Motorola's 'Droid' A Doc's Best Bet

For Verizon Wireless customers, the new Motorola Droid just became the best smartphone option for you. Here's why.

The Droid is the newest device from Motorola and the best effort from the Chicago-based company in years. The Droid runs an advanced version of the Android operating system from Google.

Android 2.0—also called "Eclair"—is a major leap forward for the Android platform. It brings in a bevy of new features and truly is a more enterprise-grade operating system. New features for the Android platform include:

• Support for multiple Google and Exchange accounts
• Third-party "sync adapters" allow apps to tie in to the phone's sync services
• Quick contact menus for fast access to specific key pieces of contact information Unified email inbox
• SMS and MMS search
• Text message auto-delete after a user-defined thread size is reached
• Significantly improved camera controls with white balance, macro, effects, and more
• Improved keyboard layout, dictionary, and algorithm based on multi-touch support
• Double-tap zoom in browser, support for HTML5
• Bluetooth 2.1 support with addition of OPP and PBAP profiles
• Better graphics hardware acceleration

A unified inbox within Android will make managing multiple email accounts less painful. Also, those who use more than one Google or Exchange account can rest easy, as support for multiple accounts is now standard. This means business users can load both their work and personal email accounts onto the Motorola Droid and more easily interact with those accounts.

Aside from the new platform, the device itself is extremely impressive. The Motorola Droid has EVDO Rev. A on board for super fast 3G. GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and USB 2.0 will help it connect to whatever you can think to connect it to. The whole thing is powered by a 600MHz processor, meaning its very speedy.

The screen measures a generous 3.7 inches, with WVGA (480 x 854 pixels) resolution. If those figures don't mean much to you, I can say this: the display is absolutely beautiful. It's one of the sharpest and most colorful displays on the market.

The Motorola Droid packs a 5 megapixel camera with image stabilization, dual LED flash and autofocus. It can capture DVD-quality video (720 x 480 pixels) at 24 frames per second. The phone will be packed with a 16GB microSD card. Support for the Android Market and its 10,000 apps is included, and it has a full QWERTY keyboard for typing messages.

The combination of powerful software and good hardware makes the Motorola Droid one of the best smartphones available from Verizon Wireless.