• MUSIC ENABLED¹
• MUSIC PLAYER
  Yes
• VIDEO CAPABLE
• VIDEO CAPTURE
• PLAYABLE FORMATS
  AAC, H.263, H.264, MP3, MPEG-4, WAV, WMA, eAAC+, OGG, AMR WB, AMR NB, AAC+, MIDI
• STREAMING MEDIA
  Audio, Video
• VIDEO CAPTURE RATE
  DVD quality (720×480 resolution) up to 24 fps capture; up to 30 fps playback

• BATTERY TYPE
  1400 mAh Li Ion
• STANDBY TIME³
  up to 270 hrs.

With the DROID, the company has perhaps created its most attractive and intriguing piece of technology yet. Forging an alliance with both Verizon and Google, Motorola has come up with a second compelling reason to count the phonemaker down, but certainly not out, while the other two giants have finally found a seemingly worthy device to position against the iPhone. So we must pose these questions: is this the phone which will catapult Android into the mainstream? Is it the device that will pull Motorola back from the brink? And — most importantly — is it the lynchpin Google and Verizon have needed to challenge the leader in mindshare in the smartphone market? After putting the device through its paces, we think we can give you the answers you seek — so read on to find out!

The DROID is an odd and beautiful device. Looking at the hardware from a purely philosophical standpoint, the ID of the phone seems staunchly defiant. Instead of taking its cues (and lines) from current contenders in the smartphone space, the DROID is all hard edges and angular slopes. The construction is a mix of plastic and metal, and the phone has a solid, expensive heft to it. Couple that weight with soft touch materials and gold highlights, and the effect is somewhere halfway between a Vertu device and the European version of the Hero — and it’s a good mix.

The basic structure of the phone is made up of two main pieces, the large, glass display up top, and the slightly longer keyboard / mainboard lower half. Above, the 3.7-inch screen dominates, almost filling the space edge-to-edge, though there are four capacitive buttons at the bottom of the display: back, menu, home, and search (which might be tricky for folks coming from other Android devices, since they’ve thrown the order of the buttons in the blender). The top section slides smoothly upwards to reveal the aforementioned QWERTY keyboard, though unlike other models of this ilk, it doesn’t snap automatically into place; rather, it requires a bit of force to move up, then clicks firmly once settled. The keyboard is a wide (though mostly flush) affair, with minimal amount of spacing between the keys. To the right of the four row QWERTY is a 5-way rocker — a bizarre deviation from the CLIQ’s left-sided controls — and the bottom piece has a strip which juts out from the device with a small mic hole (closed or open). It’s almost like Motorola’s version of the HTC chin… though tempered somewhat. Atop the phone is a 3.5mm headphone jack and a power / sleep button; along the right edge is a volume rocker, and camera button on opposite ends; the left side houses a MicroUSB port; around back the 5 megapixel camera (and flash) are revealed, along with a thin, gold, crosshatch strip that hides the DROID’s speaker.

The thickness of the DROID is striking, coming in at just a hair (13.7mm vs 12.33mm) thicker than the iPhone 3GS. The body itself is actually narrower than the iPhone. While thinness is important (though typically not a deal breaker for us), the fact that the phone packs a larger, higher resolution screen and a physical keyboard in such a small frame is notable.

In all, Motorola has pulled off what seemed unimaginable for them just 12 months ago; they’ve made a device which is truly lustworthy, even next to the best efforts of Apple, HTC, and Palm.

It will be difficult for casual observers not to see the DROID as a kind of anti-iPhone in Verizon’s arsenal. Certainly the company has played up the comparison with its “DROID does” ad campaign, and it’s no secret that Verizon and Apple have previously had some friction — the V famously passed on the first-generation iPhone, after all. Of course, it’s easy to draw parallels between the two devices; as with most current smartphones, they share a tremendous number of similarities, though there is plenty that set the two apart as well. And that’s really kind of the point — it’s useless to look at devices like this in black and white, or to try and figure out if an Android device on Verizon is better than an Apple device on AT&T (or any other device on any other carrier, for that matter). What it ultimately comes down to when judging this kind of device is more complicated than a “yes” or “no” answer.

