Android Battle: SGN v RAZR

I'm traveling to Europe for the first time in two years, and as usual, the phone I have isn't global-capable. Thanks Verizon, for adding a great new technology (LTE) but not standardizing with other parts of the world.

But that's because I've got a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which doesn't have GSM capabilities, or EU CDMA. The Motorola DROID RAZR, however, does have GSM.  So I borrowed one (thanks Alan!) and off I jet to Germany next week.

So I've had a little more than a day to play with the RAZR.  I spent most of yesterday reloading apps (why didn't they download automatically?  I understand the sideloaded ones, but the Google Play stuff should have just appeared, right?), and found some things I do and don't like about the RAZR versus the GalNex.

Galaxy Nexus Wins

• Jelly Bean. Hands down, this is the deciding factor.  I really like the Google Search Cards, voice activation, better gesture controls in the browser. At least the RAZR has Ice Cream Sandwich.
• Buttons. I like the soft buttons on the screen, and their arrangement.  having to long-press home to switch tasks is a pain.
• Skin/Launcher. Having 16 buttons plus the search bar on each screen is a bonus (although the hard search button on the RAZR offsets this a bit)
• Lack of cruft. Moto and Verizon both pack this thing with a lot of useless apps
• Feel. This might be just a matter of getting used to it, but the RAZR has harder edges, and the bulge at the top makes for an unbalanced grip
• Battery. If I had the MAXX version, the RAZR would win. But the Nexus is removable, and I have the regular one and an extended one (only about 10% better, but beats a poke in the head with a sharp stick). I haven't used it enough to know what real battery life is going to be like, though.

DROID RAZR Wins

• Weight. Noticeably lighter and thinner.
• SD Card slot.  Shameful that there isn't one of these in the GalNex.
• Speaker. More powerful - the Nexus is rather quiet
• Camera. Better resolution and with the one shot I've taken so far, better light sensitivity.

In general, though, why do Android phone makers not standardize on function buttons?  Having the soft buttons on the GalNex should be the best way, but I've seen pretty much every combination of Menu, Home, Return, Search, Apps when I look at different phones, and it's annoying.  Having a hard menu button at the bottom means that ICS apps that would put the menu button at the top don't do so, meaning I have to re-learn.

Turning Pro (Droid)

I just received a loaner of a Droid Pro (no, they're not available on Verizon's Global Loaner program yet, but I gots connections -- Thanks Alan!).  My 1st-gen Droid doesn't have a global roaming capability, and I head for Nice on Saturday.

Switching over was relatively simple: Just called Verizon up and gave them the new hardware ID's on the phone. Activation and logging into Google brought in almost all my apps (except those downloaded outside of the Android Market), and all my files came over on my MicroSD card.

High points: MotoBlur is a little spiffier than vanilla Android 2.2 (Froyo), with 7 home screens instead of 5, and a number of active widgets that put it close to on par with the active blocks in Win7Phone. If I cared more about social media, I'd probably be squee-ing, but, no.  The batteries are the same as the Droid, so I may take the other as a spare. There are a number of extra apps, which I haven't had a chance to play with yet: Camcorder, City ID, Dialer (slight changes from the standard Phone app), DLNA, Files (a real file browser built in), Verizon Account Manager, NFS Shift, Social Networking, Task Manager, VZ Navigator (bleah).  I was a little disappointed that I had to reconnect to all my other accounts, but that was managed very well by an Accounts tool.  Nice point: EasyTether still works (and they've got great support -- got me a new activation key within minutes), so I don't have to shell out $$$ to use Verizon's tethering. It would be nice to have the hotspot feature, but hey, for avoiding a $30 charge, I don't mind having a cable.

Low points: Form factor. It's a little thinner and lighter than the standard Droid (no slide keyboard), but the keyboard is smaller, and there's a BlackBerry-like keyboard at the bottom. Lose it, and I'll use Swype instead.  They also moved the order of the four main buttons (Menu, Home, Return, Search instead of Return, Menu, Home, Search) -- but apparently that varies on every phone: my son's EVO has yet a different layout. The case is also a much cheaper-feeling plastic, versus the heavier coated metal back of the Droid. While I didn't like the position of the USB cable in the Droid, it's worse on the Pro -- lower on the left, where I'd hold the phone.  The BB-like keyboard doesn't have the cursor keys that the Droid's slider does, and it's harder to click on a particular piece of text on the smaller screen.

Everything is a little different: the email program is significantly different, in the browser bookarks are a list versus a grid, notification icons are all different.   Nothing I can't get used to, but it hardly makes Android look like a "platform."

Most likely, I'll just be getting used to the differences around the time I hand it back.

Swype me one of those!

Wow, somebody got it right!  Swype, in beta for Android phones, is such a quantum leap beyond the Android keyboard -- physical or "soft" -- such a huge step over Blackberry keyboards, worlds better than my old Palm's learn-a-new-alphabet letter recognition.

Rather than typing out letters one at a time, swype has you trace a finger around the soft keyboard to spell out the word. It uses continuous dictionary lookup to figure out what word you're really typing.  Something the soft keyboard on Android should do -- and almost does, by showing possible words on the top, none of which are what I'm actually using.

Is it perfect?  No.  It occasionally comes up with the wrong word, or gives me a choice of eight words none of which are right, but it's accurate much more frequently than the standard soft keyboard, and much, much faster.  It may be sucking battery power more than my already-thirsty phone does (something likely to improve with the release version, I'd hope).  But I swyped several emails yesterday while waiting for my plane, things I'd only have done with the slider keyboard on my Moto Droid previously.

It looks like support for it within apps depends partly on the app: most of the Android apps integrate with it beautifully.  A couple times, I couldn't get it to appear in landscape mode, but I haven't put my finger on it yet.  The one app it doesn't seem to support at all is "Twisty" -- an interactive fiction interpreter for playing "Adventure" and the old Infocom-type text adventures.

But this is an app that's staying on my phone, and I'll probably pay for it if I have to when the beta is up.