Not an iPhone killer, but Droid X is still a looker

BY RICH JAROSLOVSKY

IN NEW YORK

APPLE’S new-product launches tend to suck the oxygen from anyone who dares to unveil a gadget at around the same time.

Such is the fate of the Droid X, the sequel to the phone that launched Motorola’s comeback effort last year.

The Droid X, which Verizon Wireless and Motorola introduced in the same week as the iPhone 4 and goes on sale next Thursday, probably hasn’t received as much attention as it should.

It lacks the iPhone’s polish and buzz – but if you find yourself repelled rather than attracted by Apple’s gravitational-distortion field, the Droid X is definitely worth a look.

You can’t miss it: The Droid X is huge, one of the largest smartphones I’ve ever used. Its 4.3-inch screen is 16 per cent larger than that of the original Droid, known outside the United States as the Motorola Milestone, which was itself a hefty chunk of hardware. The screen is also 23 per cent bigger than the 3.5-inch display on the iPhone.

Yet, for all its girth, the Droid X is both thinner and lighter than its predecessor and not at all uncomfortable to hold – if your hand is large enough. Mine is, and I found a natural place for my index finger to grasp it, just where the rear of the case flares out to accommodate the 8-megapixel, dual-flash camera.

ONSCREEN KEYBOARD
Motorola accomplished the reductions in weight and thickness by jettisoning the original Droid’s slide-out physical keyboard in favour of an onscreen one that, especially when in landscape mode, is a pleasure to use, thanks to all that display real estate.

Like all Motorola smartphones, the Droid X runs Google’s Android operating system. Android continues to improve in terms of usability and the number of applications available, now a claimed 70,000.

And the Droid X can do some cool things the iPhone can’t. One is to act as a Wi-Fi signal for nearby laptop computers or other devices.

COMBINED SOCIAL CONTENT

The Droid X also makes use of Motorola’s MotoBlur software, which lets you combine content from Facebook, Twitter and other social-networking sites into a single stream.

It also comes with 24GB of storage – the comparably priced iPhone has 16 – and you can expand the capacity to 40GB, where the more expensive iPhone 4 tops out at 32.

It also has a removable battery. A spare will come in particularly handy if you make much use of the power-sucking Mobile Hotspot.

FLASH-FRIENDLY
Not all the battle lines between the Droid X and iPhone 4 have yet been drawn. Google and Motorola are promising that an over-the-air upgrade this year will allow the Droid X to run videos using Adobe Systems’ Flash software, which Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has famously banished from the iPhone.

So, the Droid X provides more than enough features and performance to vault it to the head of the Droid line.

The original Droid was the first smartphone to really challenge the iPhone. In the end, though, it did little to dent Apple’s hegemony.

That’s likely to be the Droid X’s fate too. In today’s much broader field of Android-based devices, it does a lot of things well – but no one thing well enough.

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Source: www.mypaper.com.sg