Motorola Droid X and iPhone 4: Rivalry at best
By Jamie Angle
It seems as though there are now many options when it comes to choose smartphones. However, still there are only few best smartphones available in the market. Lets compare the best devices in the market. Yes, I am talking about Droid X and iPhone 4.
The iPhone 4 and the Droid X are very similar. Each offers distinct advantages. The Droid X wins over iPhone when it comes to the call quality, battery life and support for enterprise applications. However, iPhone is now for time being beating Droid X when it comes to corporate security and general use.
Although the Droid X does better in the most essential functions however, it fails on most important factor: safety. If you want to implement one of these two devices in your company at that time, the iPhone should be your best option – but only until the Droid X is updated to Android 2.2. Once the X receives Droid Android 2.2, the iPhone will have no advantage over it in matters of security and corporate functions. Droid X is expected to get Android 2.2 by early September.
If you are planning to use it for business and give less important to Safety, then Droid X will be the best choice over other smart phones including iPhone 4.
I’ve had both iphones and android phones and the droid x is the clear winner! Display size is awesome and open source opens way more doors.
This article is more than a little “brain dead”.
Here is where I have no problems: Droid X beats iPhone on call quality. That’s easy. It’s on Verizon. Verizon has overall better call quality than AT&T. But on battery life? While Apple says the iPhone 4 gets 7 hours of talk time (3G, but 14 hours on 2G) to Droid X’s 8 hours. Reviewers call this a draw, as the iPhone 4 gets 300 hours of stand by to the Droid X’s 220 hours.
Where I’m genuinely at a loss is what you say next. How does the “Droid X” win for “enterprise applications”? Does it have Goto Meeting? I know iPhone has that. iPhone 4 actually has numerous enterprise applications, as well as very deep support for Exchange and administrative features like remote wipe and encryption. I’m guessing this is what you then mean by saying the iPhone 4 is ahead with “security” and “general use”. But, not only are you vague, but it helps to cloak curiously misguided conclusions.
Search Google for InfoWorld’s scoreboard comparing iOS 4 to Android 2.2 (Froyo). Skip to page 3, where it says “Android OS 2.2 is significantly inferior to iOS 4 when it comes to corporate email capabilities. That’s mostly because Android OS 2.2 supports just a limited set of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) policies, so most corporate Exchange environments are unlikely to permit access. The biggest omission is support for on-device encryption, which is a basic EAS requirement. You can tell Exchange to ignore such policy misses, but that lets any noncompliant device onto the Exchange server — not a viable option for most enterprises.”
Now, keep reading, and you’ll see it gets worst: “Also, Android doesn’t let you automatically sync Exchange folders; you have to go to each folder and manually update them. By contrast, iOS 4 lets you designate which folders are automatically synced as part of the mail settings.” This isn’t a criticism of Google however. This is because iOS began getting serious about Exchange and corporate users a while ago, and the latest OS still has serious lead time on Android’s development of similar enterprise features (see the Exchange/enterprise feature announcements from iOS 2, 3, and now 4).
Your article then says: “Once the X receives Droid Android 2.2, the iPhone will have no advantage over it in matters of security and corporate functions.” This is quite frankly a lie. I don’t write articles for a living, but it seems reasonable that if you’re making statements to which the veracity is not fully known (or has not been properly checked), you should hedge. If you don’t, you are doing your audience a disservice.
BETTER CONCLUSION:
If you are planing to use your smart phone for business and give less importance to call quality, then iPhone 4 is the best choice over Android phones currently on the market, including the Droid X. Google is working furiously to keep its ascendant platform competitive however, so expect another Android 2.3 update before the end of the year (codenamed: “Gingerbread”). While its not yet clear whether the new update will help Android based phones meet or eclipse the iOS platform, the 2.2 update was designed to make sure component upgrades much more easier, bypassing problems Android has historically had filtering OS updates through its carrier and manufacturer partners.
It’s possible this article is not a “real” tech article, and that its some type of fake opinion peace that is only aimed at pushing Android OS or Verizon phones for commercial reasons (astroturf). I thought it was worth assuming otherwise and responding though.
Dudley, This of course is of your opinion. Assuming you really have any tech reponsibilities that you can objectivley respond to this or any other article???
Get real. Iphone is a flawed platform, Android is taking advantage of that.