Gadgetory

hey guys john r Ettinger here with two of the hottest smartphones for Verizon Wireless the Motorola Droid and the blackberry storm2 we're gonna put these CDMA kalaiy as head-to-head in the series of tests covering browser and browser speed text entry customization navigation apps and then a few other little features as we go select to jump into something that I use the most on any mobile device the browser these are both running on Verizon Wireless is same 3G EVDO Rev a network each with about three to four bars of service we're going to load the same webpage over 3G and I'll show you how to navigate works then we're gonna load the Samboy page again over Wi-Fi so you guys can see really which one's faster or slower let's go ahead and get started we're gonna load TechnoBuffalo comm on each this has been loaded on both phones so it'll be a test of a site that you visit on a regular basis this is a pretty text rich site so it should be a decent comparison let's go ahead and open it up on each alright it's in a history there let's get it in the history here as well okay and try and hit these both at the same time and we'll get started ok and we are off on each device you can if you want to monitor the progress you can see the yellow bar across on the Droid and the blue bar across on the bottom of the blackberry storm clearly the Droid jumped out to an early lead fact the page is almost already loaded you can start reading and navigating through it's not quite done yet and the storm has yet to really even render the page the Droid is already done in the storm is still loading so while the storm is still loading I'll show you how navigation works on the Motorola Droid clearly showing that that has the faster browser rendering close you wondering it's based on WebKit the same browser that's found on the iPhone so navigation is done really just with your finger since both are using capacitive touchscreens scroll to anywhere you'd like if you find a bit of text that you'd like to read you can zoom in in one of two ways you can either double tap and that'll zoom it in or you can take advantage of the zoom down below here with a plus or minus magnifying glass and the storm2 is still loading so we'll zoom out using that magnifying glass we just talked about one of the things that I always check when I view mobile devices is how quickly the page renders as I scroll from the storm2 just finished well not you see that checker pad and as you go through showing the vise and the processor can't keep up with your scrolling that's nothing that you see here on a motorola droid really keeps up and you get sort of physic scrolling so as you flick your screen you flick your finger rather it keeps going there is no multi-touch for pinching zooming here now again all your zooming is done either by double tapping or using the magnifying glass but a renders page is very smoothly and cleanly and I've been very impressed with the browser on the motorola droid you see rich HTML websites and of course it has an accelerometer so you turn the device you can view it in landscape or portrait turn it the way that's meant to be there you can view it in landscape or portrait makes it nice and easy to read size and it back up it's got a very quick rotation speed let's take a look at the storm and see how the paté renders and you can see them head to head the Droid clearly renders pages a little bit better brightness on each of these devices has been turned down so you can see this on camera this is also done via flick scrolling although there was that sort of delay that I was talking about it's not quite caught up all the way as I'm scrolling unfortunately keep going and it's still taking a little bit of time so zooming is done very much in the same way as it's done on the droid you can double tap to zoom in on some text takes a bit of a second to render can double tap to zoom in a little bit more a little bit more or we've got that same hourglass functions on the bottom the plus and the minus I go ahead and zoom out and zooming BlackBerry's been known for fantastic email their email services what's kept to think rim going their blackberry push services it is unbelievable but they are not known for their browser and the storm to is really no exception the browser definitely lacks behind the smart phone competitors in this case on the motorola droid so let's do the same speed test over Wi-Fi and see if that helps at all so Wi-Fi has been turned on and enabled and of course we're connected to the same network so let's see if Wi-Fi helps the speed of the storm or not and again we're gonna load TechnoBuffalo calm good search okay it's there okay and we're off on each now the storm to has been much faster than it was on 3G but certainly not able to keep up with the Droid which is almost already fully loaded it's not appeared to be even that big a difference between the Wi-Fi speeds and the 3G speeds so it's already done now on the Droid and same old story still loading up on the storm navigation of course is the same as what we just saw and as I scroll through there's no page loading time it's already there so while we wait for the storm to load I can tell you a little bit of a story because I think we might be here a while I'm starting to get to see some images you can already view some text you can see the Wi-Fi is turned on it's got the Wi-Fi signal up there and it's still loading so that just goes to show you that if browser is important to you the BlackBerry is not the way to go it does have a usable browser but certainly cannot keep up with the likes of the Droid and we are almost done so in the interest of brevity here I'm gonna cut this short because who knows how long we're gonna be waiting for the storm to to load let's go ahead and move on to the next series of tests finally finished up text entry so text entry is done in two ways on the motorola droid but go ahead and open up a new message here it's done either via on-screen virtual keyboard which comes up in portrait or via the full QWERTY keyboard which is down below so I should preface this with saying that I don't really use either of these devices on a regular basis so I'm not used to keyboards on either so there should be a fair test however the as you use these will become more accustomed you'll probably get a little bit of increased accuracy so let's start with the soft keyboard on the droid it's relatively spacious and quite nicely laid out and as you move your fingers over the keys you can see what letter that you want to type let's go ahead and start typing a message and I'll do my typical this is a test message and see how it works and you do get some auto correction as you go so this is a test not bad using the on-screen keyboard let's try it with the QWERTY keyboard now the quartic keyboard here is interesting there's a lot of real estate space that's being taken up by this d-pad the keys aren't really rounded or domed at all so it's very hard to feel separation I'm not the biggest fan of the QWERTY keyboard on the droid but let's go ahead and try it again and see how it works and we'll type once again this is a test so not so accurate this is a Ted's nest like Snoop Dogg here I think it's something that you would get used to but the physical keyboard is definitely a little bit of a downfall of the drawing a little bit of a disappointment certainly I prefer physical keyboard over a soft keyboard but this is not one of the better implementations that I've seen so let's take a look how text-entry works on the blackberry storm2 now let's use a unique technology called sure press that you might have seen or heard from the storm one it's got a