I was pretty excited to go out and get my hands on a Droid yesterday. I made my way out to a local Verizon store, where a new owner was kind enough to let me play around with the phone and make a few calls. I have to say, I was pretty impressed with the device. The screen looks incredible and the whole thing operates pretty quickly. Call quality was better than my iPhone, but what isn’t. What I can’t understand, though, is why Motorola added the physical keyboard. It’s not that a hardware keyboard is a bad idea, but that keyboard is the bad idea.

Seriously, that keyboard is terrible. The keys are too close together and so difficult to push that I found myself hitting multiple keys at once pretty often. The top row is too close to the slider, making it difficult to get my thumbs in there to push. The keyboard seems even more out of place when you use the virtual keyboard. I didn’t like it as well as the iPhone, probably because of the lack of multi-touch support, but it’s the best I’ve used outside an Apple product.

The obvious conclusion is that it’s meant to be a differentiator from the iPhone. Unfortunately, it detracts from the quality of the phone, and makes it a lot thicker than is necessary. I think part of the problem is that no one wants to make anything so close to the iPhone that an exec says, “Well why wouldn’t they just buy an iPhone,” and that’s a terrible strategy. The iPhone is great, but it can be improved upon, and there are people who just want something a little different. So give them Android, but leave the pointless differentiators on the design table.

My only other problem with the phone is the Android Market. It’s still too barren to make me seriously consider a switch, even if it would mean Google Voice and Google Navigation.

On Saturday night, Verizon publicly declared it would be going after the iPhone with a new Android phone from Motorola. To do so, Big Red is using the same tactic Palm did, but it will probably see a much higher success rate. The reason: the OS.

It’s not just that I think Android is a superior platform (which I do), or that Palm continues to botch almost everything it tries with regard to the App Catalog (which it does). It’s really that Verizon isn’t trying to pioneer a new OS against the world’s most successful smartphone. Android is not the thriving development community it could be, but it’s not brand new either. That means there will be plenty of app support on launch day, but more importantly that developers are familiar enough to create apps that take advantage of specific features of the new Motorola phone – a big part of what makes the iPhone so good.

On top of that huge advantage, the phone looks really nice. It’s sleek and slim, has a landscape keyboard that far outstrips the cramped POS on the Pre, and it’s on Verizon. I don’t think I need to mention all the other features Verizon’s new ad points out.

This isn’t something Apple will take lying down, though. We should see the rebuttal in what promises to be a snarky little ad war before long.

Thanks to the folks over at AndroidLib (and the detective work of the good people at TechCrunch) we now know that Android has reached the 10,000 app marker. That’s a big deal, largely because Android’s biggest and best competitor, Apple with the iPhone, often touts its monstrous app library. For those of you counting at home, Apple’s got something like 70,000 apps these days.

But Android may start to get a leg up as more and more devices turn to the mobile OS. The number of Android devices already announced for next year is way too long to print here, and solid app support is one of the reasons the platform is so popular. As more apps get developed, we can hopefully start to see more talented developers head that direction.

I know, I know, I’m usually only so jubilant about iPhone apps. Honestly, though, I want Android to continue to succeed. The few times I’ve used it I really liked the OS, but more importantly I want the iPhone to have some serious competition. Right now, Android is the only thing that comes close. Yes, Blackberry has a huge installed base, but feature to feature, Android is the most comparable OS with the best long term growth potential. Here’s hoping the Android Market continues to improve.

Smartphones used to be the domain of supergeeks and tech professionals – people who needed or desperately wanted the functionality of a full computer in a tidy mobile platform. As the devices became more popular and the desire for on-the-go web capabilities grew you could almost smell the storm coming.

Then the iPhone came out and sold millions, spurring competitors to make their own touchscreen wonderphone. We’ve now got the Blackberry Storm, the HTC G1, the Palm Pre, the Nokia N97, and the Samsung Jet, all running on a different operating system. While the manufacturers tout the hardware features that make their phone the best (physical keyboards, a screen that clicks, a camera with a flash), consumers are starting to look to the software that runs the phone, and the applications they’re finally able to install, to make a decision.

Apple has been most successful with third party application sales and support due to their App Store, which opened in mid-July, 2008. Since release, the App Store has seen more than a billion application downloads and now showcases more than 50,000 third party applications. From games to translators, finance tools to ereaders, the Apple App Store has an app for almost anything, leaving its competitors lagging far behind.

It’s taken nearly a year for competitors to get their mobile application stores up and running, time during which Apple has continued to lure consumers with the promise of a robust app catalog. As Business Insider points out, consumers aren’t just investing in a phone, they’re investing in a platform, with application quality and quantity as a major component of that investment. In a similar article, BI adds that time users spend with applications is replacing time spent on the web. Apps like Yelp allow users quick access to restaurant reviews, where before they would have been using Google.

This isn’t just good news for Apple, it’s an important statistic for developers. Read the rest of this entry »