Gadgetory

hey guys John Rhett enger' here as we get closer to the holiday season there are a ton of hot Wireless handhelds either out or coming out and probably two of the hottest of the hot as the iPhone 3GS and the Motorola Droid the iPhone 3GS is running on AT&T network here in the US and the Droid is running on Verizon's so we're gonna put these two Ghoulia's head-to-head we're gonna cover browser and speed text entry customization scrolling navigation apps and maps and a few other little things along the way so let's go ahead and get started the first thing you're gonna see when you want to look at your device it's going to be the unlock screen the unlock screen on the iPhone is pretty simple slide to unlock there's no other functionality there you just slide to unlock the unlock screen on the droid is pretty similar but has a few tricks up its sleeve so if you want to unlock it it simply slide to unlock just like you did on the iPhone but if you want to change the ring style from vibrant to ring or vice versa you can actually go the other direction sound is on do it one more time sound is off kinda cool this is something that'll be found on Android 2.0 let's go ahead and unlock it and let's continue with our tests I think the first thing that everybody wants to see is why our browser speed and how the browser's work on both devices so these are each running on the same Wi-Fi network so it'll be a very fair test of speed well test 3G speeds of each afterwards but just know that the running on the same network so it should be very fair we're gonna load TechnoBuffalo on each so it has been bloated on both devices before so this will be a fair test of visiting a website that you check out on a regular basis so first we'll get it queued up here on the iPhone 3GS TechnoBuffalo hit the browser here as well and there it is in bookmarks so we'll go ahead and try and launch it at the same time and see how we do okay they are both off and again connected over Wi-Fi you can see the progress bar across the top of the Droid so we can already start viewing the page on the iPhone but it's not quite complete yet there it is on the Droid and the Droid is done and the iPhone is still loading which is actually very impressive the hardware on the Droid it is quite nice and the iPhone now just finished up let's take a look at how the browsing navigation work on each so if you want to scroll through obviously you can use your finger and both have capacitive touch screens and one of the things I like about the iPhone is that you never get that checkerboard like the screen is refreshing as you're going down the content always seems to be there if you want to zoom it you can do it one of two ways you can either double tap to zoom in or it can use take advantage of the multi-touch capabilities the phone has and use two fingers to pinch and zoom to wherever you'd like notice right here there's a youtube video I'd go ahead and hit play and they'll open the iPhones built-in youtube lighter won't play it on the screen since both phones don't have flash but when you've done viewing the video take you right back certainly the phone's got an accelerometer so when you turn it into portrait you can view the page that way as well let's see how the Droid stacks up certainly it looks very similar move that a little bit over scrolling it's also very smooth no checkerboard pattern there if you want to zoom in you can do it one of two ways as well you can double tap similar what we've just seen and it zooms in double tap again to zoom out you don't have multi-touch gestures here zooming is primarily done via navigation on the bottom you've got two of our glasses plus or minus certain thing I prefer the multi-touch but this is a very nice implementation and it really works quite well and the YouTube videos here will play much the same way I can hit play it'll take me to the built-in YouTube player and come back I'd say really the only difference between the browsers is the multi-touch capabilities on the iPhone the browser on Android 2.0 is fantastic if you like what you get on the iPhone you're gonna like it equally I think on Android just need to get used to the lack of pinch or zoom if you're coming from an iPhone if you're not used to it you're never gonna know the difference browser for browser I think that these things really keep up with well with each other the speed of Android on Wi-Fi and the speed versus the iPhone 3GS you saw that is a difference so we're gonna have to call this one I think a little bit of a draw because of the multi-touch capabilities on the iPhone but the speed of the droid it's really going to come down to which one you prefer which one your network of choices so right now I'm going to go ahead and turn off Wi-Fi on each and we're going to run the same set of tests over the 3G networks okay next we're gonna test 3G browser speeds of both devices I've got five bars of 18t 3G and I've got five bars of Verizon 3G so it should be a relatively fair comparison keep in mind this is gonna vary depending on your 3G speeds on where you are but here in Southern California you can least get a sense we're gonna load up engadget.com and again this is a site that has been put on both devices so again it'll be a test of a site that you guys on a regular basis so it hits load here and we'll hit go here try and get at the same time all right and both are off you can see the yellow bar on the Droid and the blue bar on the iPhone they already started viewing content on the iPhone but not yet on the droids there it loads up on the droid looks like both are just about at the same point alright the iPhone has finished and now the droid is still loading and now the droid is done so over 3G to 3G