill the iPhone by any stretch but it will keep people from leaving Verizon. I could also see it grabbing BB users frustrated with Storms, keeping WinMo users from fleeing to an iPhone and lastly allowing anyone who has left Verizon for AT&T and who is not satisfied with the NETWORK to return and not feel like they are missing out. This will not steal a single sale from anyone who is already satisfied with their iPhone or is in an area of good AT&T coverage. However if the coverage is questionable, if they are paying a 3G price for 2G coverage, I could see this easily making the sale. It isn't perfect and it isn't better but it is definitely good enough. It easily clears the bar for compelling reasons to own a smartphone.

That is feature Ive been looking for for two years now.

When I was young and arrogant, I was taught by a marketing guru that I respected, "never mention your competitor in your ads. It makes you look insecure and gives your competitor free advertising." I thought about it, said "Makes sense!" and took all references to our competitor out of our marketing literature and marketing pitch. If a potential customer brought up the competitor I was ready with why we were better, but the customer had to bring it up, we weren't going to bring it up first.

iDon't understand why Motorola and Verizon want to appear insecure and give their competitor free advertising.

I agree attack ads make a company look insecure and scared. So why would Apple use the same approach in their 'Get a Mac" ads?

It's different there. Apple is a much smaller competitor in that market, and can do that. I was also in advertising, and what I learned there, is that a big competitor can't beat up on a much smaller, but upcoming company. People think of that as not being fair, or unseemly.

In addition, Verizon is pounding heavily on the iPhone, and it's not humorous.

Apple, in the other hand, has brilliant commercials that are very funny. It takes the edge of. The only people I know who strongly don't like them have been Windows fanboys of the type that some Apple users are accused of being.

Its not different just because Apple does it. Brillant is also an opinion and many do not think they are billiant. Also when using Verizon and ATT I believe overall ATT is a far bigger company then Verizon and has certainly been around alot longer.

Alot of people may find the Verizon ads humorous because they slam Apple back by beating them at their own game.

Then you're different.

I really don't think so. Maybe different compared to the average person no this forum but not in the real world. The vast majority uses Microsoft so I find it hard to believe they find any humor in Apple trying to make them look like idiots. Apple ads only appeal to their base.

Also comments on this forum that IT department are stupid just makes me shake my head. Like Apple doesn't have an IT department? I'm not even sure what those statements are suppose to mean. I can only picture these comments coming from someone that works the Taco Bell drive thru.

Also if your going to actually make attack ads there shouldnt be any real humor involve. Verizon ads are far more effective because they hit hard and they hit ATT and the iPhone an real weaknesses.

Real weakness, like not being able to do voice and data at the same time, that sort of real weakness?

The Blue Christmas Ad is misleading as you can still make calls over 2G networks, you can still access the Internet and you can still use email or use WiFi to also do VOIP calls, unless it was filmed in area's with no coverage (including WiFi) whatsoever in which case you could probably film the same ads using a Verizon phone in cherrypicked locations where they also have no coverage.

Actually the Bad Toy ad also implies that an iPhone is useless without 3G which is not true, it's functionality is diminished but it can still make calls, access Internet functions over 2G and VOIP via WiFi.

OMG, its amazing how people can differ

For me, reviewers somehow keep missing THE REASON I could never buy an iPhone:

MUSIC!
With the iPhone, you have to use quicktime, itunes, a proprietory cable. You cannot drag and drop folders of music to and from your phone.

I absolutely detest all of that (and I own two new mac computers of my own). I like being able to plug in to a generic USB, on ANY computer anywhere, and just add or remove or copy music to and from the device as much as I want, no interference from a freak controlling Apple.

This makes iPhone (or an iPod for that matter) completely unacceptable to me.

Mark UK.

More successful in what way? RIM has existed for a long time. How many Blackberry models have they shipped? How many vastly different offerings have they had in Blackberrry product line?

Not one has been anywhere near successful enough to even gain mild recognition. The RIM product line sells well all over the world.

Apple competes with ONE model. Yes its been through 3 generations, but ONE model.

Ask anyone and they'll tell you that the iPhone is #1 worldwide. Its not, obviously, but the perception is that it is.

When Blackberry makes one model that sells 50 million units in 3 years, we can mention Blackberry as a relevant factor in smartphone discussion.

How is this supposed to be a reason? its 2009. You claim you own Mac computers, yet you detest the beauty and simplicity of transferring content and syncing with the iPhone?
You're trying to say that its in some way preferable to have rudimentary, 1995 folders/files and drag and drop on a modern smartphone/pocket computer? Rather than an elegant, organized, and colorfully visual way of transferring content?

No thanks. I bought a Mac and a iPhone because I appreciate the brain power and skilled development that goes into the creation of every aspect of their GUIs. Saying you'd prefer to drag plain folders, (as if thats somehow faster, easier or more convenient) has to be a joke.

If not a joke, you should probably recognize that this is not a missing feature of the iPhone, and nothing more than a quirky preference of yours that was intentionally written-out by smart people.

It's been stated many times by people in the industry that those Ads are responsible for many new Mac users, much of them from the Windows user base.

The Ads don't make fun of PC users at all. In fact, PC users aren't mentioned, except where they're shown moving to a Mac, something that been increasing over the years.

If someone can't tell humor from dreck like most of the competing Ads from MS are, then it's not the Ads that are at fault.

You don't know much about advertising then. NEVER do Ads that attack a competitor without humor. This is well established. You can read up on advertising, and you'll see that as a basic principle. Verizon's Ads are yet to be seen as effective. The only way we'll know that is by sales. So far, the Droid has gotten pretty good reviews, so it should sell well. Will Verizon's Ads make a difference? No one knows yet.