By John Dodge
What difference does an ounce make? When it comes to smartphones, a lot.
The Droid X made by Motorola and sold by Verizon Wireless is lot of smart phone for 200 bucks: its big 4.3 inch display is brilliant and crisp. The X’s thin design is sleek and a major improvement upon the brick-like profile of its original Motorola Droid. Verizon Wireless loaned me a review unit late last week and I’ve been putting it through its paces.
Droid X
But I give the Droid Incredible (which TDR followers know I loved) from HTC with its smaller 3.7 inch screen and profile a small edge. Given, they are both $200 Verizon smartphones with the usual two year service contract, they beg comparison.
Here’s the weigh-in: The X weighs 5.47 ounces (49 ounces less than original Motorola Droid) versus 4.59 ounces for the Incredible (versus 3.7 ounces for my aging Blackberry Curve). Watching videos on the X, my hand tired holding it up while I was horizontal on the couch.
It feels a bit bulky in my pants pocket, too. It’s 5.02 inches tall, .039 inches at it thickest point and 2.57 inches wide versus. The Incredible is a touch thicker, a touch less wide and 4.63 inches tall.
Both are both based on the Android version 2.1 operating system, but that’s where the innards’ similarities end. The X comes with a different chipset known as OMAP from Texas Instruments, long a mainstay in cell phones. And it has the Motorola application platform, whatever that is.
The Incredible phone is based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor and is a heavily Google-ized phone. Verizon Wireless calls the Incredible a “Google Experience Device (GED).” The X is a pure Android…the differences are subtle, but simply put, the GED is an Android-based phone with lots of Google apps built in.
