SmartphoneSmarts

Regardless of what operating system you put on it. That is a pretty compelling combination. The hardware is minimalistic, weighty, and clean. Meaning the phone looks and feels solid. I can imagine people complaining about the heft, but I like it.

This phone ships with Android 2.0. In my opinion this is the best mobile OS I have used so far. While at first glance, it doesn't seem to be the most polished or even full featured, I think it demonstrates the most well thought out architecture for a phone that is meant for business.

Let's compare this to other operating systems I am familiar with:

I have used Windows mobile since it was Windows CE. Back then the devices weren't phones with mobile OS's, they were mobile devices that could come with phone capabilities.

This long history for Windows mobile still lives on. And much like compatability and code sharing with previous versions of the desktop operating system prevent Windows from really breaking free of many faults, Windows mobile suffers as well. Take for example the requirement that a Windows Mobile device needs to have a resistive display (no multi-touch) and support for a stylus. Windows Mobile was a pain to use for many years, but it was too easy to blame the hardware. The small screens, small amounts of memory, and minimal connectivity made it so that the devices could be used for small specific tasks.

Naturally being windows, they took a some design choices for granted:
- Of course we'll support a ton of configurations
- Of course devices will have differing screen resolutions
- Of course devices will have differing peripherals and connectivity
- Of course we will take our Desktop UI components and re-use them
- Of course we'll let developers decide how to write and deploy their own applications
- Of course we need to make sure we have top notch support for our own formats

In retrospect only the last bullet point has kept their devices relevant. Like how many people and organizations are reluctant to leave windows XP because of the software and office suite, I too was reluctant to leave windows mobile because it did the best job of working with Exchange. As an IT consultant, excellent exchange integration was critical.

Then comes the iPhone. Apple has realized that they can make a decent portable device. And for some unknown reason, people just really like how the devices look and they are willing to buy the devices no matter what as long as they look cool. So they decide to develop a mobile device that is more rooted in a portable consumer media player than a portable computer.

Remember when the first iPhones came out? Remember how there was no such thing as an app store? Remember how there was only one home screen?

If you took the feature set of the original iPhone and put it on paper and compared it against Windows Mobile it was easily laughable.
- Only one type of device?
- No replaceable/configurable components?
- No copy and paste?
- No user exposed multi-tasking?
- No user access to a file system?
What kind of techie would want such a device?

However, Apple managed to put in some innovations that made you forget about a lot of those faults because the devices looked so frickin cool and were so cool to use:

- Deadly simple UI
- Home screens and notifications that have limited scope
- Multi-touch and Pinch and zoom
- Accelerometers and Ambient Light sensors
- Managed file system through iTunes

They made a device that seemed really advanced, but didn't let people get lost in settings or feel like asshats when they couldn't figure out how to change a setting.

Slowly Apple started expanding more of its functionality, but ultimately did not stray far from its original core values. It's an iPod first.

This leaves us with a device that to me is aggravatingly inflexible and is hopeless when it comes to actually getting work done.

Skip forward to about a year ago. The first Android device was released. Yes, Android devices have only been around for about a year. Unfortunately when you're late to the party, people forget how long everyone else has been around and how awkward they were when they were first born.

Android again enjoyed many of the lessons learned from Apple in how to make a compelling mobile device platform in the age of connectivity, and also made a decision to develop an Open Source Mobile Operating Platform.

What does this mean? We basically have all the cool things about Windows Mobile, without the baggage. We have all the cool things about iPhones, without the dumbing down.

What are we left with:
- Devices that can support multiple resolutions
- Devices that can have differing hardware attributes (keyboards, cameras, radios etc)
- User interfaces that are finger and mobile friendly
- Application stores and an SDK that allow developers many ways to develop, but 1 way to deploy

So we end up with the device that we have today. A compelling hardware platform running one of the newest mobile OS's with the most potential. Naturally there are still some kinks to be ironed out, but hey its just software.

Gmail:
The Droid excels at gmail. This device lets you do everything you could do with your desktop web version with complete ease:
- Threaded messaging
- Archive Search
- Easy message management (tagging, moving, archiving)
- Push email

POP/IMAP:
The droid does well at POP/IMAP accounts. It now offers a unified inbox that makes it easy to manage multiple email accounts.

Exchange:
The droid does not do well at Exchange. In fact, I can't really write a complete review, because my work email servers will not let my Droid connect to my exchange servers because it does not support some security settings, (PIN lockout and Remote Wipe). The iPhone and the Palm Pre have had similar security issues with Exchange, most of these issues have been resolved via relatively quick software fixes.

