My Blackberry Curve (8330 on Verizon) decided to call it quits last week, so I was forced to go phone shopping at the worst of times: One week before a major Apple product announcement, and with the Google Nexus One coming to Verizon sometime this quarter.
I purchased a Motorola Droid, probably because I am easily influenced by flashy TV commercials. The Droid has a beautiful screen (protected by Gorilla Glass), amazing GPS navigation capabilities, and a very nice web browsing experience. Heck, you could even use the camera's LED flash as a flashlight. It was a bit heavy, and I didn't love the sliding keyboard, but I could easily overlook those issues.
In practice, however, I found the Droid to be fundamentally unusable as a phone for day-to-day use. For example, hanging up a call could be a 5-step process:
- Hit the power button to wake up the device
- Unlock it by entering a "connect-the-dots"-style password
- Navigate to the home menu
- Press the Phone application icon
- Hit the End Call button on the Phone application
It seemed like the Droid was designed to be a mobile Internet device that could also be used in a pinch to make phone calls. I used it for a day and a half, but then exchanged it for an HTC Droid Eris and haven't looked back.
By most accounts, Eris is the lesser, budget-oriented phone in VZW's Android lineup. Eris currently runs an older version of Android OS (1.5 vs 2.0), has a slower processor, a lower-resolution screen, weaker battery, etc., when compared to the Moto Droid.
But despite its relatively weaker technical specs, I've found Eris to be a far superior user experience to that offered by the Droid. This is due in great part to HTC's Sense UI which builds atop the stock Android interface. The Eris is first and foremost a phone, with physical call send/end buttons. Eris is also thinner, lighter, and less expensive than the Droid. I've found the browser pretty snappy over Wi-Fi, and plenty fast over 3G.
For anyone on Verizon who needs to buy a business-oriented smartphone before the next-gen devices are available (i.e. the Nexus One, BlackBerry Tour2, and possibly the iPhone), don't overlook the Eris.
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