Geneva: shitty weather, but nice cars!
Founder and CEO of Zong. Making $ for gaming and social networking companies through mobile payments awesomeness.
After a few days playing with the new Motorola Droid, I want to share my impressions of where the device rocks, lacks and ultimately share if in my opinion, it presents a threat to the iPhone supremacy, or not.
First of all, the device looks good and feels high-quality and solid. The screen is amazing, way better than the the iPhone in terms of resolution. Android 2.0 is definitely a more accomplished OS than the one I first tested on the G1. So let's get to the nuts and bolts in an concise way as there are a gazillion blog posts out there that detail differences at length.
I like: apps that can run in the background, Google Navigation (stunning, really), seamless integration with Google Voice, Google Apps, Gmail and almost every single Google service out there, gorgeous screen (not in sunlight), Contacts management (integrated with IM and Facebook), Notifications, Status LED, and finally, Verizon's network.
I dislike: lack of apps, user experience and device feedback that's by far not as snappy as an iPhone 3GS, lack of apps, battery life (not better than iPhone), lack of apps, physical keyboard (kudos to the Motorola engineers for stuffing a keyboard in such a slim phone though, the downside of that is that the keys are completely flat), lack of apps, camera (flash is nice, but the software sucks for now, very slow startup, autofocus is awful - this should be fixed soon by a software update), buttons (got used to the pureness of the full on-screen controls on the iPhone), oh yeah, and did I mention it? Lack of apps!!
Let's face it, the iPhone is not perfect. It doesn't support apps running in the background, and Apple's workaround with push notifications doesn't make up for it, push email with Gmail/Google Apps is a joke as it drains the battery in a few hours (had to go back to good old IMAP refreshed every 15 minutes), AT&T's network drives me nuts because of dropped calls on freeways and poor in-building coverage, but let's face it. The iPhone is still the king of smartphones and every week, it's like a totally new device through a new app that will let you do cool stuff you didn't even imagine was possible. My latest mind-blowing experiences were using my iPhone as a remote for Apple TV, and the monocle feature of the new Yelp app, unbelievable user experience. Don't get me started on the gaming side of things...
That being said, the combination of the Droid's hardware and Android 2.0 is the closest thing that ever came close to competing with the iPhone. Give it another year, and provided Google solves its apps ecosystem by providing a real business model for developers, the iPhone could be in trouble. The main problem with Android Market is that it's checkout experience, put in plain English, sucks. And that's definitely the one thing I know about... If I live in the US, I don't want to see prices in Euros or in British Pounds, I don't want to setup a Google Checkout account on my device and type my credit card number before I make a purchase, and so on and so forth. The truth is that if you're not Apple, and if you don't have hundreds of millions of users with their credit card associated with an iTunes account because they bought a music track a few months or years ago, then you must face it and find another way. The only way to get people to start paying for apps on Android is using seamless carrier-based billing, and then eventually, let users pick other payment choices, but they should at least know what buying an app is. Zong can certainly help with that piece of the puzzle, but this post is not about Zong, it's about devices, so I'll stop my rant here.
Bottom line, as far as I'm concerned, the ideal device would be a Verizon iPhone with global capabilities (CDMA/GSM), background apps support, better battery life, Google Voice that merges messages and dialing features with the iPhone native dialer and message apps, and Google Navigation. There are rumors out there of a Verizon iPhone in the works, so some of this might become a reality soon...