Which brings me to a minor point in general:
All of these devices that are being developed now are being released in record amounts of time. These devices are being conceived, designed, developed, tested, marketed and released in a matter of months. Most often time in less than a year. Because of this, many features that impact 10% of the population or less get delayed and pushed in updates. So while it's easy to bash the Droid for not having 100% support for Exchange, it has 80% support and I imagine the rest is coming soon.

Second, there is a workaround. And because of the nature of Android, the workaround is the most elegant of all the operating systems. 3rd Party developers have developed software based solutions for exchange connectivity. While I do lose the benefit of having my email and calendar appointments placed into my default calendar and mailboxes, this solution still works:
- I still get notifications using Android's notification services
- I still get push email/updates
- Instead of locking my entire phone or wiping my entire phone, the security policies only extend to the mail application

That being said, I still wish Android supported exchange out of the box, so I wouldn't have to go to a third party, but out of all the operating systems, I think Android allowed for the best solution.

For the record, I am using TouchDown for my exchange integration.

Google Application Integration

This like gmail, is phenomenal. While each of the services on their own isn't that great or novel, they have a lot of potential when they all come together in a single connected device:
- Gmail
- Google Voice
- Google Maps
- Google Talk
- Google Finance
- Google Calendar

The operating system again allows these services to be elegantly integrated. With Google Voice, you can have it use GV to make all of your calls, only international calls, prompted with each call for a choice, or manually invoked.

Google Maps and Search have been beautifully integrated into the phone. Today, I was able to hold the search button and say "Navigate to the museum near Washington DC with the Blackbird SR-71." After thinking, my phone came back and asked me if I would like to Navigate to the Smithsonian Udvar Hazy Air and Space Hangar. That pretty much made everybody's jaw drop today.

Phone quality
I should have put this higher, but sadly on devices today, this seems to take minor importance. However, it is apparent to me that Motorola developers thought it was quite important. The Droid is the best sounding phone cell phone I have used. I talked tonight with my wife who was on a landline and halfway through the call I just had to stop and gush about how good the sound quality was. There was no difference between using the droid and a High Quality POTS handset. It just sounds incredible. Combined with the Verizon Network, it's a lethal combination. The speakerphone is equally as good. For a device of its size, it is able to produce clear and loud tones.

Multi-tasking support
This phone handles multi-tasking the best. The Droid backgrounds apps like nothing. Most apps in Android don't close. They're merely backgrounded. This works fine for most cases. In rare occurances you will need to kill processes that are taking too much battery/processor. Android fortunately has an interesting way of addressing this as well. Under Battery status, the phone lists how long the phone has been unplugged from a charger. Then it lists what percentage of the battery has been used by what process. From there you can see if you have a process that you probably want to kill.

Because multi-tasking is handled so well, most people will never use this function, but as a technical user, I love this feature.

Notifications
All of the phone's notifications come up through a sliding drawer at the top of the phone. Applications can display text and/or display icons to let you know you have a message that needs your attention. You can then expand the drawer and triage your notifications. This plays very well with multi-tasking and allows you to quickly switch back and forth between contexts.

Another interesting feature of notifications is the ability to customize. By default, all applications use the default notification setting. However, you can also go into each application's settings panel and specify how you want to be notified. This means that you can assign different sounds to your google talk messages, gmail messages, work email messages, and you can also specify whether or not you want those notifications to vibrate. This is another point that is done much better than the other operating systems.

Widgets
Google clearly took a page from its iGoogle widgets concept and allowed applications to place widgets on the home screen. This is incredibly useful in letting you check news, facebook status, email, weather, and media settings all at a glance. Windows mobile lets you do a little bit of this, Apple doesn't let you do this at all.

Random device kudos:
- The Pandora app is the best sounding Pandora App I have seen on a mobile device.
- SSH with a hardware keyboard is absolutely beautiful
- Google's implementation of voice command is jaw dropping
- The open app platform allows me to install applications that wouldnt have been "approved" on apple devices. (PDANet, Emulators, Terminal Apps, Google Voice)
- The screen is absolutely gorgeous. The pixel density makes the screen absolutely wonderful to browse full web pages on
- Verizon's 3G network performs admirable as expected.

The Motorola Droid is hands down the best phone out there. While it might not sell as well as the iPhone, this does not mean that it is an inferior phone. I find it hard to argue against the three main components for the device.
- Superior OS
- Superior Hardware
- Superior Network