iPhone 3GS vs. Droid: How Do They Really Stack Up?
Our friends at BillShrink, who developed an interactive tool that lets you compare handsets and pick the best phone-plan combination, crunched the data on some of the newer smartphones and compared them with the current champion, the iPhone 3Gs. “While sticker prices are roughly comparable between smartphones, each offers its own particularly generous features,” the company says. But in the end, customers should base their decision on the total cost of ownership of the device over the entire length of their contract with the phone company. So how does iPhone 3GS stack up against the Droid, MyTouch 3G and the Palm Pre? Results are below the fold.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
At some point, gauging battery life in terms of talk time is going to cease to be useful. As far as I’m concerned it already has. I have the lowest available minute plan for my smartphone and have never exceeded it. More important is how long the phone will last when being used for all those smart things – especially if you’re actually using the multitasking options. And believe me, when an iPhone (original flavor) is downloading a podcast, getting mail pushed out and delivering a push notice while you’re surfing the web and listening to tunes, you’re multitasking no matter what the chart claims. And your battery will s-u-f-f-e-r.
Well said! Just goes to show that while the industry has heavily latched on to the ability to multi-task, it really isn’t that big of a deal on a smart phone. Only few apps really need them, such as IM clients, but with push notifications, your battery lasts longer in the end.
“But in the end, customers should go for the total cost of ownership of the device over the entire length of your contract with the phone company.”
Sounds, Penny wise, pound foolish to me.
Or how much has the price of the contract influenced your decision to drop the iPhone?
If you look at it as a small computer buy the best one that does what you need it to do. I for one can think of a 100 things I could program if the iPhone had none native apps multitasking support. That would be my reason to drop it for example, but I also need mutli-touch. Just for some processes I have my work flow adopted to. So I already changed things around and adopted and picked up some new things.
Contract price should certainly on the list. But it’s not the only criteria.
The only Downside on the iphone is the multitasking, but who cares the iphone is king.
The “king” please, as time goes on (just like now) the competition is finding ways to make the i phone obsolete.. Now let me introduce to u the droid!!! Something the I phone can’t compare to, I’ve had both and the i phone isn’t even close to the droid!!
Droid who? lol joking. we’ll just have to see if apple comes out with multitasking and a 4G iPhone.
i have multi-tasking on my iPhone via JB of course but yes multi-tasking is a seriously overrated feature when most current gen phones still have horrible battery life!!
PLEASE ADD THE N900
I second the that. N900, please.
Can’t multi-task voice and data with the Verizon ‘droid while you can with the iPhone on ATT/GSM. Big issue being ignored by everyone.
This is entirely untrue.
actually this is entirely true buddy
uhh wtf are u talking about…yes you can on the droid….(as I do it right now)
YES, you can, however, you will NOT be allowed to do it when you are tethering under the Verizon tethering plan, which is slated to come out March 1st, 2010, and at 15.00 per month – and yes, alot of Pantech users will be pissed, I know I will be returning mine and discontinuing the 60.00 per month for 5GB data cap. BTW, PLEASE NOTE THE 5GB CAP DOES NOT APPLY TO THE PHONE DOING THE BROWSING OR DOWNLOADING, THE CAP IS ONLY APPLIED TO THE DATA ACCOUNTS (The Droid currently not being one of them).
Clearly a decent phone, but an iPhone killer it’s not. Hey, if you have to advertise…
what will drive Android adoption is the: user interface and Android app store. I haven’t seen reviews of either, but both would be extremely helpful. For instance, i love the iPhone because the app store and iTunes integration is awesome. It makes me hesistant to switch to Android-based phones.
Hard to weight the pros of cons of dumping iPhone/AT&T with this info. Much thanks!
Huh? No mention of Droid’s display which is two times better than iphone’s.
Okay, I am now ready to hear fanboy’s reply as to why the screen resolution doesn’t matter.
To me, it only matters if the device is significantly larger in terms of physical screen dimensions. I’m someone who really doesn’t care much for the extreme of everything. That is, I don’t think a 5MB camera will server me that much better (I’d rather my iPhone had a flash first), nor do I think a higher resolution would do much more for my movie viewing pleasure. I guess it depends on what you use your device for. I use it much more for e-mail, podcasts (some with video, but those are usually news), Internet, FB and other social networking, finding my way around, … so a faster data connection is always welcome, and I’d rather see processor speed increases and better battery life before more screen pixels.
Disclaimer: not a fanboy, just a peeved ex-M$ user. :-)
(Sorry, I meant to say 5 megapixel camera)
what the .. where’s htc hero in sprint .. 5 megapix, voice commands, sleek. that should be one to compare, not mytouch.