The Compare/Contrast Essay: Droid 2 vs iPhone 4

I chose to compare these two phones because they are both leading smartphones in the world today. The iPhone has maneuvered itself into the world stage by being an Apple niche product with great design and an avid following, and is now one of the most talked about devices on the planet. The Droid 2, and specifically, the Droid 2 Global, is a QWERTY slider phone, with a full physical keyboard, is loaded with the open Android operating system and powered by a 1.2GHz CPU, making it one of the most powerful and most useful phones today.
On the surface, they are both quite the same: They both feature a very high resolution display, a high res camera, lots of RAM, good battery and are lightweight.
However, there are differences that sometimes make the world of difference. The more subtle ones are the screen, the processor, dimensions, and the talk time.
Although the Droid 2 G’s screen is slightly bigger, a 3.7″ vs the iPhone’s 3.5″, the iPhone presents a crisper image with a slightly higher resolution screen, 329 points per inch vs the Droid’s 264 PPI. The Droid is the first to feature a 1.2GHz processor while the iPhone still uses a 1GHz CPU. Both of their dimensions are roughly the same except for thinness: the iPhone is 9mm thin and the Droid is 14mm. But, considering the Droid features a full keyboard, this is hardly surprising. And while both phones provide several hours of talk time, the Droid 2G offers 8.3 hours and the iPhone only 7.
The bigger differences between the phones are storage capacity, application access, video capture capability, weight
The iPhone comes with 32Gb of internal storage space while the Droid only has 7GB, but the Droid also has a MicroSD card slot which allows for up to (according to current standards) 32 more gigabytes of storage. As far as applications are concerned, although the iPhone has access to the bigger Apple Store, the Android Market is less restricted and thus offers more variety and less censorship. In the case of video capture you do have to hand it to the iPhone for capturing 720p video while the Droid can only do DVD quality. And the iPhone also takes the cake for weight, being almost 30 grams lighter. Yet again, this is probably a consequence of the full keyboard and not unexpected.
So overall, the iPhone, with almost no standard ports, no memory extension, no Flash support and a price tag in the near 600 EUR, pales compared to the open and supportive Droid which has some minor flaws.

Brought to you from the Communication in English class.


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