looks like AT&T speeds were just a little bit faster and the navigation is going to be exactly the same as I just showed you I think browser to browser again it's a very very very close I think that's the browser on the droid it's actually fantastic and much better than the browser on Android 1.6 that you'd find on other Android devices so let's go ahead and move on to the next round and we'll make this text entry let go to the home screen of each so we'll start again here with the IFO and I'm going to go ahead and open up a new email message so text entry is really done only one way on the iPhone via virtual keyboard either in portrait or landscape and before I get into speeds and how easy it is to type I should say that I am an iPhone owner and I've been using every iteration of the iPhone so I'm very familiar with the keyboard on the iPhone the Droid certainly just came out so I have not had a chance to become as accurate with it as I am with the iPhone I do want to give a little bit of a caveat there in all fairness so you can type anything that you'd like and you can also type as well in portrait I'll do a real quick test you guys can see with the keyboards the on-screen keyboards look like as you select a letter you can move your finger around you can see what letter you're typing I think that's a very handy feature and Apple's autocorrect is really quite accurate so just in landscape I'll do a quick test and I'll just type but this is a test so that was pretty quick again I am familiar with the keyboard we'll try that in landscape again nice and quick so we'll open up a new email on the droid and we'll see how text entry works as well on this okay so I've got a new entry field here and you can enter text in one of two ways either using the on-screen virtual keyboard or the slide-out QWERTY so I'll go ahead and open up the virtual keyboard and I can't say I've used the virtual board on older Android devices one-point-six devices and speed and accuracy has really been improved with 2.0 to get the same sort of thing as you move your finger over you can see the letters and it does have autocorrect and recomendation here so I will type again this is a test and we'll see how it works so you can see as I typed our letter down below that give me suggestions for that like so a little bit of an accuracy and I can double tap the spacebar for a period but I did get this is a test now one of the nice things about the Droid and I think one of the biggest drawing points is that you don't have to rely on the virtual keyboard if you don't want to because it has a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard now this is an interesting chorded keyboard and some questionable decisions were made by Motorola's design team you've got a pretty spacious QWERTY keyboard but there's a lot of space and real estate that's been taken up by this d-pad it's a five-way keypad you can actually select it in the middle but the keys you can see angle it up they're not really raised there's no doming to them so it's hard to feel a difference between each key I think the more you use a keyboard in order to get used to it let's go ahead and type out this is a test again on the QWERTY keyboard and see how it goes this is a text not a test so a little bit hard to get used to I think like one of those things the more you use it the more you are going to get used to it I am one of the few that probably one of the many rather that prefer a physical keyboard to a QWERTY so I got to give this round slowly - to the droid I think the best implementation I've ever seen of a on-screen virtual keyboard is the iPhone but there's very little substitute for having actual tangible keys and you've got the option for using the on-screen keyboard for quick text entry it's not bad on the droid it's not the best physical keyboard that I've seen I think that crowds got to go to the tilts - or the touch pro2 depending on where you are but it is a very very very good implementation so the next round is customization now the iPhone is known for being very closed and not offering a lot of customization at least within Apple's confines you can configure your homescreen and arrange your icons that's really the the biggest level of customization that you get droid and Android in particular offers a high level of customization certainly you can customize the icons any way you want move them around just as you could on the iPhone but you can also put on here these widgets which you can see I've got a few here this one is YouTube this one controls my device manager and Wireless this is one for Facebook and there it's fun of different options to go ahead and hit the home screen widgets and there are more that are being added pretty regularly and you can pick whichever one you'd like one of the things about Android is it's completely open source so you can customize this any way that you'd like so from customization certainly it's not hard to be Apple since they don't really offer a high level of customization so this also has to go to the droid so means there are a ton of rounds that you could pick or i could skew it one way or skew it the other but I'm trying to pick the rounds that I think most people would be want to use and most people are really the most curious about selects let's talk about scrolling one of the things that touchscreen phones and one of the things that I've seen with Windows Mobile is as you scroll you get that checkerboard the screen can't refresh fast enough to get to where you want to go and I think that you can illustrate scrolling very easily with contacts I'm gonna open up contacts on the iPhone I'm going to show you how the scrolling works it's very quick and is kinetic as I let go it keeps scrolling