Two OMAP 3430 Phones: Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid
by Brian Klug on June 10, 2010 9:29 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- N900
- Maemo
- Motorola Droid
- Droid
- MeeGo
- Android
- Mobile
It's impossible to really go any further about the hardware without talking about the keyboards on both devices. Superficially, there's a lot of the same between them. Both the Motorola Droid and N900 are landscape sliders with full QWERTY keyboards, but that's about where the similarities end.
For starters, the N900 has 3 rows of keys, while the Motorola Droid has 4. The N900 also has a shallower slide out depth compared to the Motorola Droid as a result, making it feel just a bit more balanced in your hand when the keyboard is slid all the way out. The Motorola Droid includes a clickable D-pad, while the N900 just uses traditional up down left right keys. Layout is almost the same, though the N900 places the spacebar in what at first seems like a curious position at the far right of the keyboard rather than centered like it usually is.
So what's the verdict at the end of the day? The N900's keyboard is excellent, while the Motorola Droid's keyboard starts out frustrating, to put it lightly. I spent the greater part of three weeks trying to get used to the Motorola Droid's keyboard, and I'm no stranger to landscape keyboards. I've come to the conclusion that it's just hard to use. Ultimately, the problem boils down to two things: key travel depth, and tactile finger placement aide.
Let me explain myself. The first thing I'm talking about is that the keys on the Motorola Droid just don't click down enough. The travel depth feels shallow, and there's not enough of a solid click to affirm you hit the key and can go to the next one. The second thing I'm talking about is that there's very little in the way of surface features letting you know you're on the right key. Ultimately, good hardware keyboards have ridges or features that provide haptic clues for positioning fingers. Look at the blackberry keyboards, the better HTC keyboards, and other keyboards users laud as being easy to type on; they'll all have some sort of ridge, impression, depression, or feature so you know where your fingers are. That's what makes it easy to type.
Even in the photos I've taken, it's obvious that the Motorola Droid's keys are slightly concave. Look at the N900's keys - they're slightly convex. The result is that resting your fingers on the keyboard, you're instantly able to tell just about whether you're in alignment. I found myself able to instantly type just as fast on the N900 as I could on any landscape slider keyboard, whereas on the Motorola Droid I often just used the Android virtual keyboard. It's readily apparent to me at least that Motorola's primary design focus on the Moto Droid was keeping the package thin, and the inevitable tradeoff happens to be the package height of the keyboard. At the very end of my time with the Motorola Droid, I was typing faster, but nowhere near as fast as I'm used to on most landscape keyboards or even the iPhone or Android virtual keyboards. It's frustrating because I want to go faster, but just can't.
I discussed the issue with a number of my friends who own and use Motorola Droids as their daily devices. They told me that they too experienced a longer than usual break-in period before it clicked and the hardware keyboard was natural to use. I don't doubt that given a month or two, you'll start humming along at greater than 40 WPM, it just requires practice.
The keyboard is there for you to use, and nobody is entirely alike. Hopefully the Droid 2 continues to improve the hardware keyboard domes, and it'd be nice to see the somewhat maligned D-Pad disappear, as it doesn't really serve a functional purpose. The favorable trend right now appears to use a trackball like the Nexus One or optical trackpad like the HTC Droid Incredible.
Update - Droid 2 Keyboard:
I originally wrote the above paragraphs a few weeks ago. It's interesting to note that today some photos of the Droid 2 have emerged that show it lacking a D-Pad and featuring convex (raised) buttons. This is entirely for the reasons I stated above - it's easier to verify finger placement when the buttons are raised, and it also helps make them more clicky. And the somewhat useless D-Pad - well, bye bye!
Since the Motorola Droid is running a vanilla Android 2.1 installation, it's got the stock virtual keyboard in both landscape and portrait. In landscape, if you slide out the keyboard, the virtual keyboard disappears. Portrait works just like you're used to if you've familiar with Android. Of course, the usual addenda apply about being able to install any keyboard you want; that's still the case.
The N900's keyboard is thankfully clicky, and the keys are slightly wider than the Motorola Droid's. The only standout caveat with Nokia's layout choice here is the space bar. At first, it's totally awkward to have it off to the side here instead of centered like you'd expect on a desktop. However, the spacebar being located here ended up not being a problem. Just use your left thumb, and you're good to go.
The N900 also has a virtual keyboard, though the device ships with it disabled. In all honesty, since Maemo on the N900 is almost entirely landscape (with the exception of the phone dialer, which is both), you should just use the slide out the excellent hardware keyboard for data entry whenever possible.
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Affectionate-Bed-980 - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
You talk about the display brightness and how nice it looks, but you need to mention gamut. In some tests the 3GS shows ~65% of gamut, while the Droid shows 102%. Nexus One is at 141%. I expect the Incredible to be around there, so while the colors look nice on AMOLED, you must remember it's over-saturated and inaccurate while the Droid is spot on at 102%.fabarati - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
I think you've misunderstood what gamut means.When a screen is advertises as 98% of the Adobe sRGB Gamut, it means that the screen covers 98% of the colours defined by Adobe for that gamut..
