At work the corporate cell phones are through Verizon. Over the last week+ our office has had a demo unit of the Motorola Droid, and I’ve gotten the chance to have it for a day. This is my initial like/dislike list from my experience.

Disclosure — I am a very satisfied iPod touch user, so this review comes from an iPhone/iPod touch background.

Like

• I was immediately pleased that the , (comma) and . (period) buttons were on the main keyboard layout for the on-screen keyboard. This is an irritation of mine with the iPod touch keyboard, that I have to go the secondary screen to get a comma.
• For a phone-based camera, it’s a nice one. 5MP with a flash. When I snapped a photo at work today a co-worker was shocked with how bright the light from the flash was.
• I like the alpha-sorted applications tab. Because you have the ability to drag specific apps to the desktop (?), it is really nice to have an alpha list of all the apps installed.
• I used the built in GPS turn-by-turn navigation on my way home. It’s a simple drive, but it worked. It did get a little confused trying to direct me out of the parking lot at work to the highway.
• The non-slip rubberized back of the phone is really nice.

Dislike

• I can’t stand the physical keyboard. The buttons aren’t really buttons, but spots on an almost featureless pad to push. I was fat fingering it like mad because I couldn’t tell which key I was pressing. And to top it off, the keyboard is off center. There is a D-pad on the right of the keyboard (why? I don’t know), and that has forced the keyboard to the left. So the left-most keys (QWE, ASD, shiftZX) are too close to my left hand to be comfortable for my left thumb, and my right thumb has to stretch across the keyboard to get to the middle-right keys. Now, I do have small-to-medium sized hands, so that could be a factor.
• I setup my various email accounts on it, and was surprised to find that I couldn’t sync my Google Apps calendar. It sync’d my regular Google calendar, and it sync’d my Exchange calendar, I just couldn’t find a way to do it with my GApps calendar.
• Coming from an iPod touch I was struck by my inability to do multitouch gestures.
• There is an SD expansion slot (yay!), but you have to remove the battery to get to the slot. Design flaw.
• Compared to my iPod touch, the on-screen keyboard feels cramped. I set them side by side. The iPod screen is marginally wider, and the keys are approximately the same size. However, the keys on the iPod are clearly spaced apart more. This “dislike” could come primarily from the fact that I’m accustomed to the iPod keyboard.
• The back button has two roles: to go back one screen (e.g. between setup menus), and if you can’t go back anymore it takes you to the Home screen. I think it should not take you to the home screen. That’s what the Home button is for. The back button should do nothing if you are at the beginning.
• The user interface (UI) is disjointed. On the iPhone, regardless of the app you are in, you know that it is an iPhone app. There is a cohesion to the look-and-feel of the apps across the iPhone platform. With the Android platform there are not the same UI rules, so there isn’t a lot of consistency from app to app.

All of this said, I wouldn’t mind if I had a Motorola Droid; I could live with these dislikes. Most of my issues with it are related to the hardware, and not with the Android OS. I fully expect Google to challenge Apple in the smartphone market. And I fully expect someone to make hardware, that when paired with Android, will be a real iPhone challenger.

Side by side, I’d still choose an iPhone over the Motorola Droid. While I don’t think the iPhone is 100% perfect, in my opinion it is still the better device top-to-bottom. And for me, I don’t have a problem with AT&T. I’ve been with them for 9 years, and haven’t had any issues; they have been a solid phone company for me. If you are anti-AT&T, and that’s why you aren’t on an iPhone, this Droid is still a really nice phone; it’s just not an iPhone.