I finally went down to the Verizon store and spent some hands-on time with the Stratosphere and Droid 3, and I reached a decision.
I'm coming at this as a Droid 2 owner, who is actually quite happy with the D2's performance. But I'm also a tech enthusiast who is always looking for the latest and the greatest. The only thing I don't particularly like about the D2 is its 4-row keyboard, which is usable, but mediocre.
When I got to the store, I tried the Stratosphere first. My impressions were:
Stratosphere
Display: Good
- Sharp, with the rich colors you expect from SAMOLED
Keyboard: Average
- The keys were tiny, but well-spaced, with very little travel, but a distinct click.
- Overall, I'd rate it slightly better than my D2's keyboard, because of the dedicated number row.
Build Quality: Average
- It didn't feel cheap, but it also didn't feel particularly high-end.
Performance: Average
- It felt about the same speed as my D2 (which also has a single-core 1GHz CPU) -- not going to blow anyone away, but definitely usable.
4G LTE: Frustrating
- Unfortunately, I was unable to get 4G to lock on for more than a couple seconds, after which the phone went back to 3G and stayed there. Tried rebooting -- no change.
- Given that the store was located in downtown Boston, smack in the middle of what should be LTE territory, this was disappointing. I noticed that none of the store's other 4G phones (Bionic, Charge) were able to get 4G either, despite all being prominently displayed under a 4G banner. Epic fail on Verizon's part.
Then I went over to the Droid 3...
Droid 3
Display: Average
- Given all of the controversy over the pentile display, I was very curious what it would look like. Put me in the category of people who can't see what the problem is. I saw no pixelation. The text was slightly less sharp than on my D2, and I saw a bit of a shadowing effect when scrolling on a page with pictures. Neither of those would be deal-breakers for me.
Keyboard: Excellent
- This is the best keyboard I have ever used on a phone, period. By a large margin. If I were to buy this phone, it would be for the keyboard.
Build Quality: Excellent
- I've always been a fan of Motorola's build quality and industrial design. To me, their high-end phones (like the Droid line) just feel more solid and well-crafted than any other Android phones.
Performance: Complicated
- There were two D3s in the shop. I tried the first one, and I was shocked that the performance when browsing the web or using Google Maps was slower and jerkier than on my D2. I tried rebooting and turning off live wallpaper, but this had no effect. Granted, this isn't entirely a fair comparison, as the D3 has a higher-resolution screen and all the animations were turned on. (My D2 has animations turned off, but live wallpaper turned on.) Still, not what I expected.
- I ran Quadrant and came up with a very respectable score of 2500, so whatever was causing the slowdown wasn't affecting its benchmark performance.
- Then I tried the other D3, and it was considerably faster than the first, and somewhat faster than my D2. All the animations were also activated on the second D3, and I turned on live wallpaper, but that had no effect -- it was still much faster than the first D3.
- Most likely, there is some sort of D3 software configuration that results in substantially slower performance, but I have no idea what that could be. Maybe the second one had received the latest OTA update and the first hadn't...
- Less likely, maybe some D3s are actually slower than others due to a hardware defect. That could explain why some of the initial reviews described the phone as quick and responsive, and others were saying that it was slow and laggy.
- It's also possible there was a problem with the touchscreen on the first D3, and that was the cause of the lag and jerkiness when doing things like scrolling web pages and maps.
- In any case, I'm pretty sure that with some trial and error (software settings and hardware exchanges), you could get the D3 configured so it was significantly, but not spectacularly, faster than the D2.
My Decision
Neither of these phones seemed like a huge step up from my D2. The only thing that would be a big improvement is the D3's keyboard, which is phenomenally good. If I didn't know that other high-end sliders (like the Maserati) were in the pipeline, I would probably pick up the D3 for the keyboard alone.
As it is, I'm going to wait for the twin announcements on Tuesday, and see if we get lucky and find out anything about a Galaxy Nexus slider or the Maserati. If not, I'm still going to wait and see what comes out between now and the end of the year. Given the latest tweets from Droid Panda, it sounds like a bunch of ICS phones are coming out before Christmas, including ones from Moto and HTC. Hopefully, one of these will be the keyboard-equipped phone mentioned in tfleming's poem.