If it says 141% of the Adobe sRGB gamut, it means that it covers more than that defined area. It doesn't mean that the colours are oversaturated. It also doesn't mean that it can display all the colours there is.
Read up on gamuts on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut
Powerlurker - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
On the other hand, I doubt that anyone is going to do color correction or some sort of display calibration on their smartphone, and since most companies set their displays to be somewhat saturated by default, I would guess that in practice the Incredible's AMOLED screen will be oversaturated compared to the Droid's LCD.Brian Klug - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
So here's the problem - there's absolutely no way to measure it. Or at least, I haven't found an acceptable solution.Going off the display panel numbers seems extremely unrealistic for obvious reasons, but barring that there are other bigger problems.
1. Android uses 16-bit color in a lot of places because they're rendering them with 3D OpenGL compositing and compressed textures. One of the most glaring - and dare I say troubling - examples is right inside the gallery application. The gallery application in 2.0.1 was full 24-bit color, but in 2.1 Google contracted with Cooliris to develop a more flashy 3D gallery. Obviously, the limitations imposed by the GPU on different devices (and possibly even from the POV of what textures are supported) necessitated 16-bits per color. In practice, it just looks awful. Without even being nitpicky, I can notice lots of banding.
2. The AMOLED displays use the PenTile array, which also does a lot of dithering inherently - in fact, their pattern is essentially trying to get around Nyquist by being very creative with the human eye system, and this intermediate software layer of theirs. The consequence is that it ends up smoothing and dithering the 16-bits, making it really hard to see the banding, but it's still there. Pull up the color gradient images from the article and scrutinize the Incredible. There's no banding, but in person, you can stlll pick out dithering and a problem.
3. I still have no way of doing gamut testing on any mobile devices. So back when I started on the iPad article, I had a (relatively clever, I think) idea to use the calibration software through a 24-bit remote desktop session, tricking it into using any mobile device like a screen. This just doesn't work for reasons outside my understanding. I've done it on iPhone OS and Android, and for some reason the results are just complete bogus. So there's no way of really telling what the % gamut coverage of Adobe 1998 any of these things are. Moreover, since there's no way of loading a display profile on them, you're really stuck with whatever it shipped with anyways.
The sad state of things is that AMOLED "looks" brighter and more contrasty, but the color accuracy is just undoubtedly wrong. I mean, it's obvious to make that comparison when you're surrounded by calibrated IPS panels with Delta-E tracking under 1.0, you hold up any of the phones, and see a veritable library of differently hued photos.
I'm open to any suggestions you guys have for really measuring gamut. I mean, we could try being more manual and laboriously testing colors one by one (that's basically how I do brightness - white, black, and contrast) but, is it worth it?
KevinToon - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Shouldn't the speakerphone testing be done with the devices suspended off the desk??I know my phone sounds different if it's on a hard surface like a desk.
R3MF - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
I have an n900, so thanks, good article.Found an interesting MeeGo article since you mentioned it:
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/ultim...
medi01 - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
May I ask why 3GS is missing from "side by side comparison"? Just an incident or you are THAT afraid of Mr Jobbs marketing's wrath?dtreader - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
Wow! Just moments after finally placing my order for an N900 about eight hours ago (I've been lusting over this phone ever since it was just rumored to exist), I noticed this article on AT, with no comments having been posted to it yet. Cool, huh?I have a feeling there are many people like me....people that have been thinking about purchasing this incredible phone, but have been holding back for various reasons: for the price to come down a bit, to see how Nokia supported it with software updates, to find out about bugs and if they're being fixed, to feel comfortable about the future of Maemo on the N900 and, at this point, feeling comfortable about buying this phone even if Nokia comes out with something better in a few months time.
I've been depending daily on my flip phone/N800 tablet combination for a few years now, and have been dying to step up to the next level, even before I knew that would come in the form of the N900. A few months ago I looked at the Droid (currently I'm with Verizon), and lately considered the htc EVO on Sprint, but when you combine the current capabilities and the exciting future of the N900 (thanks to its truly open philosophy and dedicated enthusiast/developer base), I just couldn't wait any longer to get on board! T-Mobile 3.5G here I come!
Thanks for this article, Anandtech! You've been my main "source for hardware analysis and news" for over ten years now! :)
Go N900!!!
milli - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
"From a performance perspective, the Motorola Droid's 550 MHz Cortex A8 simply isn't a match for the 1 GHz A8 in Snapdragon's Scorpion CPU ... "That should read: ... for the 1 GHz Scorpion CPU in the Snapdragon ...
There's no Cortex A8 in the Snapdragon.
Brian Klug - Friday, June 11, 2010 - link
That's being a bit semantic I think.Inside the Snapdragon is a Scorpion, which is Qualcomm's trade name for their hardened (1 GHz supporting) Cortex A8 CPU.
Cortex is the ARM Family, ARMv7-A is the family, and Cortex A8 is the fully qualified core name.
So really, either one is correct ;)
-Brian