Droid 1 Versus Droid 3

Summary

The Droid 3 is a worthy successor to the Droid 1, with a few notable drawbacks. The improved speed, longer battery life, and 8 megapixel camera are great improvements. Unfortunately a sometimes-fuzzy display and finicky keyboard detract from these improvements.

The Good

The Droid 3 is noticeably faster than the Droid 1. It has twice the cores operating at more than double the clock frequency. All apps seem faster and more responsive.

Battery life is improved in the Droid 3. It lasts all day even using some battery-intensive applications like streaming video and GPS.

The Droid 3 camera produces clearer pictures in bright light due to the improved pixel count. However, the autofocus is a little slow and focuses on the wrong objects too easily. The camera and gallery apps are much faster than the Droid 1 apps, making taking pictures of fast-moving subjects easier and more rewarding.

A newer version of Android is available on the Droid 3 and this brings significant improvements too. Bluetooth calling is easier. The camera app is faster, though this might be just due to the hardware improvements.

The Bad

The Droid 3 display by the specs should be superior to that of the Droid 1. It is about 10% larger diagonally. It has a nominally higher resolution. Unfortunately, the "PenTile" technology can't render lines as smoothly or clearly as the display in the Droid 1. In particular, colored text in an application like ConnectBot looks jagged and fuzzy, less legible than on the Droid 1. Pictures and video look about the same or a little better due to the increased screen size.

The Droid 3 keyboard adds dedicated number keys, and has more available punctuation marks clearly indicated on the letter keys. However, the key operation seems to require a break-in period. Some of the keys don't register well during initial operation. And the right-side shift and alt are gone, causing problems for some apps (like ConnectBot).

Last modified on 14 Jun 2013 by AO