The new Droid 4 is coming out tomorrow for Verizon. So, my conundrum begins today.
My wife is due for an upgrade. Well, not technically until the summer, but she’s due. The Motorola Droid Pro has run its course. It’s had a great ride, but I’ve heard countless times “this phone is soooo slow!!” I’ve given up. She wins. As usual.
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| Motorola Droid Pro |
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| Motorola Droid 4 |
One major requirement for her, aside from speed, is a physical QWERTY keyboard. Personally I think the keyboard makes an already big phone more bulky. But, she doesn’t like the virtual keyboard, and definitely can’t get on board with the greatness of Swype. She had a Blackberry for a number of years and really likes having keys to press more than tap, knowing which button she actually clicked. I hear the argument, and everyone has their own tastes. I was a fan of the Front Qwerty keyboard on the Droid Pro, but it just took up too much real estate on the form, thereby limiting the screen size.
Originally, when I had her switch from Blackberry to Android, I was debating whether to go with the Droid 2 with the slide out keyboard or the Droid Pro. I decided to not throw to many changes on her, since there is a drastic difference between the Blackberry OS and the Android OS, if nothing else than the touch screen. To make her learn and get accustomed to a completely new device was too much for me to ask and I didn’t want her to get frustrated and switch back to Blackberry.
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| Samsung Stratosphere |
So, here’s my conundrum. Do I get the Droid 4 for her, keeping with the same Motorla Blur overlay on Gingerbread that she already knows or do I make her jump into the to the only other 4G keyboard slider phone on the market, the Samsung Stratosphere and have her figure things out all over again, saving $100?
Here are the specs for the Droid 4: http://bit.ly/wdputg and they look great. 4G LTE, 4 inch qHD display, Android Gingerbread 2.3.5 (with reports of upgrades to Ice Cream Sandwich in the first half of 2012), 8MP camera, Front camera, 1.2 GHz processor. Also, what sets this one apart is that even with the sliding keyboard, it is less than half an inch thin. Everything I’ve seen and read have shown me that this looks like a great phone and will meet all of my wife’s needs.
The Stratosphere is an older model Qwerty slider and even though it has 4G LTE, the processor is slower. It runs Android Gingerbread 2.3, but haven’t heard anything about an upgrade to ICS anytime soon. Screen size is the same 4 inch, but not as sharp as the qHD on the D4. The camera is only 5MP, same as her current Droid Pro. The only advantage I’ve seen is that the Strat has the Android buttons on the slider while the D4 doesn’t. I can’t see that as such a huge negative since she’s never had a slider before and isn’t used to the buttons being there. We both had a chance to look at the Strat that my Aunt has recently and she wasn’t wowed, but then again, I’m usually the one that gets excited by new tech toys.
I’m leaning towards the D4, but I’m not 100% convinced yet. Right now, I’d just feel bad getting her an older model, even though she’s trading in a 3G for 4G, so she’d see a significant difference right away.
If you have any suggestions or recommendations, please send them my way.
– Yak