I have been in the market for a smartphone for a long time. I’m a loyal Verizon customer, and I guess it would have been easy enough to drop Verizon and go with AT&T and the iPhone, but I’ve resisted doing that for over a year.
Why? For starters, I like Verizon. I think their network is better, more reliable. This is circumstantially evidenced by the daily dropped calls I get from my husband on his iPhone. Secondarily, I felt a pull to go against the grain. Most people I know have an iPhone and, since I don’t like being a lemming, I wanted to have something different. I wanted to rebel against the Apple machine, I suppose.
Enter Android.
I had been reading excellent reviews of Android-based smartphones from various handset makers, many of which were available on Verizon. I test drove the first Motorola Droid when it debuted in November, but didn’t like the heft and the terrible physical keyboard. In the spring, the reviews for HTC’s Droid Incredible were off the charts, so I thought I’d take the plunge. Well, the device was officially released in April, but the backlog was immediate. In fact my local Verizon store is still out of stock.
Finally, I got my hands on a Droid X, the day after it was released, no less. Like other Droid phones, it had been getting great reviews. Most said it was the best Android phone yet, and the closest any phone had come to besting the iPhone.
The first thing you notice is the size. It’s big. Not so big as to be uncomfortable but big enough that I feel like I’m holding a small dish to my head while making calls. But I’m sure I’ll get used to that.
I found the Android OS to be relatively easy to use, but lagging behind the iPhone OS in simplicity. Most tasks in Android take a step or two more than on the iPhone. Case in point: snap a picture on the iPhone, tap the screen and you’re prompted with options for e-mailing or deleting the picture, saving it as your wallpaper, etc. With Android, emailing a picture is a four-step process.
Regarding notifications (voicemails, texts, emails, etc.), Android users must pull down a menu from the home screen to see their notifications, whereas with the iPhone you can see from the home screen whether you have new notifications.
Much has been made about Apple’s advantage with its app marketplace. Honestly I used to poo-poo this but I think there’s something to it. Not only are there more and better apps in Apple’s store, they’re much better categorized. For example, on the iPhone you can search within categories like “kids” or “financial” but Android (even with its 75,000 apps) lacks that granularity.
Another Android downer: no easy integration with iTunes. I have a significant investment in the music library I’ve built in iTunes, and there is no simple, seamless way to get my music on the Droid X. Apple’s is a closed ecosystem where synchronization between devices and computers is brainless.
For these reasons, I returned the Droid X to Verizon after seven days, paying the $35 restocking fee.
This is not to say there aren’t things the Droid X does better. True multitasking, a higher resolution camera and an HDMI port for watching videos on your TV are all nifty features. Google has built a feature-rich, smart, lightweight smartphone OS, and the Droid X is an impressive handset. But for me, it’s not enough.
So, after I returned the smartphone to Verizon, I walked two doors down to AT&T and ordered an iPhone 4.
Lisa
