Shop RadioShack for Great GiftsPrizefight: Motorola Droid vs. iPhone 3GS
For many smartphone manufacturers and carriers, the Apple iPhone is the great, white elephant in the room. Though they might not want to acknowledge it, the iPhone has certainly changed the game and for better or worse, it's become the gold standard to which a lot of people compare other touch-screen phones.
While most of the competition might be content to let their products speak for themselves, Verizon has made a bold move by single-handedly calling out the iPhone and AT&T in its iDon't and "There's a map for that" TV commercials. The ads are certainly entertaining to watch, but are they actually true? Did Motorola really create an earth-conquering smartphone in the Droid?
Well, we decided to find out in our own Motorola Droid vs. iPhone 3GS Prizefight and while we won't spoil the ending here, we will say it was our closest smartphone Prizefight ever. Check it out for yourself and be sure to take advantage of our new commenting system right on the Prizefight page to leave your remarks. Apple, Android fanboy/girl alike, we're sure you'll have plenty to say. It all goes down right here.
Bonnie Cha is a senior editor for CNET, covering smartphones and GPS. When she's not testing the latest gadgets, you can find her chasing after her crazy lab or surfing in the chilly waters of Northern California. E-mail Bonnie.
Bonnie Cha reviews the
latest smart phones, PDAs, and GPS devices, helping CNET readers get
their hands on the latest mobile electronics. 
Kent German is CNET's
cell phone editor and has been following the wireless industry for
seven years. He's embarrassed to admit he can name almost any cell
phone he sees on the street. 
Nicole Lee reviews cell
phones and their accessories for CNET, thus satisfying her love for all
things small, shiny, and digital.
I've spent hours now with the droid, and I have to admit, I didn't realize how much I gave up being on AT&T. I miss the app store, but the voice activated search is awesome, and the open source nature of android means there is plenty more coming. I usually don't disagree with the prize fight results, and I'm not suggesting the iPhone isn't still a fantastic handset, but it's not perfect in 3 out of 5 categories by any stretch, and where it counts... it still leaves people screaming "can you hear me now?"
Round 1
Score: 4.3
Two scored it a 4 and one scored it a 5. Key quote from Bonnie, ?(iphone 3gs) . . . design is beginning to bore me.? I suppose its become interesting again in the past few months or maybe it just looks that good compared to the droid. I?ll let you decide.
Round 2 Navigation and Multitasking
Score: 4.0
Key complaint was the lack of the iphone 3gs multitasking.
Round 3 Features
Score: 4.3
This isn?t really comparable any longer as the main complaints with the 3gs were lack of mms, tethering, and turn by turn navigation. I know mms has been added since then and we?re still waiting on tethering, but I?m not sure about the TBT navigation.
Round 4 Web Browsing and Multimedia
Score 5.0
Round 5 Call Quality
Score: 4.0
Reason is obvious. Again perhaps the call quality has gotten worse or just seems worse compared to the droid. Again, I?ll let everybody fight this one out.
Every time the total score is the same, cnet will come out new way to make iphone win.
At the Palm pre vs iphone pricefight, they use the 0.01 decimal points. Now, they use different system. Can I still trust cnet on any review when it seem to bias on particular product all the time?
I think Cnet should address this!
When all your friends are using iPhones & Touches, it finally gives relevance to apps that require related devices. Ubiquity also means lower prices on accessories.
Comparing the iPhone to the Droid in this respect is like comparing a car running on gasoline to one running on natural gas. The infrastructure is an enormous component, and it's not one that you can just fabricate in your smartphone R&D team - it takes years of marketing presence and user loyalty.
Basically one charger will work regardless of manufacturer (a bit like the Android idea but for charging) and 3.5mm jacks are also pretty standard for audio.
music is drag and drop in any format,,and guess what applefans can access itunes with the droid as well.
there is also a great multimedia dock for the droid
it uses an industry "standard" 3.5 headphone jack you could buy at dollar general if you had to.
at my workplace everyone has an iphone , I'm the only one with a droid(eris) and they all >>> love<<< my new droid
and what the future holds for it...!!.
my droid eris cost me $100 and this past weekend they offered buy a droid ..get one free... lets see apple top that !!!!
I want a mobile media GPS device, without a contract or $600 price tag. :/
Alternatively, if it's running Android, The new Google Maps GPS feature could allow you to download certain areas (say the roads around the path of a planned trip) and the locations of gas stations and food stops within a certain distance of that rout when you're connected to the internet, allowing you to take that when offline. If it's got a build in compass and accelerometer (I believe) it should be able to track and guide you from there.
this review is comparing smartphones.(droid and iphone)
mabey try a search on cnet for multimedia devices
This is the way i see it:
Droid Pro's: Verizon Network (it's just gonna work people), Actual Keyboard, Significantly higher resolution screen. I can't believe this isn't being touted more. It's more than TWICE the pixels, meaning better quality video, less zooming required when web-browsing. Also a plus, I don't have to use iTunes.
iPhone: Best App Selection (Android will come in time though). Better web browsing, Multitouch screen..
I can't wait to see if either has a longer battery life, that would be pretty crucial for me too
I DO NOT THINK THIS PRIZEFIGHT WAS FAIR
There see to always be a new strategy to allow the Iphone to win these challenges. As big as new option is Cnet seem to be taking sides AGAIN !
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by spldbrt
November 16, 2009 4:47 PM PST
- Is it really fair to compare the two units, and have one of the categories be "call quality" when it's a well known fact that AT&T has horrible coverage? The poor call quality seems to have more to do with the carriers system than the actual unit. Why doesn't Apple take the exclusive away from AT&T like they did in Canada?? They took it away from Roger's and allowed Bell to carry the Iphone...which is when I got mine, because I was not prepared to switch to Roger's knowing they had poor coverage, no matter how badly I wanted my iphone.
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