Motorola’s Droid 2 is one of the first Android phones to ship with Froyo 2.2 pre-loaded and is a noticeably improved version of the original Droid. It’s the best phone with a keyboard out there at the time of this review and can be compared to a Droid X minus the keyboard and a smaller screen. A 3.7 inch 854×480 TFT LCD capacitive touch screen, 1-GHz TI OMAP processor nearly double the original Droid’s 550MHz processor. The phone comes with 8GB of internal memory and an 8GB microSD Card, expandable up to 32GB. Changing the microSD card requires first taking out the battery which was a little inconvenient. Network coverage in the areas tested was excellent, over the course of 2 weeks, I did not have a single dropped call
Keyboard
In my opinion, Motorola have hit a huge future winner with Swype. For those that don’t know or haven’t tried it yet, Swype is my favorite input method by far and easily out performs typing on my iPhone 3GS, or on the Droid 2’s own slide out keyboard. The physical keyboard has significant improvements over the original Droid and the raised surface makes typing the right letters a breeze. The slide out keyboard was one of the main reason why I wanted to try the Droid 2, but with Swype, I can say Motorola have indeed persuaded me to try out phones without physical keyboards
Design
Aesthetically the Droid 2 looks very much like the original Droid but with more rounded edges, and effectively the exact same dimensions & weight (4.6 by 2.4 by 0.54 inches, 5.96 ounces). The shape and weight of the phone make it comfortable to slide into your pocket, and the build quality assures you that if you forget it in your back pocket that you won’t break it. Compared to many lighter & more plastically looking phones, the Droid 2 feels like a precision jet fighter instead of an origami plane.
Software
The Droid 2 supports Adobe Flash which greatly improved the user experience on many websites. Playing embedded YouTube videos on websites not only looked great, but worked seamlessly. Every flash gaming website I tried didn’t work nearly as well as I had hoped because most are developed to use a mouse as an interface device. A Bluetooth mouse or joystick attached to your phone might be a solution to this (hope your listening Motorola). Overall I found that the Android 2.2 Droid 2 performed much faster than the Droid X even though they have the same processor. I can only attribute this speed boost to Froyo. Once other Android handsets get upgraded to 2.2, I think this competitive market advantage will carry less weight.
Camera
The 5 megapixel camera with flash that takes good photos for a camera phone can’t compare with the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10’s 8.1mp camera. If you are just posting snapshots to Facebook, Flikr, etc, then the camera works good with the exception of low light situations where much of the details is lost. Video mode records at 720-by-480p which again is good enough to upload to YouTube, but not what you would want to use to record for display on a TV or large computer screen.
Business
As a business user phone, Microsoft Exchange server support and full integration with everything Google (Google docs, Gmail, GPS-powered Google Maps Navigation, Google Maps) made for a solid alternative to RIM Blackberry devices which incidentally are being blocked in more Middle East Governments than any other phone maker.
Overall the Droid 2 is the best keyboard smart phone in the US marketplace and a close 2nd overall to the Droid X in the top range of Android phones. We give this phone a rating of 4.5/5.0 when compared to current phones available in the marketplace.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
