Does The Droid Do It For You Or Does It Not?

Okay, so enough with the Droid Does word plays. The Motorola Droid is finally here and everyone is plenty… weirded out about it. For reasons known and unknown, consumers did not get at the Droid like hordes of possessed people running towards the last hope for survival. No one in their right minds expected an Apple-like mad rush but everyone was expecting some kind of rush.

So amid all that expectation, droid day dawned on us and what happened? Nothing happened, to be very precise. Everyone went on with their lives and did not pay much heed to the weirdly dressed Verizon employees who were trying their very best not to be disappointed at the lack of interest. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

The Droid got great reviews and everyone said that it was the best Android phone yet. It is the first phone Android 2.0 phone ever. Android 2.0, the much anticipated update to the Android OS. The version that has the Google Maps Navigation feature. It had everything going for it, so why not?

I would say it’s because people hardly know about the phone. Verizon made so much noise about what the iPhone can’t do that it simply forgot to mention what the Droid actually does. In that state of confusion, consumers tend to shy away from the device. Verizon should’ve focused on the device more and less on the competition.

Then there is the fact about the multitouch or lack thereof. In a bizarre contract, Motorola has actually left the multitouch behind on this phone even though both hardware and software support it. Something about competition and cannibalizing other models. What utter BS!

There is another problem though – we expected too much. The Droid is a good pone on its own and an even better phone because it is on Verizon’s network. But when pitted against the iPhone, it loses out on certain important areas.

First of all, nothing in this world can compete with the iTunes store. When you are up against the world’s largest digital music store, you need something seriously good in your arsenal and the Droid does not have much when it comes to multimedia. Not that Android cannot play media, it can. But there is a lack of compelling features that can compete against the things that make the iPhone the better multimedia device.

There is also the little thing about the number of Apps for each platform. Granted that you will find the necessities and more in the 10,000+ Android apps but you will also find much more than that in a place with more than 100,000 apps. That is ten times as many. Also, the Droid is pretty basic and does not do much out of the box. You have to download a lot of apps to do the same things that the iPhone does out of the box.

So does the Droid lose against the iPhone on every count? Not really.

Droid’s larger screen and higher resolution far outdoes the iPhone. The display is really great and you would love to watch movies and images on it. On the software front, the Google apps completely outshine anything equivalent that the iPhone has. The Gmail app on Android 2.0 is a fully functional version of actual Gmail and we all know how much everybody loves Gmail. The Android has a fantastic instant messenger integrated into the OS. The iPhone has nothing as integrated and great. Also, I will remind you that the Android will probably be the first to get complete Google Wave optimization. I have been using Wave and let me tell you this – if you have contacts with whom you communicate online and share things regularly – you will love the Wave.

So over all, Droid is more like a mixed bag of goodies that wasn’t promoted right. It certainly is not an iPhone killer but it is a great phone in its own right. Without the iPhone in the market, this would’ve been the phone to have. But then again, without the iPhone in the market we would still think that Blackberries were the best.