Smartphone Wars: Motorola Droid versus Apple iPhone (1)

If the latest ad "Everything iDon't, Droid Does" launched by Motorola is be believed, Droid is everything iPhone isn't.

According to those who have tested the smartphone, Droid is vastly superior to previous Android-based phones like G1, myTouch and most recently, the Cliq, which lacked in three key areas: hardware, user interface, and network power.

In a sneak peak, IBTimes found that Droid runs on Google's latest mobile platform Android 2.0 (hence Droid, duh) and the phone, which is slightly thicker than iPhone, is powered by the super-fast ARM Cortex A8 TI OMAP3430 processor (the core of both iPhone and Palm Pre), boasts of a huge 3.7-inch (compared to iPhone's 3.5-inch) capacitive multi-touch WVGA display (with 854x480 resolution as compared to iPhone's 480x320 resolution), has a slider Qwerty keyboard in landscape mode (Droid promises more precise, quicker typing than iPhone where typing is sometimes slow because the touchscreen is less precise at registering your finger taps), 5-megapixel (compared to iPhone's 3.15-megapixel) camera with autofocus, 4x digital zoom, LED flash, night-shot capability and video recorder, supports multi-touch gestures (allows you to flick and swirl your fingers across the screen for intuitive navigation. It also allows you to scroll and flip through web pages, photos, spreadsheets and more), EV-DO, 512MB storage, 256MB RAM, microSD/microSDH card slot (a 16GB microSD card ships with the phone but up to 32GB can be supported), supports multiple audio and video formats, GPS, USB, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi, accelerometer and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Droid also reportedly rivals iPhone 3GS in web page loading speeds, syncs your Facebook contacts, has a better email interface than iPhone (it lets you flag multiple emails as read or unread).

Droid also has an improved browser and Microsoft Exchange compatibility is reportedly built-in.

The smartphone also boasts of speech recognition capabilities, advanced multitasking capabilities (Droid can run multiple applications simultaneously) and interchangeable batteries that has enough juice to power the smartphone up to 6.4 hours (talk time) and 270 hours (standby time).

Droid also supports Google Voice that lets you route calls more efficiently, control who can contact you, and transcribe messages, unlike iPhone.

Also thanks to the latest Android platform, Droid also boasts of more intuitive and polished user interface than other Droid-based smartphones.

But the most exciting feature of Droid, perhaps, is the Google maps app that are replete with text-to-speech features, layered with traffic data and a satellite view and comes with built-in turn-by-turn, voice-guided navigation. And the best part is that it's all free!