Apple iPhone vs. Motorola Droid

VS.

All the smartphones coming out this fall in time for the holiday season, and there's only one (besides the iPhone of course) that everybody's talking about. It's the Droid, of course (and in case you're wondering, like we were - yes, they did have to pay Lucasfilm's a boatload of money for the rights to use the Droid name). Is it the iPhone-killer? Isn't it? Let's find out...

This Droid, unlike R2D2, runs on Google. And if there's one OS that all eyes are on to see if they can take a bite out of Apple, it's the Google Android OS. Even RIM's BB OS is no longer being seen as a competitor for Apple so much as the enterprise camp to Apple's multimedia jungle. But now here's the Android system, the internet ring of this 3-ring mobile OS circus...or maybe it's the big top itself, since enterprise and multimedia require internet to function. And that, in a nutshell, is why everybody, including Apple, is scared of Google. Now as the for the Motorola Droid...

There have already been several other Google phones put to market since Android first came out. So what's the big hubbub about the Droid? Why does everyone seem to think this is the smartphone that will finally outdo the iPhone?

1. Price. The cheapest Droid is $99; the cheapest iPhone $199. But AT&T is rumored to be trying to change that with a $99 8GB iPhone supposedly coming out in time for the holidays.
2. Keyboard. The Droid has a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a good, tactile, responsive one at that. The iPhone has none.
3. Android 2.0. Like iPhone 2.0, this is first major upgrade to the Google mobile OS, and in this case, as most others, that means major improvments. But Apple did pretty well with their iPhone 2.0 upgrade.
4. 5 megapixel digital camera. That's on par with any decent digital camera that doesn't have a phone attached. The iPhones meager digital camera has always been one of its downfalls, and here Moto takes full advantage of that.
5. The internet. Yes, we know we said that, but it bears repeating because as great as Google's reputation is for all things web, that's how poorly the iPhone'sweb capabilities have always been rated. Here, again, this time thanks to the zippy Verizon network, the Droid prevails.

However, as new and shiny as the Google Android OS may be, neither it nor Motorola and Verizon's articulation of it in this Droid still pales in intuitiveness and user-friendliness to the "all-powerful" iPhone. Maybe someday, but for now...these are not the Droids you're looking for.

Going back to the subject of keypads for a moment, one other glaring difference between the iPhone and the Motorola ROKR E8 is that the ROKR has an actual slide-out keyboard (though not a QWERTY keyboard, just an ordinary phone pad) while the iPhone only has its touchscreen option (ordinary phone pad and QWERTY-capable).

Another key difference is that the iPhone is not just a music smartphone but an internet smartphone and a personal desktop assistant too, while the Motorola is pretty much just a music smartphone. A good one, by Motorola's standards, but not on par with the iPhone by any measure - ModeShift or no ModeShift.

When you're looking at the bottom line, Motorola is selling the ROKR E8 for about the same price the Apple is getting for the new iPhone 3G. Motorola uses T-Mobile; Apple uses AT&T. T-Mobile requires a 2-year contract; AT&T does not. Now go back and reread this review of the two devices and you do the math.