Motorola Droid review round-up

On Thursday, a week ahead of the Nov. 6 release date, tech bloggers issued their first reviews of the Motorola Droid, a smartphone powered by Verizon Wireless and Google’s Android 2.0 operating system. So how does the Droid stack up against, say, the BlackBerry Storm 2? As always, it depends on whom you ask.

Early tests of the Droid have been largely positive, with reviewers praising the Droid's navigation capabilities, its full QWERTY keyboard, and its lush screen display, which bests the iPhone in terms of resolution. Over at Gizmodo, Matt Buchanan says there is "something weirdly refreshing about [the] straightforwardly utilitarian design" on the Droid:

The 3.7-inch display, packed with pixels, looks simply amazing. Text is ridiculously crisp, thanks to a 854x480 resolution that makes for 267ppi. (The iPhone is 163ppi.) Seriously, looking at my inbox is kinda making me drool. Besides clarity, touch response seems dead on. The keyboard works way better than it looks. It appears flat, but there's a slight bump to every key that, combined with the soft rubber texture, just works.

At CNET, Kent German and Bonnie Cha call the Droid "a real competitor to Apple's device." They are particularly jazzed about the Android 2.0 operating system, which they say meshes very well with a range of desktop programs, including Office programs:

Perhaps one of the top highlights of Android 2.0 is the expanded capabilities of the personal information management tools, including e-mail, calendar, and contacts. The Droid now offers native Microsoft Exchange synchronization out of the box for e-mail, calendar, and contacts, in addition to support for Gmail and POP3 and IMAP accounts.

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