capacitive touchscreen on top but this whole screen actually clicks almost like one big button now on the storm one there is only one sensor so the screen would just click in one spot so if you're trying to type something that was in the corners you'd have a pretty hard time trying to get the accuracy with what you wanted or even getting that clicked register at all the storm to really improves on that technology something called PCO technology that it uses essentially what you got to know is now it has four sensors one in each corner meaning it's much more accurate and because there isn't just one sensor the time you have to wait for the screen to come back up is much improved over the storm one a lot of original owners lamented that they had a wait a very long time to type on the soft keyboards that came on the storm and that was a real big turn-off so let's see if that's improved we're gonna go ahead and open up a new message here as well and see how it works okay so you've got a few keyboard options here right now you've got a sure type keyboard similar to what's found on the pearl or the pearl flip it's two keys per letter it doesn't learn as you type let's go ahead and try this is a test on this keyboard and you'll see and you'll hear the screen is actually clicking as I'm going so a little bit of an error but not too bad this is attack dud is at-at I think you would get used to this this keys are big and they glow a blue color as you put your finger over it if you go ahead and rotate it you're going to get a full QWERTY keyboard here in landscape and this was probably one of the biggest is employment of the storm one let's see if it's been improved with the storm - I'll try typing the same thing this is a test and I was able to type that actually perfectly so if you have to compare soft keyboards I think that the storm - is actually better than what's found on the Motorola Droid I even would go as far to say that's the soft keyboard the full QWERTY keyboard is even a little bit easier to use than the actual QWERTY the physical one found on the Droid I think that you probably get used to the Droid is you use it more but just enough first week usage the storm tooth keyboard is quite easy to use and a huge improvement over the original so let's go ahead and move on to customization one of the nice things about Android is that it's an open-source operating system meaning you've got the capability to do whatever you like with it this is a Google experience phone look at the back it says with Google so that means there is not a skin on it so nothing like the Sense UI that you've seen on the HTC Hero however you got a full array of customization options you can add widgets to the homescreen as you can see here I've got a YouTube widget with a OneTouch upload I've got a power management widget I've got a Google search widget with Google Voice I can go ahead and hold down the screen I can get a ton more widgets and customize this any way I like I've got C right there I've got three home screens to choose from to put things anywhere I'd like I can drag icons from my menu tray anywhere and put them somewhere on the home screen if I choose so I currently customize what shows up where it shows up and how you interact with it now you can do sort of the similar thing with the blackberry storm and the black very OS in particular if you go ahead and hit the BlackBerry button you can view the full menu items now you can move things around and change the order but you can't control how many icons show up here on this short homescreen you are stuck at 8 however you can determine which goes where you can arrange these icons any way you'd like navigation is done by the very familiar blackberry buttons that you've seen on BlackBerry devices for years past send button the BlackBerry button which pulls up a menu back button in the end button and of course your finger and on the droid it's done by a back a menu a home button and then there's a search button as well and that also uses a capacitive there's a little bit of haptic feedback when you touch these so it feels a little bit different than just touching the screen these buttons on the BlackBerry have that same sure press click as you feel as you push it so you definitely know that you're pushing a button so let's go ahead and move on to the next series of our tests and we'll talk about app since both have their own app stores so on Android we're looking at the Android Marketplace and it was revamped for Android 1.6 the Droid is of course running Android 2.0 the first device to actually run 2.0 go ahead and reopen that back up let's take a look at how it looks so you've got it arranged by a series of categories we'll go ahead and just pick one we'll pick comics and you can see that mostly the applications are relatively cheap and there are a ton of free ones that should not the best category to pick let's pick entertainment so here I am now under top paid can pick top free one of the nice thing about Android Marketplace is that most of these are free applications did you go ahead and open one up so here's one called funny jokes you get a little bit about the app you get some screenshots of what it looks like you get some user comments and you get some more about the developer we can actually email a developer or the developers web page directly which is kind of cool and for one to install it you just go ahead and push install BlackBerry has blackberry app world which works in pretty much the same way go ahead and open it up although I have found that apps in blackberry app world are little bit more expensive than those found in the Android Marketplace so your main app home screen you can scroll through and see what the new apps are it's a very clean interface you can go through and view the same categories that we saw before so I'll hit entertainment give a second to queue up and we'll pick gadgets big gadget guy and this is still connected to the Wi-Fi network so let's just pick one we'll pick big tin can and Buzz me so this is a free application loading up so you can download it directly you can see reviews recommend it screenshots you have to click buttons to do that so if you wanted to click a screenshot you go ahead and flick screw flip through rather and see them I prefer the user interface on the Android Marketplace over BlackBerry App World but it's really gonna come down to personal preference I found that things here are a little slower to load in BlackBerry's app world and there are many more applications in the Android Marketplace so again you know it's gonna really come down to which one you like more so guys there a ton of categories that we could have covered here in this review but interest of brevity I had to cover some of the ones that I thought were most prevalent if we want to talk about email for example there's nothing better than a blackberry blackberry has really been then known for its pushing my capabilities it works well and it works almost all the time it's very little downtime we could have talked about camera and the five megapixels megapixel sensor on the droid versus the three on the storm2 or how the droid can capture DVD quality video even but again we're just a little bit short on time so the final decisions gonna come down to you personally I had to pick one based on my needs I would go with the Motorola Droid hands-down but decision is going to be in your hands for exclusive content check me out at Twitter twitter.com slash John for Lakers and to get all your tech news and reviews check out TechnoBuffalo comm links to all of those will be in the sidebar I'm John Rhett enger' and I'll see you guys in the next video