Noob here. Free Moto Droid or 150$ Incredible?

[ronsgardening]

I was looking at my local verizon store and I liked the way the incredible looked and how easy the touchscreen was...but I liked the fact the moto had a keyboard. I text a decent amount and do a lot of things needing typing but I dont want to buy yesterdays technology...especially with the cadre of new droids set to come out in the next 6 months. I also looked at wirefly and found some cheaper prices...especially seeing the moto droid for free instead of 150 at vzw. My head is spinning with talk of Omap3630's, 2ghz snapdragons, rooting, overclocking, apps, widgets, homescreens and dollar signs. I tried to do a lot of research...but from someone whos 5-10 years behind on the technology curve, its a bunch of technical jargon.(used to be a tech junkie) Is there nice enough to help me sort through the mess a bit? I will use it for mainly business use, I own a landscaping business and my sprint moto v950, though rugged and has great battery with my 5$ ebay extended battery...has its shortcomings. Like say...gps never works, horrible coverage where I live to the point of 50% of my calls drop, and lack of any cool features! Help? :greendroid:

 

[Abadus]

A lot of your decision depends on if you want to root or not.

Things like the inc runs 1Ghz... my droid rooted runs 1.2Ghz. I don' think a rooted inc will run that fast. But ATM that is speculation.

The phones run the same software, but the inc has extras like sense with all the sense widgets which I like.

You have to look at hardware. Inc has less battery than droid but has a better camera.

I personally use my keyboard a TON. I would not want a inc because of no keyboard. My camera takes great pics in good light ;P

 

[Backnblack]

I never use the keyboard, it's too kid sized for me.....

And I liked the DI I used for a few weeks....

 

[christim]

You will find folks saying the droid is better and others saying the inc is better. Visit an apple forum and you'll find some who even think the iphone is better

For me, having the latest upgrades is important. Shortly the official 2.2 android OS will be released for the Moto Droid. This phone has gotten a couple of OS upgrades while many other android phones have not. One thing preventing that on other phones could be hardware or manufacture's non-desire to do the legwork to upgrade their phones.

The Incredible will most likely get the 2.2 upgrade but it's manufacturing came up with a custom gui that runs on top of the OS. It will take them longer to get a functional 2.2 OS out for the phone than for others more vanilla Android OS phones.

I'm happy with my droid, but have two friends who have the inc phones that I've handled and they are nice phones. Some, including one of my friends, have said their battery doesn't last long at all. Others say they have no issue with the battery at all.

For either phone you can always pick up a spare battery.

Visit the store, handle them both then choose. If you don't like your choice you have 30 days to swap it for another choice.

edit: the inc's still camera is very good. The droid's is good for still shots but it's slow shutter speed makes it not so good for action pics...or kids and pets that tend to move. The droid's video camera has captured some excellent clips for me.

 

[hookbill]

I'd say with Froyo available now i'd go with the Droid for free as opposed to 150.00 Incredible. I don't use the hard keyboard either but hey, when you do a benchmark on an overclocked Droid and compare it to the Incredible you can see how much faster the Droid is. Plus the Droid is made out of metal and quite honestly I feel more comfortable with a Motorola product over HTC.

 

[ronsgardening]

Ok, so good points made. But the shadow is due to come out super soon, I cant wait for the droid 2 or droid x....I forget which is coming out more near christmas. I need a phone soon. Should I wait to see what the shadow is going to be like? I am also afraid of overclocking and rooting my droid and bricking it. I would probably only do 800 mhz to be safe, Im not a 10 multiple app guy I would think. Just run a task killer a lot. Isnt there a way to get touch from the htc on to the droid I read somewhere too? So basically, I can get a droid to run as fast as a inc and same software virtually or better...but I'm still worried about new phones coming out in the next few weeks to a month. I am NOT worried about phones coming out later than that, if I try to wait for every new phone coming out in 6 months...there will always be another 6 months later to come out again. It's a vicious circle. Thanks for the info so far!

 

[mrgoochio]

I was just in the same dilemma.. In fact, I've never even had a smart phone or even played with 1 before. I made the jump into a droid for free via wirefly instead of the incredible (i'm with VZW) and still awaiting it in the mail.

 

[Houndstooth]

I have never been a guy to like virtual keyboards. In fact, one of the selling points of the Droid was that it had a physical keyboard. But I don't think I have used it more than a handful of times.

 

[vedwed]

Having been a long time HTC user, the Hero most recently before my droid, Sense is not that cool, nor is the Incredible, I had it for a day and changed to the Droid. The camera on the front and the crappy snapdragon is its main selling point, and they are not that great when it comes down to it. In my opinion the Droid is a much better phone, and more worth the investment (which is nothing if it is free)

 

[mrgoochio]

I have never been a guy to like virtual keyboards. In fact, one of the selling points of the Droid was that it had a physical keyboard. But I don't think I have used it more than a handful of times.

play any emulators?

 

[MiXoLoGiSt]

Having been a long time HTC user, the Hero most recently before my droid, Sense is not that cool, nor is the Incredible, I had it for a day and changed to the Droid. The camera on the front and the crappy snapdragon is its main selling point, and they are not that great when it comes down to it. In my opinion the Droid is a much better phone, and more worth the investment (which is nothing if it is free)

Well i think you are mistaken because there is no camera on the front of the Incredible. The Snapdragon processor runs fine. Sense IMO is awesome! I am a fan of the widgets Sense has to offer.

Both devices are very nice devices and i would say go with which one you think you will like more. Honestly a Motorola Droid for free is an awesome deal.