Verizon is really counting on the Droid to steal some of iPhone’s massive market share. For a while now we have seen Verizon’s iDon’t commercials. The truth is that all they hype that has been built up ended with a big letdown.
Multitouch is a feature that is just expected on most capacitive touchscreen phones these days. Many of the Droid’s key applications lack this feature. For example the onscreen keyboard does not offer multitouch. This is a big deal for typing accuracy for onscreen keyboards. Another application that does not have multitouch is the web browser. You can zoom in by double tapping though, which is a new feature for Android 2.0.
The hardware keyboard is a complete failure. The keys are very hard and are not contoured at all. Also the keys are very cramped and not separated at all. Also while having a D-Pad is nice, it was not implemented well in this device. It caused the keyboard to be off center and making it feel less natural to type on.
Droid packs a 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus and dual LED flash. On paper that sounds quite nice but in use the camera does not perform very well. Launching the camera takes a somewhat frustrating amount of time. Also after taking one picture it takes a bit to save it and let you take another picture. It is just overall slow and not the amazing.
This is a matter of personal preference but I have never understood the purpose of soft key buttons. The main benefit of having a touchscreen is that you don’t need to have dedicated space for controls. You can still have hard keys at the bottom for things like call and end functions though. These aren’t dynamic like the screen is, so they do not offer anything special by being touch sensitive rather than physical. Personally I believe it is a downgrade compared to physical keys.
To be fair I have never been a fan of Motorola’s phones. They don’t ever seem to hold up to the rest of the market. I am however a huge fan of Android. Android 2.0 is an excellent operating system and I can’t wait to see it on more capable devices.