Two Droids: Verizon HTC Droid Eris and Motorola Droid

one thing that should be mentioned is that android is opensource and 2.0 will be available for EVERY android phone for FREE, not just the verizon droid, yes the verizon droid is the only phone to be released with the new 2.0, but within a month or so the update will be available to all.

There has been some misinformation floating around. The Droid Eris is $99.99 with a contract and a $100 mail-in rebate. The Droid (original one) is $199.99 with a $100 mail-in rebate. These are prices according to Verizon stores both in LA and in Orange County, Ca.

I preferred the Eris over the Droid, in the short time I had to play with it. It is very, very fast. The on-screen keyboard is set up as a traditional QWERTY keyboard with correct spacing, though I did find it not as accurate as say, an older enV Touch 2. The Droid also scored poorly with me in on-screen keyboard typing, and its physical keyboard is so tiny, flat, non-responsive, non-feedback, and layed out badly, is atrocious.

The Eris is a smaller, more attractive package to be sure, where the Droid is a rectangular brick that is a little uncomfortable to hold. And more uncomfortable to type on (using the physical keyboard).

The screen on the Droid I found to be very nice. Very high quality. However, with a screen of this size, I feel that the extra resolution is wasted. The Eris only has a QVGA screen, but it is very smooth, very sharp, and it looks brighter than the Droid.

One major downside to the Droid, and this may have simply been a couple of bad phones that I got to look at, but the capacitive touchscreen responded easily to touches along the edge of the screen. On the actual framework of the screen on the side, I was able to activate touch functions of items that were already close to the edge of the actual screen. I was not able to find this flaw with the Eris.

The drawback to the Eris is that users will have to wait until HTC ports over their SenseUI to Android 2.0 so they can upgrade their devices. However, multi-touch in Android 1.5 on the Eris is a really nice feature that should have been included as a standard in Android 2.0, not just an optionally supported function that noone has included yet.

I am strongly considering moving to Verizon from T-Mobile. I own a Sidekick LX (first gen, not the 2009 model), and I’m getting sick of all the issues with the Danger servers, and then T-Mobile services issues preventing calls out or in, or, whoops, sorry, you can’t send text messages. I am going back to look at the Eris in more detail and will probably pick it up over the Droid. I have almost written the Droid off as a much hyped but not-much-delivered device, kind of like the original iPhone (I have never owned an iPhone, however service them and Blackberries at work frequently, so I’ve had extensive experience with them.) My other option was a Blackberry Storm 2, however I got to use one for about 2 hours – yesterday, in fact – and it turned out to be a very frustrating device after about half an hour.

I like my Sidekick for its well layed out features, and its outstanding, unbeatable keyboard with well-spaced keys, excellent tactile feedback and complete accurancy with home key marks. It’s outstandingly fast. I can access any function by using a hot-key (Jump+T for example brings me straight to sms, Jump+W for browser, etc..). But the network is failing. So I’m going to be one of the rats who jumps ship for, likely, an HTC Eris.

Having just gone through the SFGate article, there are a couple of things in there that are just plain wrong, and it was posted yesterday so these should have been edited correctly.

Eris is 99.99, $100 mail-in rebate.
Data is $30 for “Unlimited” internet, INCLUDING Exchange support. Data is $30 for you and I. Data is $45 for Enterprise users, who’s accounts are marked as Business. This is a clearification that Verizon themselves made last Friday on launch-day.
It is compatible with Windows 7.

NOTE: I put “Unlimited” in quotes as I did because there are still some lingering questions about whether or not Verizon actually does give you unlimited data with the aptly-named package, or if it’s actually still a 5GB cap.

I switched from blackberry to android and I couldn’t be happier. I looked at the Eris and the Moto Droid. Not a huge difference in performance but the Eris is more comfortable to use. The slide out keyboard seemed cheap.

I LOVE the Samsung Android epic from Sprint.
No need for improvement…..for perfection.