Gadgetory

what's up prize five fans i'm brian tong and we're here to face off another contender for king of the smartphone ring it's the heavyweight prizefight you've been waiting for between the Motorola Droid and Apple's iPhone 3GS Motorola and Verizon have been blitzing Apple and AT&T and there's no love lost between these phones so we're bringing in the heavy hitters to judge this fight senior editor Kent German senior editor Vani cha and myself we'll do the honors now we'll take all three judges scores and average them out to the nearest tenth each round the final prize five score will be an average of all rounds using the same decimal system who's bringing home the bacon first round in Section eight Motorola's droid touchscreen is the highest resin I'm seen and all of us agree it's a thing of beauty it's a thin form factor considering it has a keyboard but a drawback is its blocky design and that fat lip on the bottom not a fan the iPhone 3GS still holds its place as the sleekest and cleanest device on the planet with its rounded corners is this thing even debatable the iPhone sexy is timeless with the perfect five and the droid gets a 4.3 next round is navigation the Droid is bringing a responsive touchscreen a navigation pad and a physical keypad now even if the keys are described as flat and slippery by Kent Bonnie says you'll get used to them the Android OS 2.0 has a minimal learning curve and it's a lot more customizable plus I love the notifications pull down no one can deny the iPhone is still the easiest and most elegant OS to use navigation is smooth as butter pinchy may be subtle but it's a feature you'll miss on the Droid and there's no other phone that my three-year-old niece and I can both use the iPhone gets the edge here with another perfect 5 but the joint isn't too far off with a 4.7 so after averaging two rounds the iPhone rocks a perfect score and the Droid trails by half the point next round the secret both bones are packed with core features like 3G Wi-Fi GPS and Bluetooth so what really stands out the Droid brings it's faster flavor of 3G EVDO Rev a it's a multitasker and there's more customizations with the Android OS native exchange support with a unified mailbox for multiple accounts turn-by-turn directions in Google Maps with a voice search that left me impressed Academy of Sciences plus a user replaceable battery and their tethering feature will be available before the iPhones now that's a whole bunch but the iPhone is no chump either the App Store is lightyears ahead of the Droid and it enhances the iPhone exponentially exchange support is here cut copy and paste is better implemented and turn-by-turn Google Maps are said to be coming soon but having the ability to roam the world on GSM networks is a huge benefit this one was close but the Droid just edges out the iPhone with a perfect score in round 3 and the iPhone gets a 4.7 next round is web browsing to multimedia the droids browser is very good with its thumbnail bookmarks but overall it's still a step below sorry it has a better 5 megapixel camera with flash the Amazon Marketplace is solid and its media player is pretty basic but capable now syncing your media to the device is a clunky drag-and-drop experience plus standard mpeg-4 files that played flawlessly on the iPhone chugs and had audio sync issues on the Droid Safari is still the best mobile browser that separates it from any smartphone ESPN and CNN mobile sites display streaming media on the iPhone but they did it on the Droid multimedia on the iPhone is unmatched with the top notch video player and video quality that still makes to say wow even though you're locked into iTunes the syncing process is seamless with a huge library of content to access now the judges all agree in this round the iPhone lands another five and the Droid gets a respectable four so after four rounds the iPhone leaves by four tenths of a point but this my friends is far from over the final round that decides at all it's all quality and performance the droid is on Verizon and it's called quality delivers with a clear signal on both sides of the call speakerphone sounded great - and it's 3G is faster and more reliable even outside of San Francisco and it delivers longer battery life for calls the iPhones call quality on AT&T isn't horrible but it's not great either there's more background noise and we all know about those drop calls its 3G has improved in some areas but Verizon still performs better battery life has improved from previous phones but the big killer for me I dialed the iPhone from my droid side-by-side and the iPhone didn't even ring yeah the droid lands the biggest blow this prize fight in the final round with a perfect 5 and the iPhone gets a three point three so let's average out all five rounds and in a battle where the iPhone was sitting pretty the Droid fought back in a final round that would make Rocky Balboa proud leaving us tied at four point six points a piece now that is what I call a fight so you know we can't walk away like this and we're gonna have to go to a tiebreaker and that's the number of rounds won so check out the breakdown people but after a truly epic battle the iPhone wins the tiebreaker three rounds to two and is your prize buy it winner these are two really impressive phones and there's no losers here but this prize fight really shows us that the Droid excels as a phone and the iPhone 3GS stands out as a multimedia phone which phone ends up in your pocket is up to you i'm brian tom thanks for watching and we'll catch you guys next time on another epic prizefight