If you must compare the DROID to the iPhone, then know that the Android platform still has a ways to go before the experience of using the phone is as seamless as the one Apple has created — but also know that Apple has a long way to go before its messaging, email, and customization can match what Google is offering. Both products have very distinct strengths and weaknesses.

So, is the DROID a good smartphone? Yes, the DROID is an excellent smartphone with many (if not all) of the features that a modern user would expect, and if you’re a Verizon customer, there probably isn’t a more action packed device on the network. That’s not to say the device doesn’t have its faults; the camera was unpleasant to use, the application selection feels thin in both quantity and quality (despite the claim of 10,000 options), and the phone has bits of basic, non-intuitive functionality that might chafe on some users after a while. But even still, it’s hard not to recommend the DROID to potential buyers eager to do more with their devices. It’s easily the best Android phone to date, and when you couple the revamped OS, Verizon’s killer network, and an industrial design straight from a gadget enthusiast’s fever-dream, it makes for a powerful concoction. Ultimately, the DROID won’t usurp the iPhone from the public’s collective mindshare or convince casual users that they must switch to Android, but it will make a lot of serious geeks seriously happy — and that’s good enough for us.

Comparing the aesthetics of the iPhone and the Droid is.. ludicrous, if not impossible. It’d be like having a heated argument over whether Angelina Jolie was more or less gorgeous than Halle Berry. Each is stunning for their own reasons. Same deal here; the iPhone is engulfed in glistening curves that give it a softer, friendlier look, while the Droid is wrapped in tight, clean angles that make it a shining example of great industrial design.

If we were to consider the overall designs par-for-par, all we’d have left to nitpick is the details. In the Droid’s case, the gold details on the camera button, 5-way D-Pad, and rear casing lose it some points for looking like something straight out of a bad 70′s bachelor pad. The iPhone then loses its ground for the fact that the glossy back casing is damned near impossible to keep clean and free of fingerprints.

The Winner: It’s a tie. Both are drop dead gorgeous, and the only flaws of each are downright trivial.

On-Screen Keyboards:

In preparation for the onslaught of candybar Touchscreens that were sure to follow after the success of the iPhone, Android earned on-screen keyboard support shortly after the launch of the G1. At first, it.. well, it sucked. A lot.

It has gotten better since, however – on the stock build of Android 2.0 I’ve got running on this Droid, I’m able to blast about at nearly the same rate as I can on my iPhone. That’s impressive for Android’s sake, considering that I’ve spent considerably more time on the iPhone keyboard.

That said, the iPhone’s autocorrect seems a bit better at properly attending to my typos, primarily on shorter words that have more potential alternatives.

The Winner: iPhone, by a very slim margin. It just does a better job at guessing what I’m trying to type as I poke my way around a sea of glass. That said..

Physical Keyboard:

For many, a physical keyboard is a must-have. Every smartphone I had prior to an iPhone had a physical keyboard, and I still prefer a physical keyboard after two years. The Droid has one, and the iPhone doesn’t – so it wins this one by default.

That’s not to say the Droid keyboard is all that great – nor is it terrible. It is decidedly average. The buttons are practically flush with each other, and it’s quite easy to jam down on two buttons at once.

To rank it amongst some of the more well known keyboarded handsets of the past few years: the Droid keyboard is better than that of the G1, Helio Ocean, and the BlackBerry Curve, but not nearly as good as anything from the Danger Sidekick line, the BlackBerry Tour, or the HTC Touch Pro 2.

The Winner: Droid, by default.

The Browser:

On the popular web-standards test known as Acid3, the iPhone scores a 100/100 while the Droid caps out at 93/100. Thus, if we’re going purely by measurable standards here, the iPhone browser wins. That said, we’re not robots – standards schmandards, we like what we like.

With that said, I still prefer the iPhone browser. It tends to render pages pixel perfect (as implied by the Acid3 test results), while the Droid would occasionally fall short. Oddly, it renders pages more accurately when they’re being viewed in landscape mode than in portrait mode. What really sealed the deal, however, was multi-touch in the browser. Once you’ve grown accustomed to pinch-zooming, the level of accuracy provided by tap-zooming alone simply doesn’t cut it.

