The man who created smartphones, Martin Cooper, has the top knowledge on cell phones and he chooses to use a Motorola Droid. Is it just for marketing purposes ? The Droid has both a nice screen and a nice keyboard, backed up by lots of power and a great operating system. It is definitely the “cream of the crop” as far as smartphones go. Martin Cooper was probably dreaming of this twenty years ago.

The screen is luscious and bright. The resolution is way up there at 480 by 854 pixels. It is a very respectable 3.7 inches in size. It also has one of the highest number of colors you can get in a smartphone at 16.7 million colors. It performs all the “tricks” that a smartphone of this stature should be able to do. Multitouch allows you to pinch and zoom ( with android version 2.1 ), an accelerometer allows you to view the screen at vertical or horizontal angles and a proximity sensor shuts it down automatically when you are not using it. There are no negative surprises with the display.

Motorola Droid

The inside workings of the Motorola Droid are just as impressive. It has a 600 megahertz processor, 133 megabytes of internal storage and 256 megabytes of RAM. It connects to four different GSM bands and two on HSDPA for voice communication. For data communication there is everything you would need, except infrared, which people hardly use anyway. Wi-Fi is available in the “B” and “G” modes. Bluetooth connections have one protocol, the v2.1, with A2DP. The web browser connects to the web and give a good rendition of web pages. The browser is the WebKit model, which is a high quality browser with a good bit of speed. 

The one thing that has rejuvenated Motorola is the all-important operating system in their new phones. The Droid was the first phone to use the android 2.0 version. It should already have been updated to the 2.1 version. This operating system is three-mile-island hot, and has got to be the biggest buzz in the mobile world right now. It gains around 333 new applications per day. Why all the fuss ? It is simple, you can get it for free and it is just as good as other operating systems in smartphones. You can save money, improve productivity, track your contacts ( literally, using GPS ) and even download slightly illegal things. It also is able to wipe all the personal information from the phone with a pre-arranged text message. This is for those who lose or have their Droid stolen.

The camera on the Motorola Droid takes great pictures and has five megapixels of power. It comes with all the goodies you need with digital zoom, geotagging, LED flash, autofocus and white balance control. The camera also takes video at a very nice 24 frames per second. The maximum length of a regular video is thirty minutes. The maximum for an MMS video-message is thirty seconds.

In real-life testing the Droid is right up there in speed and web browsing capabilities. It can load the CNN web page in seventeen seconds. The keyboard is manufactured to high quality standards as is the rest of the phone. If you have gotten accustomed to high call quality with Motorola phones you will not be disappointed with the Droid. The Droid weighs 170 grams or six ounces if you are in the United States. That is more than most smartphones, but it is still thin; just over half an inch or 14 millimeters. The only negative thing that can be mentioned is that the battery runs out quickly. With all the power the Droid shows, that is a forgivable trait. The overall rating for this smartphone is very high. If Martin Cooper can be happy with a Motorola Droid, it is highly likely you will be also.

Not at all, especially for a phone that is going for about $200 with a  two year contract. This is a phone that will get a lot of people excited, and as you can see, it already is having this effect on people – they love it, it is getting great reviews, and why not? After all, it has everything a phone user would want, and with the advent of Google Android as a platform, you will have more open-ended applications then you could possibly know what to do with!

Motorola Droid

It does seem like Google and its baby, the Android platform, have claimed victory this time. In a market where competition is fierce for an OS worth keeping, everyone needs everything that they can get to keep rolling, and Google has proved, once again, that it can handle the strain of an open-ended operating system for a major handset.

So, whether or not you choose to try the new Motorola Droid, one thing is for sure -  if you do, you will not regret it. Is it the best phone out there for the price? Maybe – but who knows? There is way too much to take into consideration so just finding a phone that you LIKE the best is what you need to worry about.