iPhone 4 vs. Droid Incredible a Verizon smartphone showdown

The iPhone 4 is now on Verizon's network. But the Droid line of smartphones, running Google's open-source Android operating system, is already there ... and it's not going anywhere!

In an earlier article, I compared the iPhone 4 to the Droid X, Verizon's top-of-the-line Android smartphone. Now let's see how it compares to the Droid Incredible: Verizon's budget Droid, at only $99.

Droid does

HTC says that the Droid Incredible was inspired by an Italian sports car. It's not as minimalist as the iPhone 4's sleek, industrial design, but the ridges along the back help you grip the phone (per the Engadget review), and the extra buttons on the front serve a purpose. The menu is hidden in most apps until you tap the Droid's Menu key, freeing you from distractions; and the optical trackpad seems useless at first glance, but when you need to position the cursor while working with text it's a lifesaver.

Because the Droid Incredible is an Android phone, it can do things that the iPhone can't. While you're browsing the web, it reflows text to fit the screen width, so that you don't have to scroll horizontally while you're zoomed in. It can use a limited version of Flash, and the home screens can sport widgets, like the Mint finance one that lets you see your bank balance at a glance.

HTC's Sense interface takes Android to a new level, with sleek custom apps and widgets that let you easily check Facebook and Twitter. It also lets you pinch the screen to zoom out, and see all of your home screens at once. HTC Sense is shiny, and the animated weather widget is a nice touch.

Droid doesn't

The Droid's most obvious hardware deficiency, compared to the iPhone 4, is its lack of a front-facing camera. Its main camera has an 8 megapixel resolution, compared to the iPhone's 5, but unlike the iPhone it can't record HD video. The Droid also has a maximum of 40 GB of storage, compared to the iPhone's 16 or 32 GB, but only if you buy a 32 GB memory card for it; it only has 8 GB built-in. And you'll need at least a cheap 2 GB memory card, because some apps require it.

Speaking of apps, the Droid lets you buy them from Google's Android Market, which has over 150,000 according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. But what he doesn't say is that one reason that number is growing so quickly is because it's much easier to put an app on the Android Market than it is on the iTunes App Store. There's no approval process, and many of the "apps" are just ringtones and wallpaper packs. The Droid does have access to the essentials, like eBay and Angry Birds ... but it's also loaded with garbage Verizon apps that you can't uninstall, unlike the Verizon iPhone.

Finally, the Droid's AMOLED display isn't as sharp as the iPhone's Retina Display, and looks washed-out when you're outdoors.

The verdict

The $100 savings over the iPhone doesn't stack up to the cost of a data plan. If you like Android's features, go with the Droid Incredible; otherwise, go for the iPhone. Keep in mind that both are going to go out of date soon, though, with 4G Android phones and this year's new iPhone model on the way.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

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Android smartphones, tablets on the march

Just a year ago, Android handsets accounted for a slim 8.7 percent of the global smartphone market, with OS vendors such as Nokia, RIM, and Apple well in the lead, according to an industry survey. Not anymore. Also: Android establishes a beachhead in the tablet market.

We've already been hearing plenty of reports about how Google's Android OS has been surging in the domestic and worldwide smartphone marketplaces, but the latest figures from the industry analysts at Canalys put the new mobile platform landscape on stark perspective, with Android sales seeing an extraordinary, 615-percent growth spurt in 2010 to topple Nokia's Symbian platform off its throne.

As of the end of the fourth quarter last year, Android enjoyed a 33.3 percent share of the global smartphone market, according to Canalys, with Nokia's Symbian OS trailing (just barely) at 31 percent.

Mind you, Nokia still ranks as the No. 1 global manufacturer of smartphones, the survey noted, with the Finnish phone giant seeing worldwide shipments of its smart handsets grow 30 percent in 12 months.

But that wasn't enough to stop Android, which saw its global market share kick in the afterburners with help from a veritable gang of smartphone makers—think HTC, Samsung, LG, and Acer, according to Canalys.

After Nokia comes Apple, which saw its fourth-quarter 2010 global iOS market share dip ever so slightly to 16.2 percent, from 16.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009—although as with Nokia, Apple still saw a healthy surge in global sales (up nearly 86 percent compared to the fourth quarter of '08).

In fourth place, we've got BlackBerry maker RIM with 14.6 percent of the global smartphone market, down more than five percent from the year-ago 2009 period, while Microsoft saw its fourth-quarter 2010 market share slump to 3.1 percent.

Narrowing our focus to the U.S. market, the contest for the top smartphone OS really wasn't one, with a new NPD Group survey crowning Android the crown last quarter with a whopping 53 percent slice of the domestic pie.

Far behind in terms of smartphone platforms was Apple with a 19 percent share, according to NPD. Apple still had the top-selling smartphone in the U.S. last quarter with the iPhone 4, but a trio of Android handsets were nipping at the iPhone's heels: the Motorola Droid X, the HTC Evo 4G, and the Motorola Droid 2.

RIM was tied for second with 19 percent of the U.S. smartphone market last quarter, NPD said, with the old Windows Mobile OS at 4 percent and the new Windows Phone 7 platform at just 2 percent.

Meanwhile, Android isn't just surging in the smartphone department, with researchers at Strategy Analytics reporting (via Bloomberg) that Android-based tablets grabbed a 22-percent share of the worldwide tablet market last quarter, up from a mere 2.3 percent the previous quarter.

That's still far behind Apple's 75-percent global tablet share last quarter, but consider this: Apple's tablet share in the third quarter of 2010 was a dominant 95 percent, meaning that Android managed to take a serious chomp out of Apple's share of the slate market.

But while Android may be gaining ground on Apple's tablet market share—and eclipsing it in terms of smartphones—it's important to keep in mind that almost all the big mobile OSes are moving more devices (many more, in some cases) than they were a year ago.

For example, Apple saw its tablet sales surge an eye-popping 74 percent between the third quarter of 2010 and last quarter, according to Strategy Analytics, even as Android tablet sales soared to 2.1 million units from just 100,000 in the same period.

Same goes for smartphones, with only Mircosoft selling fewer smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2010 than it did during the year-prior period, according to the Canalys survey. Indeed, overall smartphone sales nearly doubled from 53.7 million units to 101.2 million handsets.

In other words: even if Android's piece of the mobile pie is bigger than Apple's, or Nokia's, or RIM's, the overall slices are getting bigger—a lot bigger. For us consumers, that's a good thing.

Source: Yahoo News

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