and I never get a checkerboard pattern the processor keeps up with everything that I want let's take a look at contacts on the droid and see if it does the same thing camera focusing and it definitely keeps up just as fast and it's got the same kinetic scrolling as well it's got a big bar across the side we can navigate to the letter as you like so scrolling equally fast on each note processor lag and it can certainly keep up with any of the scrolling that you'd want to do this one I think is a draw so next let's move on to maps and I think that this one is something that people really want to see on Android 2.0 because as you might know or maybe you don't know Android 2.0 offers free turn-by-turn directions which I'm going to demonstrate in an upcoming video it's just going to be an overview so we're going to focus on the native map applications that come Google Maps on each so let's go ahead and open it up on the iPhone so they both have GPS so you can really zoom in and see where you're at and sort of get a better sense of you know what you're looking at you can view by traffic you can view my map satellite hybrid or list you can get live traffic and you can do routes and they'll tell you where to go it's not you know certainly turn-by-turn like a Garmin or a Nuvi but it will give you driving directions it'll tell you when to turn and you can follow yourself along is the little blue dot and blue pen moves along and it seems it's web-enabled the maps are always getting updated the points of interest and such you're always getting updated and you can search and call for phone numbers right from the screen so there are sort of two map functionalities found on the droid first we'll take a look at Google Maps which certainly compare below what we're looking at right now so you can zoom in or zoom out just as you could on the browser with that plus or minus again you can use multi-touch with the iPhone to zoom in or out so one thing that this has is a thing called layers let me show you what these layers are open up the menu and you see there's one right there called layers now this lets you add 12 layers over your map so you can add traffic you can add satellite you can even add Google Latitude to see where your friends are or even Wikipedia to learn about landmarks that you may be walking by or driving by and there are more layers so you can view your map driven transit lines if you want to see where the subways and stuff go I'll show you what that looks like we'll go back to Maine Maine and old Joe a traffic so it give you a sense of what we're live traffic is where I'm at right now on a Sunday afternoon things are pretty clear Google map for Google Maps functionality about the same you get a few more options with the layers that you don't get with the iPhone but I think that eventually those options will come over to the iPhone but what the Droid offers that the iPhone does not is turn-by-turn directions similar to what you get on a Garmin or a Nuvi and I think eventually this will come to the iPhone but right now it's only found on Android 2.0 and the Droid is the only Android 2.0 device so we'll hit car home and you can use voice search to pick a location and you get free well turn-by-turn directions I'll show you very quickly what this looks like and again in the limit of time I can't do the best so I'll cancel that out search South Coast Plaza that's a local mall by me so there's South Coast Plaza I can go ahead and hit get directions and it'll start routing me to where I want to go eat in the browser or Maps and again it'll be a full demonstration of this and how it works but you do get a very robotic lady's voice telling you to turn left on actually give you the street name so the last category we're going to look at is the App Store and the App Store on the iPhone you see it everywhere there's an app for that there's an app for that because there really is an app for that the App Store is huge and growing and there are a ton of free applications I think this is one of the things that separate the iPhone from the rest of the pack however Android Marketplace has gotten a redesign and is really becoming almost as full-featured there are a bit more applications in the iPhone but to really make up for that mostly applications in the marketplace are actually free we're getting a phone call here we'll ignore that it's rotate to ignore and as you go you know you'll see that most these are free so app for app I think that there are more in the obviously Apple App Store but there are more free options in Android so it's really going to come down to personal preference so in conclusion I think both these devices really are fantastic and offer some functionality not seen in others if your get better a teensy reception I think the iPhone 3GS is better what better way to go if you get better price and exceptional you can pick up the Droid and I feel like you're losing anything you're gonna get a fantastic device if you get both good reception for each device it's gonna really come down to which one you like you know I think the iPhone OS becoming a little bit stale so if you're getting bored of the iPhone and your contracts up you know picking up a droid you're not going to lose anything you're going to get a increased functionality with the keyboard turn-by-turn directions and they're going to get the openness of the Android platform so guys hope you enjoyed this comparison head-to-head action of the iPhone versus the Motorola Droid for exclusive content check me out at Twitter twitter.com slash John for Lakers and to get all of your tech news check out TechnoBuffalo comm links to both of those will be in the sidebar I'm John rector and I'll see you in the next video buh-bye