Shadow Warrior

The basic structure of the phone is made up of two main pieces: the large,glass display up top,and the slightly longer keyboard lower half. Above,the 3.7-inch screen dominates,almost filling the space edge-to-edge. The keyboard is wide with minimal amount of spacing between the keys. To the right of the four-row QWERTY is a five-way rocker which we honestly took some time getting used to.

What really made us go jelly-kneed was the huge screen. The 3.7-inch screen has a pixel density of 267ppi,and is something I think Id kill for. It just reminded me of how sometimes some of the simpler things in life can be sculpted out with such ease,and how very few people actually manage to do it. The thickness of the Droid is 13.7mm and for people who have a fetish for anything that is sleek this is one device which deserves a mention and a second look.

The heart of the Droid works on an Arm Cortex A8 CPU (a 600MHz,OMAP3430 chip down clocked to 550MHz),256MB of RAM,and 512MB of ROM. If that CPU sounds familiar,it is the chip inside the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre. However,the phone does stutter a lot while doing a lot of basic things like pulling down a window switching applications on the phone. But it is still one of the few android-based phones that do make the phone appear a lot firmer,tighter and speedier.

In the many phones that we have seen recently,the resolution of the 5MP camera is as bad as the first cameras on the Nokia mid-segment phones in the earlier part of this decade. Without beating a lot around the bush,the Droids camera is plain bad. The video recording quality on the other hand is a touch better,but not the best,although it is the lesser of the two evils. Firstly,the camera is slow. And not just slow,it is molasses slow,and when it does start up we almost wish that it didnt. The Android camera application needs more than an overhaul if the guys at Motorola hope to catch and topple over the likes of the I-phone in all departments. The music player,the occasionally unresponsive screen and the lack of basic widgets also add up in the minuses. And,occasionally,the GPS might throw you off track so it would be safer to have a real map or use the vector rule while driving through blind spots in the city.

The introduction of Android 2.0 by Google itself is a big plus for the phone. The Android 2.0 isnt drastically different from the1.5 or 1.6; save for some squeezes that have significant impact. True to their no-nonsense approach,Google hasnt gone for visual flair or wild embellishments for the sake of a few and kept operability at its bare best. Google has added some new fades and cross-application animations,which make the Android seem a bit more contemporary. Additionally,icons and elements have been updated across the board to give the OS a more modern look.
Not the best and definitely not the worst is how Id put the 1400mAh battery,which seems to do decently well. A full charge lasted a decent 11 hours,which included a lot of web browsing,trying to click pictures,recording videos and trying out the Android based applications,which of course I did struggle with initially.

Id give the Droid a thumbs up for the amazing form factor,the big bright screen and the fact that even here in India the Verizon wireless phone had good coverage,which I feel will make this the second best phone after the iPhone. The Android behemoth,which is still growing,will soon become a force to reckon with. Despite the bad camera and not-so-great keyboard,the industrial design and the network make this phone every geeky gadget aficionados dream come true.
The phone is available in the US with a two-year Verizon Wireless contract for $200 and $600 without the contract. It might not usurp the throne of the iPhone yet,but yeah it is around the corner,thats for sure.

What is the Android?
No,its not a human looking robot from the Terminator era,but an operating system developed by Android Inc,currently owned by the Open Handset Alliance.
This mobile device platform,initially developed by the guys at Google,makes use of a modified version of the LINUX Kernel. The Open Handset Alliance aims to develop a platform that will power a plethora of mobile phones of different makes. The Alliance,which bought Adroid from Google,is planning to make it one of the biggest platforms to support mobile devices and also offer along with it a host of APIs (Application Programming Interface) to let third-party developers create their own applications.
The Android versions developed since the Google era has had some interesting names for the updates. For instance,Android version 1.5 was called Cupcake,version 1.6 Donut and the latest version 2.1 the Éclair.