Motorola Droid: The iPhone Killer?

Motorola's strange campaign of unexplained "Droid Does" commercials were the early hype-causers for what would be the second true competitor (behind the Android) of the Apple iPhone. Coined the "Motorola Droid," this smartphone touts itself as outperforming the iPhone by picking at its shortcomings: search Google via voice command, use the web on Verizon's "faster" 3G network (the Motorola Droid is, in fact, exclusive only to Verizon), and last but not least, its 5 megapixel camera that works in very low light situations.

It's a pretty brazen thing to do - being that the iPhone has practically revolutionized smartphone technology as we know it. However, there's one major wound to pick at, and that's the iPhone's insanely stupid exclusivity agreement with AT&T. Here, Verizon and Motorola have a wide opening to the end zone...until Apple decides to open up to other carriers (which is not rumored to happen until the release of the 4G network in 2011).

One of the groundbreaking aspects of the Droid is that it will be the first smartphone to feature turn-by-turn GPS fashioned directions via Google Maps Navigation. This navigational system is built-in and requires no additional hardware to work.

Best yet, it's voice-driven; simply speak out the establishment/food type/location you want, and the Droid will proceed to pull up the information and give you turn-by-turn walking or driving directions.

A crowning achievement of the Droid is its ability to recognize speech commands. Simply say "navigate to (my town)" and the Droid will initiate Google maps, and audibly give you directions to your destination. It's certainly a nice "hands-off" feature for drivers.

The speech recognition of this device appears to be ample enough to understand commands on the first try.

With a hefty 5 MPX built-in camera, the Motorola Droid boasts "DVD quality" video capturing capabilities and instant upload to YouTube. Its dual LED flash ensures that night time pictures will come out as bright as day. Pictures can be instantly uploaded to your Facebook photo albums.

There's not much word about what's already available, but Verizon has stated that there are already 10,000+ available apps in their network. It can handle running 6 apps at once without significant slowdown. It has been designed so that you can multitask by using its phone capability, along with a live internet connection and a few apps all at the same time without any wait or load time.

The Motorola Droid is also widget-capable, whereas many of its competitors are not. Keep in mind, the Droid is open-source, too!

Early reports have already touted the Droid as being an overachiever in terms of internet connectivity. The Android 2.0 platform has been called nothing short of amazing, as well as being a huge upgrade from the previous firmware version. The coupling of its amazing processor and a 3G network should prove to make it a leader in mobile internet. Its visible screen area, amongst the largest of all smartphones on the market, is able to view full-width versions of web pages and videos. Multiple browser navigation lets you load pages in the background while you view the current page. When it comes to sending instant messages, the Droid is able to handle AIM, Yahoo Chat and GTalk.

One thing's for sure, Verizon is talking up a STORM about how confident they are about their 3G network and its ability to handle the mobile internet market.

The Droid's battery lasts through 6.4 hours of talk time - that's longer than the iPhone, and any other smartphone on the market for that matter. It can go 270 hours in standby. A swap-out feature lets you easily pull out and replace your used up battery with a fresh one when you don't have time or the ability to plug in a charger.

When docking the Droid, it becomes a digital picture frame, clock, or goes into desktop mode.

With 16 GB of memory, this smartphone is expandable up to 32 GB.