Motorola Droid News

There’s a continuing battle going on between the various smartphone operating systems on the market, but which one’s best? Let’s take a look at the three front runners.

Sony Ericsson Satio

It’s fair to say that the Sony Ericsson Satio is easily one of the most hotly anticipated phones of the year. On the face of it, the big reason for the excitement is its 12 megapixel camera, and whilst that is a force to be reckoned with, there’s so much more to the Sony Ericsson Satio. It’s the first ‘Entertainment Unlimited’ phone, and that doesn’t just mean it combines Cyber-Shot and Walkman technology. On top of that, the Sony Ericsson Satio is also going to pull in social networking, high quality games and incredible video services to become a one-stop mobile entertainment hub. It promises far more than that, however, as the Sony Ericsson Satio is also powered by Symbian, giving it true smartphone capabilities, which will no doubt include its very own app store.

Motorola DEXT

The first important fact about the Motorola DEXT, and the bit that has made it so talked about, is its interface: Google Android, with MOTOBLUR riding on top. As it’s the first Android phone to focus on social networking as its key feature, the Motorola DEXT has garnered an awful lot of trade and consumer interest. It’s certainly more of a looker (especially in the interface, the newly designed MOTOBLUR UI) than previous Android phones, and that fusion of enhanced looks and the still-awesome power of Android makes the Motorola DEXT a very compelling phone indeed. If social networking is your thing, this is the phone for you.

HTC HD2

The Sony Ericsson Satio is easily the best camera phone on this list, and the Motorola DEXT has the edge in terms of interface, but why is the third phone, the HTC HD2, so much better? The answer lies within the processor hidden inside the HTC HD2, as it’s the first phone in the world to come with a 1GHz chip. Or, in other words, it’s little short of a laptop in the body of a mobile phone. So, the HTC HD2 promises to be faster and smoother than any other mobile phone on the market. Ally that with the unique 3D interface running on top of Windows Mobile, and you get a phone that truly is a joy to use. There’s also one other fact that can’t be denied…

Quite apart from it being hyper-fast, with an incredibly fluid interface, the HTC HD2 also has the biggest screen on the market, coming in at an unbelievable 4.3 inches. That’s a lot of real estate on screen, and it means that even previously fiddly menu bars are now finger-friendly, given the massive screen size. And as for the virtual keyboard on the HTC HD2, the extra size makes it little different from typing on a physical keyboard. Add in the rage of impressive features, including a 5 megapixel camera, broadband-fast internet access, a superb music player and GPS, and it adds up to a simple fact: The HTC HD2 is quite simply the best Windows Mobile phone, and maybe even the best PHONE, ever made, and it utterly canes the other two on this list.

Ten years and countless court battles ago, The World Health Organization (WHO) published a small, yet inconclusive study about how the radiation emitted from cell phones is bad for you.

Specifically, the WHO “suggested” a “possible” link between cell phone usage and brain tumors. The tentative language, no doubt, was influenced by the then-burgeoning cell phone industry — back when the Apple iPhone, the Motorola Droid and non-stock-broker Blackberry models were barely a sparkle in developers’ eyes.

Today we learn that the WHO’s decades-long study, called Interphone provides a clear and definite link between what they call, “heavy cell phone users” and an increased risk (between 10 and 30 percent) for brain tumors, as opposed to people who don’t use them. For those of you who wear your Bluetooth headsets all day, the WHO study suggests you might want to put them on a charger or something when you’re not on a call. There’s an elevated risk, although slightly smaller than placing your phone against your ear, that you could get a tumor too.

I have to ask rhetorically — who doesn’t use a cell phone today? Does this mean we’re truly in for a pandemic of brain tumors later on, like Swine Flu? What will this do to health insurance quotes? Will the carriers inflate them based on how many hours you use your mobile device? Too soon to tell, but further insurance reforms are likely coming as a result of this study.

I remember thinking back in the late 80s that the fat Motorola “brick” phone I lugged around at the time would get so hot against my ear, there had to be nuclear launch codes hidden up in there somewhere. Why else would they design it with that stiff, rubberized, missile-like antennae pointed confidently toward the heavens? But back then, microwave ovens were the size of college dorm refrigerators with an angry moan that dimmed your lights when you turned it on, and a spinning, silvery disk thing at the top that made your food hot on one side (no glass turntable, no evenly-heated dinner).