The iPhone browser is also considerably faster, with page loads completing anywhere from 15-30% more quickly with both handsets on WiFi.

The Winner: iPhone, thanks to multitouch, faster pageloads and web standards compliance.

Navigation:

When it comes to the standard mapping/directions stuff, the two phones are about on par. Turn-by-turn voice navigation is a whole different matter, however.

Out of the box, the iPhone 3GS has Google Maps, which does not currently do turn-by-turn voice navigation. The App Store provides a bunch of solutions for this, ranging from a few bucks a month all the way up to a one-time payment of $99 bucks.

The Droid also has Google Maps, but it’s Google Maps with Navigation – and it really, really rocks. It does nearly everything the iPhone Maps app does, with the addition of toggleable layers (show/hide traffic, satellite views, Wikipedia entries, and transit lines), support for Google’s Latitude location-sharing service and, most notably, completely free turn-by-turn voice navigation. You can also search for locations by voice, something we were surprised was absent when Apple added voice recognition to the iPhone.

Like with the browser, we miss the multi-touch support – but we’d gladly give that up for the free voice navigation.

The Winner: Droid. None of the for-pay apps we’ve used come close to the ease of use and functionality Google provides in their free app.

Interface:

This is a huge point, and one that often goes overlooked in reviews. For the past 10 years, Apple has really only done one thing, over and over: they’ve taken something we thought worked fine, and then simplified the hell out of it while maintaining the feature set. That’s exactly what they did to the idea of the smartphone with the iPhone, and it turned the damned market on its head. Windows Mobile suddenly looks like a hot mess by comparison, and most people would go into shock if they tried to screw with S60.

Even in version 2.0, Android does not match the intuitiveness of the iPhone. If you need to change a setting on the iPhone, you always know where to go: the Settings app. On Android, it can be in one of any number of places.

You can hand an iPhone to a toddler, and they’ll figure out the general gist of things in an instant. (No, really – we’ve done it.) That ease of use is one of the things that makes the iPhone so damned appealing.

The Winner: iPhone

Multi-Tasking:

I can listen to Pandora on the Droid while I peruse around the Facebook App. I can’t on the iPhone. Enough said.

The Winner: Droid

Conclusion:

There are really many, many, many dozens of categories we could dive in to – hell, I’ve got 10 more scratched out in my head alone. But we’d be avoiding an inevitable truth: apples-to-apples, the Droid tends to beat or meet the iPhone. Remote wipe and GPS location? Droid. On-device search? Droid wins. Voice control, contacts, coverage, and call quality? Droid, droid, droid, droid.

Now, back to the two questions we had at the beginning:

Get it? He’s on the fence. HAH.

What do I think of the Droid? It is incredible. It is, hands down, the nicest Android handset on the market. A very significant chunk of this is not so much the Droid’s doing as it is Android 2.0′s, but the hardware is also leaps and bounds better than anything we’ve seen so far.

Would I recommend it over the iPhone? Two thousand plus words later, you might be a bit sad to read: Nope. But I wouldn’t recommend the iPhone over the Droid, either – and that’s the Droid’s real win here. This is the very first phone in over two years that I would consider carrying for day-to-day use instead of my iPhone, but that doesn’t mean I would recommend it whole heartedly to everyone.

Each phone platform has such tremendous merits. Androids got better navigation; the iPhone has a better browser. Androids got unbeatable expandability and flexibility; the iPhone OS is mind-numbingly easy to use and the rate of growth and drive behind the App Store is simply explosive.

With Android 2.0, we’ve come to a very difficult crossroad. No longer can we recommend one handset over the other simply by its feature set. At this point, it’s all about the person who will be carrying it. For you, dearest TechCrunch Network reader: Yes, I’d probably recommend the Droid over an iPhone. Would I recommend it for your mother, father, or little sister? Nope. If you want a phone that just works and does damned near everything you could want and don’t mind Apple’s closed garden: by all means, get the iPhone. If you can handle a bit of complexity for the sake of flexibility and don’t mind having to tinker a bit: by all means, get the Droid. At this point, I honestly feel that either choice would make any sane person incredibly happy.