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Motorola Droid vs. iPhone 3GS Video

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Motorola Droid vs. iPhone 3GS
Created: 11/10/2009
Video description: It's another epic Prizefight! Motorola and Verizon are bringing their "A" games to take on the reigning champ, the Apple iPhone 3GS on AT&T. Find out who will be left standing after this bloody battle.

Motorola Droid vs. iPhone 3GS Video Transcript

[ music ] ^M00:00:07

>> What's up Prizefight Fans? I'm Brian Tong, and we're here to face off another contender for king of the Smartphone ring. It's the heavyweight Prizefight you've been waiting for between the Motorola Droid and Apple's iPhone 3GS. Motorola and Verizon have been blisting [phonetic] Apple and AT&T, and there's no love lost between these phones. So we're bringing in the heavy hitters to judge this fight, Senior Editor Kent German, Senior Editor Bonnie Cha, [phonetic] and myself will do the honors. Now we'll take all three judges scores and average them out to the nearest 10th each round. The final prizefight score will be an average of all rounds using the same decimal system. Who's bringing home the bacon? First round is sexiness. Motorola and Droid's touch screen is the highest res on a phone I've seen, and all of us agree it's a thing of beauty. It's a thin form factor considering it has a keyboard, but a drawback is its blocky design. And that fat lip on the bottom, not a fan. The iPhone 3GS still holds its place as the sleekest and the cleanest device on the planet with its rounded corners. Is this thing even debatable? The iPhone's sexy is timeless with a perfect 5, and the Droid gets a 4.3. Next round is navigation. The Droid is bringing a responsive touch screen, a navigation pad, and a physical keypad. Now even if the keys are described as flat and slippery by Kent, Bonnie says you'll get used to them. The Android OS2.0 has a minimal learning curve, and it's a lot more customizable. Plus I love the notifications pull down. No one can deny the iPhone is still the easiest and most elegant OS to use. Navigation is smooth as butter, pinching may be subtle, but it's a feature you'll miss on the Droid. And there's no other phone that my 3-year-old niece and I can both use. The iPhone gets the edge here with another perfect 5. But the Droid isn't too far off with a 4.7. So after averaging 2 rounds the iPhone rocks a perfect score, and the Droid trails by half a point. Next round is features. Both phones are packed with core features, like 3G, WIFI, GPS, and Bluetooth, so what really stands out? The Droid brings us faster flavor of 3G EVGO Rev A. It's a multitasker, and there's more customizations with the Android OS. Native exchange support with a unified mailbox for multiple accounts, turn-by-turn directions, and Google maps with a voice search that left me impressed. Academy of Sciences. Plus a user replaceable battery, and their tethering feature will be available before the iPhone. So that's a whole bunch, but the iPhone is no chump either. The app store is light years ahead of the Droid, and it enhances the iPhone exponentially. A [inaudible] supported here, cut, copy, and paste is better implemented, and the turn-by-turn Google maps are said to be coming soon. But having the ability to roam the world on GSM networks is a huge benefit. This one was close, but the Droid just edges out the iPhone with a perfect score in round 3, and the iPhone gets a 4.7. Next round is web browsing and multimedia. The Droid's browser is very good with its thumbnail bookmarks. But overall it's still a step below Safari. It has a better 5 megapixel camera with flash, the Amazon Marketplace is solid, and it's media player is pretty basic, but capable. Now syncing media to the device is a clunky drag and drop experience, plus standard MPEG4 files that play flawlessly on the iPhone chugs and had audio sync issues on the Droid. Safari is still the best mobile browser that separates it from any Smartphone. ESPN and CNN mobile sites display streaming media on the iPhone, but they didn't on the Droid. Multimedia on the iPhone is unmatched as a topnotch video player and video quality that still makes us say wow. Even though you're locked into iTunes, the syncing process is seamless with a huge library of content to access. Now the judges all agree in this round, the iPhone lands another 5, and the Droid gets a respectable 4. So after 4 rounds the iPhone leads by 4/10's of a point, but this my friend is far from over. The final round that decides it all is call quality and performance. The Droid is on Verizon, and it's call quality delivers with a clear signal on both sides of the call. Speakerphones sounded great too, and it's 3G is faster and more reliable even outside of San Francisco, and it delivers longer battery life for calls. The iPhones call quality on AT&T isn't horrible, but it's not great either. There's more background noise and we all know about those dropped calls. Its 3G has improved in some areas, but Verizon still performs better. Battery life has improved from previous phones, but the big killer for me, I dial the iPhone from my Droid side-by-side and the iPhone didn't even ring. Yeah. The Droid lands the biggest blow this Prizefight in the final round with a perfect 5, and the iPhone gets a 3.3. So let's average out all 5 rounds. And in a battle where the iPhone was sitting pretty, the Droid fought back in a final round that would make Rocky Balboa proud. Leaving us tied at 4.6 points a piece. Now that is what I call a fight. So you know we can't walk away like this, and we're gonna have to go to a tie breaker. And that's the number of rounds won. So check out the break down people. But after a truly epic battle, the iPhone wins the tiebreaker, 3 rounds to 2, and is your Prizefight winner. These are two really impressive phones. And there's no losers here. But this Prizefight really shows us that the Droid excels as a phone, and the iPhone 3GS stands out as a multimedia phone. Which phone ends up in your pocket is up to you. I'm Brian Tong, thanks for watching. And we'll catch you guys next time on another epic Prizefight. ^E00:05:56

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