I’m 7 Days into using both a Droid and iPhone and my eyes are still wide open.
Despite what I hear from people like Michael Arrington that the Droid is the same size of the iPhone, I just don’t feel that’s the case.
So for the first time today, I really took a good look at the Droid side by side with the iPhone.
Here are two views that are pretty telling.
The length and width dimensions on the phones are nearly identical as you can see from the red lines in the following picture.
The rounded corners on the iPhone do take away from some of the heft and give it a much smoother and smaller feel.
The screen on the Droid is a bit longer than the iPhone screen (yellow lines) but the iPhone screen is wider by about the same amount. This picture is not an accurate view of the screen width since it is not a straight-down shot.
The top phone is an iPhone 3Gs with a Crown case on it.
The middle is the Droid (obviously) and the bottom phone is an iPhone 3G.
More than the width and height, I think the end-view is the most interesting, and illustrative of why the iPhone feels and looks so much smaller.
Again, left to right, iPhone 3G, Droid, iPhone 3GS with Crown case.
Not only is Droid about 25% thicker than the iPhone, the rounded sides give the phone a MUCH thinner feel. So even though the iPhone is fat in the middle, it feels and appears thinner even than it really is.
Even with the Crown case on the 3GS that makes them nearly the same thickness, it still feels much smaller with the rounded edges.
This is a technique Apple used very effectively on the MacBook Air.
I hope Motorola and the other Android Smartphone manufacturers can learn something from the Apple designers.
Because I absolutely love the Android 2.0 Operating System. The phone itself is nice, but it’s got a lot of room for improvement.
