Wolf Paulus

Posted by Wolf Paulus on Aug 4, 2010 in Hardware

We are really lucky, to experience another technological revolution. After the Personal Computer and the Internet, the Smart-Phone as a front-end for Cloud-Computing seems to be the next radical alteration, once again saving the tech industry, not just in the Valley, but in every other related  tech center around the country.

It always needs at least two players to have a game and Android and the iPhone seem to be those players this time around. Even when considering Nokia’s, BlackBerry’s, and Windows Mobile combined huge install base, it still looks very much like “game over” for them. In a fast paced technology it’s all about momentum and growth-rate; market share is gained and lost during periods of transition and change.

Droid vs Incredible vs Droid X

I had three great Android Phones available, all running Android 2.1 Update-1, and all running on Verizon’s network, and thought it would be fun to run a couple casual benchmarks. So here we go, we took a closer look at the original Motorola Droid, the HTC Incredible, and Motorola’s Droid X.

I know, I know, this isn’t a fair fight, the Droid was last year’s coolest Android device launched in late Fall 2009, while the Incredible and the Droid X are brand new phones .. well, I guess this just proofs that the half-life of an Android Phone Generation is currently about 8 months.

Please, don’t take this comparison too seriously, it wasn’t performed scientifically, not even close. Generally @tompaulus and I ran the tests 3 to 5 times and picked the median. We took standard benchmark related applications from the Android Marketplace and made sure that the phones were not running too much other stuff in the background while performing our tests.

Meet the contestants:

1. MOTOROLA SHOLES – DROID

Firmware: 2.1-update1
Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v7l)
System RAM: 225 MB

2. HTC INC – ADR6300

Firmware: 2.1-update1
Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
System RAM: 404 MB

3. MOTOROLA SHADOW – DROID X

Firmware: 2.1-update1
Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
System RAM: 476 MB

Droid X WIFI Download Speed

Internet Download Speed

Here we were looking at the Wifi upload and download speed, measured with the SpeedTest.Net application. However, we are just showing the download speed. Upload speed was capped by the ISP at about 1000 kbps, which all three devices were easily able to achieve.

WIFI Download Speed [kbps]

1. Droid: 5,707
2. Incredible: 13,019
3. Droid X: 14,425

Quadrant Standard

Quadrant is a CPU, I/O and 3D graphics benchmark application, freely available in the Marketplace. It computes a single value over a large number of tests:

1. Droid: 373
2. Incredible: 569
3. Droid X: 1281

3D Benchmark

An3DBench is a 3d benchmark based on the Android version of the jPCT 3d engine. It runs seven tests from fill rate to complex scenes.

Motorola Droid

1. Fillrate: ST/MT: 8.13/7.61 MP/sec.
2. High object count: 14.85 fps
3. Multiple lights: 41.02 fps
4. High polygon count: 15.72 fps
5. Keyframe animation: 44.70 fps
6. Game level: 27.15 fps
7. Total Score: 3945

HTC Incredible

1. Fillrate: ST/MT: 9.56/9.57 MP/sec.
2. High object count: 15.23 fps
3. Multiple lights: 44.60 fps
4. High polygon count: 22.19 fps
5. Keyframe animation: 57.95 fps
6. Game level: 24.50 fps
7. Total Score: 4512

Motorola Droid X

1. Fillrate: ST/MT: 11.04/11.08 MP/sec.
2. High object count: 27.62 fps
3. Multiple lights: 60.59 fps
4. High polygon count: 25.29 fps
5. Keyframe animation: 60.67 fps
6. Game level: 46.17 fps
7. Total Score: 6045

The Camera

The original Droid features a 5 MP camera, while the two new models both come with 8 MP cameras built-in. Only the two Droids have dedicated hardware shutter buttons, which makes taking steady shots quite a bit easier. We took pictures at the best possible resolution and transferred them without editing.

We didn’t like the Droid’s camera too much when it came out and it seems that the Droid X’s camera has it’s issues as well. However, nothing that cannot be fixed with software (Hey Moto, are you listening?) Here are the blown-up samples :

Motorola Droid

HTC Incredible

Motorola Droid X

The incredible Droid X

While the HTC Incredible is heavily branded with the HTC Sense UI, the original Droid came as a Google Experience phone, meaning Motorola didn’t put the MotoBlur overlay on. The Droid X is highly customizable, i.e. you can get as much or as little of MotoBlur as you like. Some of the Widgets look and also work very nicely and even MotoBlur haters may (only very secretly of course) use a little blur if nobody looks.

The Incredible’s screen seems to be a bit glossier and also a bit sharper, which is not really a big surprise since the Incredible and the Droid X both have about the same screen resolution but the Droid X has to spread the pixels over a larger area.

What remains to be said is that the Droid X really is incredible. I don’t like the row of  four hardware buttons too much and the phone might really be too big for some and certainly doesn’t look and feel as elegant, sophisticated as the HTC Incredible but it certainly is fast and at the same time very light, .. dashing.