I figured if my mom used a radiation box to cook our peas and pop our popcorn, why worry about a phone that could transmit full conversations — in real-time — thousands of miles away without a wire?

Well, soon after Motorola launched the first-ever “pocket phone,” (it never really fit into your pocket unless you wore jeans that were three-sizes too big — Ah, but Motorola was before its time —That trend was years away), Motorola lawyered-up and filed suit in practically every jurisdiction around the country to keep us from applying for SuperFund stipends, crushing our new toys and sending them to Love Canal.

The full WHO study won’t be released until next month, but you can bet cell phone/smartphone makers are preparing their court motions at the moment.

So will you be powering down your mobile devices anytime soon? — Oh! Gotta go. My Blackbery

View full post on Droid Forum – Verizon Droid & the Motorola Droid Forum – Motorola Droid

The iPhone is here to stay, no doubt.  It would take millions of marketing dollars and years of building a recognizable brand to do any real damage to the iPhone user base.  The iPhone is to today’s tech savvy twenty-somethings that color TV was to their parents or grandparents.  The iPhone was everyone’s introduction to smart phones.  It was also a natural upgrade from the iPod.  Plus, Apple’s extensive selection of killer apps and awesome games makes other company-backed phone application stores look like a boring, dull wasteland of apps nobody seems to want (hmm, I’m looking at you, Blackberry)

Droid is a play on the word “Android”.  Android was the moniker used by Google to brand its mobile phone operating systems that it eventually licensed to manufacturers and cell phone carriers to use.  But here are three simply reasons the Droid is going to dominate Android-based cell phones: hardware, interface usability, and network reliability and power.

First, the Droid is an joint venture with Verizon Wireless and cell phone manufacturing powerhouse Motorola. Though in recent months many cell phone service providers have upgraded their network service to third generation (3G) coverage, Verizon was the first to do so.  Before AT&T began offering 3G coverage, lack of reliable service was one of the biggest reasons people were clinging to their Blackberry’s and Verizon’s excellent network speed and reliability.  Plus, Verizon has announced it is hard at work in developing an even more impressive 4G network with the ability to squeeze more bandwidth into their service.  This is great news because this means Verizon’s future 4G network can support streaming video – real video, not the choppy sometimes grainy video currently found when using AT&T’s network.  And as Verizon boasts of its soon-to-be 4G network, they are already developing applications to be ready to use once their new network is launched.  That sure beats the hum-hawing and knuckle dragging displayed recently by Apple with their inability to deftly manage their application store content.  Recently Apple has been causing quite a ruckus with mobile phone application developers.  One day they remove their applications for sale for obscure reasons and the next day they are back online for sale, for even more obscure reasons than before.  Hmm, doesn’t seem like a way to nurture today’s most popular smart phone application gateway.

Besides, the iPhone doesn’t let you run applications in the background, change batteries, or host live widgets on the cell phone homepage.  There is no open development for Apple’s smart phone operating platform – something Google is the kind of, open source technology and the transparency that techies are looking for today.

The biggest win for the Droid is the amazingly simple interface and strong hardware, surpassing even previously released “Android” phones.  To illustrate the ease of the Droid interface, here are the steps to upload a video to YouTube

Record video
Type title and description
Click “upload”

That easy.  Seriously.  Doesn’t get any easier than that.  Plus you can zoom in and out right from the video screen on a handy on-screen icon.  A touch screen that – imagine that, Apple.

Plus it syncs your Facebook contacts, its web page speed loading time rivals (if not crushes) the iPhone 3G capabilities, email works like real email, and the Microsoft Exchange compatibility is built-in.  No more strange design elements that change dramatically from one type of application or software interface to another.  Said someone working closely on the Droid before its release and hailed by many after its introduction: “The whole user interface feels slicker … feels like it was painted with the same brush.”

The days of iPhone vs. Blackberry might be over thanks to Verizon’s Droid smartphone.  With the best of both worlds, the Verizon Droid is something behold.

Oh, and did I mention it has a slide-out physical keyboard?  Enough said.