HTC Eris vs. Motorola Droid

Have you developed an opinion on the droid or droid Eris yet? That was the question I just got asked on twitter by makegood. This is the 100 time I have been asked about the two phones since I got my hands on them a month ago. After using both for a while now. I will go into detail with full review. As always you can just go to the bottom-line and read my one sentence opinion if you don’t want to read how I came to that thought.

The Droid is a big at 4.56 by 2.36 by .54 inches and 5.96 ounces. A 5-megapixel camera. It has a very nice 3.7-inch, 854-by-480 LCD capacitive touch screen. Below the huge screen are four light-up, touch-sensitive buttons. There is also the pointless lip with the microphone on it. I got amazing 6 hours, 2 minutes of talk time. Repeat talk time. That means everything else was turned off. No Wi-Fi, no data using widgets. I got 5 hours and 20 minutes of normal use. If you are a power user you will get 3 hours and 50 minutes before your battery bar goes to 2. Yes that does suck and is the only flaw in a great phone. Droid is the fastest Android phone in the market. This is the first Android phone with an ARM Cortex-A8 processor, the same Cortex-A8 that powers the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre. [Side bar: So why no multi running apps apple?] The big screen is the best I have seen on a phone. Just like the iPhone, the Droid’s screen rotates when you turn it. But unlike the iPhone web pages load up very fast thanks to Verizon’s great network. Too be fair though Droid does not do Flash. The QWERTY keys are a little too flat and small. They seemed like an afterthought of function rather than design. The Droid is not the greatest voice phone but quality was still acceptable. The Droid runs Android 2.0 but it should be called Google 2.0. That means to get the best use of the phone you must have a Google account. The phone does a good job of walking you though the setup. Google & Verizon relies on the tech-savvy customers to turn the Droid their own phone. Out of the box will be a learning curve but it is worth the time.

The Droid Eris a clone of the HTC Hero. Nothing that really separates it from the pack except the name and the company it is now on. While both the Eris and Hero have a 3.2-inch, 480-by-320 pixel screen, the Droid Eris supports 262,000 colors while the myTouch 3G has just 65,000 colors. The phone is slow when you stand it up next to the Droid it is like comparing a NES to a Wii. Years behind the competition. The Droid Eris has a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM 7600 CPU running Android 1.5. The Eris has a 5.0-megapixel camera that lacks a flash, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.0; includes a GPS receiver; and supports the 800MHz and 1900MHz bands on the Verizon Wireless network. It also has a standard headset jack, something the myTouch does not.
The Bottom Line:

Get a Motorola Droid if you are in the market for a new toy and avoid the Eris at all cost but if you are business person and love your Blackberry just wait for the BlackBerry Curve2. I’m not a Blackberry person but even I want one. I know it was not real VS. That would be unfair fight. Droid would win hands down with a knockout.