Some quick facts of Motorola Droid

A Motorola product, ‘The Motorola Droid’, is a smart phone enabled with Internet and Multimedia powered with Google’s Android Operating System. The Droid phone is the result of a three-way partnership. Motorola, the well respected brand, is responsible for the manufacture of hardware. The software is handled by Google and the network is provided by Verizon Wireless. This Smartphone is a direct competition for the Apple iPhone released in 2007. Television commercials and advertisements claim that there are several features available on Motorola that are not available on the iPhone.


The phone runs Android version 2.0.1 and has the following features:

• 5 mega-pixel low light capable digital camera.

• Wi-Fi networking

• Interchangeable battery

• 3.7-inch 854 X 480 touch screen

• Standard 35 mm headphone jack

• Google Maps navigation

• Micro SDHC support with 16 GB Card

• Sliding QWERTY keyboard

• Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 processor

• Hearing aid compatibility (HAC) rating of M3/T3

Google’s Android Operating System has several features that make the Motorola Droid Smartphone better than Apple iPhone. Following are some of the features of Android 2.0:

• Quick Contact: Android 2.0 includes a feature called “Quick Contact” which simplifies communication. You can get detailed information about a contact. The menu bar with easy icons will provide e-mail, physical address, instant messaging and all other details that you have saved for that person.

• Multiple Account Support: With this feature you can create a combined inbox and all the messages from all your accounts will be displayed in a single page. It will also let you to keep your contacts together.

• Improved Camera: Android 2.0’s camera controls digital zoom and support flash. It has many options for scene mode, macro focus, color effects, white balance, etc.

• Better Bluetooth: The Bluetooth 2.1 is fully supported and developers will be able to integrate Bluetooth functionality in a more improved way.

• Better Browser: The browser supports HTML5 standards, including the usage of the geo location API and video tag. A new address bar supports for instant tap-driven searching and navigation, and double-tap zoom is supported throughout the browsing experience.

• Other: Android 2.0 provides graphics architecture with better performance and improved hardware acceleration. It also brings SMS/MMS search and a handful of calendar improvements into the Operating System.

To summarize all the features of Motorola Droid and Android 2.0, let us point out some of the pros and cons of this Smartphone.

Pros:

• Attractive touch-screen display

• Improved web browsing

• Google maps navigation

• Multiple account support

Cons:

• All camera images are not clear

• Flat keyboard makes it uncomfortable to type on

Both Apple iPhone and Motorola Droid has gained remarkable market popularity. They have managed to make an impact on the industry. However, with the increase in the number of complaints by AT&T users regarding poor network and coverage, Verizon has gained market share and can be a major selling point. Customers find Verizon more reliable and hence are switching from AT&T. Now this is a positive sign for the developers of the Smartphone Motorola Droid.

Let us discuss some major features and how they differ in both mobile phones:

Apple iPhone Vs Motorola Droid

• Hardware: Motorola Droid runs on the TI OMAP 3430 processor, one of the top processors in the market, which is also used in the Palm Pre. In addition to its application-switching capabilities, the TI OMAP 3430 is also a very fast processor. In fact, Droid is regarded as “the fastest Android device till date”.

iPhone 3GS uses Samsung S5PC100 processor which also runs at 600MHz and includes a CPU, a graphics processing and a memory controller all on one chip. Even the iPhone’s processor is capable of application switching functionality, but Apple hasn’t utilized the feature as yet.

• Operating Systems (OS): iPhone’s OS is highly reliable and easy to use. Whereas Android OS is being tested and used by different devices and manufactures but its utility is still unknown. We will have to wait and watch whether Android OS matches up with iPhone’s OS.

• Keyboard and Display Screen: iPhone’s biggest drawback is that it lacks a QWERTY keyboard and Motorola Droid has taken full advantage of this. It also provides an attractive touch-screen which can display videos at 854 X 480 pixels, higher than the 640 X 450 pixel display of Apple iPhone.

• Camera: iPhone has a 3 mega-pixel camera with video recording and editing features. On the other hand, Motorola Droid has a 5 mega-pixel camera and has video recording capabilities but with no editing features as yet.

• Talk time and Battery Life: iPhone 3GS is powered by lithium-ion battery. On a 2G network, it can provide a talk time of upto 8 hours, while on a 3G network, it provides 5 hours of talk time.

On the other hand, Motorola Droid is also powered by a built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery, but Verizon claims that on its 2G network, it can provide talk time of upto 12 hours and on 3G a network, talk time of upto 6.4 hours.

Sources of information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/324707/review/droid.html

http://www.billshrink.com/blog/total-cost-of-ownership-motorola-droid-versus-iphone-3gs-versus-palm-pre/

http://www.androidcentral.com/total-cost-ownership-motorola-droid-verizon


- Brian Kingsley, Director of Technical Services, ACS Services, Boston

Microsoft’s Windows Azure

Windows Azure is a product of Microsoft and it provides various internet services that can be useful for both on-premises and off-premises environment. It is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Its production will start from January 1, 2010.


Windows Azure Platform provides a simple and flexible environment for developers who want to create a cloud application. It can be easily implemented in your current environment and also supports multiple languages. Windows Azure supports the following: Microsoft Visual Studio, SOAP, REST, XML, and PHP. The following are the five services that are provided by the platform:

• Live Services

• SQL Services

• NET Services

• Share Point Services

• Dynamics CRM Services

Functions/ Usage of Windows Azure are:

• Large-volume storage

• Batch Processing

• Complicated/ large-volume computations

• Build, modify and distribute applications with minimum on-premises resources

• Run commodity processes in the cloud

• Create, test, debug and distribute Web services swiftly and economically

The benefits of Windows Azure Platform are:

• Reduces cost of building and extending on-premises resources

• Cuts down the cost, time and effort of IT management

• Your ideas/ applications will be brought to market faster than expected

• Flexible platform adapts to the changes in business environment and customer needs

• Choice of selecting the best suitable on/ off premises deployment model

• Save energy and time by focusing less on managing operational resources and constraints

• Eliminate the need of hardware management

• Existing tools can be used to build cloud applications

• Consistent on-premises development

• Use computing resources only when required

The launch of Windows Azure is significant as it is the first step of Microsoft in ‘Cloud Computing’ followed by ‘Microsoft Online Services’.

- Brian Kingsley, Director of Technical Services, ACS Services, Boston