Dragon or Droid?

[johninbigd]

I'm pretty much sold on The Droid, but now I see this:

Mystery HTC Android Handset Has a Name and a Carrier | The Unlockr


Do any of you have any idea how a 1GHz processor in the Dragon will compare with the type of processor in the Droid? If the Dragon/Passion is as fast or faster than the Droid then I think that's the one I'd get. I absolutely love the Sense UI. However, I kind of like the idea of a keyboard in landscape mode so I get to use the entire screen all the time.

What do you all think? Do you have any insight on the overall speed differences between these processors/phones?

 

[Jacqueline]

Unfortunately, it is hard to predict. Either one could wind up being faster depending on how Motorola and HTC implement their system on a chip. I am looking forward to seeing the benchmarks once both are released.

 

[johninbigd]

I just read something that seems to say that the Snapdragon processor is a Cortex A8. If that's the case, it would pretty much have to be faster than The Droid, right? Same processor but a few hundred MHz faster?

 

[CRPercodani]

If its Cortex A8 then it should definitely be faster, but if it has the same RAM then honestly it won't be a giant difference. You will notice it out of the gate, but once you get a few apps going it might not be as noticeable. HTC has been making smartphones, well forever, its all they know. So you can expect it to be tuned very well, BUT a big thing is gonna be Sense. If it bogs down this handset like it did/does the Hero then the difference in speed wil be much less noticeable. If you don't care about or don't want/need a physical keyboard then I would say go for this Dragon. But if you hate virtual keyboards, and all the fingerprints that come with it, then go with the Droid.

I wish this Dragon had a real keyboard, that is something I would wait for. But a snapdragon with no physical keyboard isn't what I'd want, especially if Sense puts as much strain on it as it does the Hero.

 

[johninbigd]

I heard the Hero was noticeably faster after a recent update. I would imagine that Sense would run dramatically faster on a 1 GHz Cortex compared to the much slower and less capable ARM11.

I used to have a Blackberry Curve and I missed the keyboard when I moved to an iPhone. I really would like to have one again, but I sure love Sense. I wish we had more videos of the Droid UI. My first impression was that it was relatively ugly, but I need to see more.

 

[CRPercodani]

Well the Droid is just vanilla Android 2.0, it doesn't have any type of overlay or extension like Sense. You can hope for Sense to be ported to a Droid ROM, but it might take a few months. I can say from experience that the only thing in Sense that I really miss is the Dialer/Contacts setup, and the Favorites widget. All the other widgets can be had on vanilla Android, you can download them in the market. The only widgets you cant get are messaging, email, some of the clocks and bookmarks. All the settings widgets are in the market, the Weather Widgets in the market are the exact same as the flipcock w/ weather in Sense. The email widget kinda sucks because it is always delayed from gmail, although I'm sure plenty of people still like it. The main thing I miss from Sense is how it changes the Dialer/Contacts, but the speed of a stock Android or Cyanogen greatly makes up for it. If you are interested in more info you could PM me and I can find all the widgets to help create the Sense experience.

 

[johninbigd]

I'll let you know. I'm going to get either The Droid or the Dragon/Passion. Probably the Droid. If I do, I'll let you know.

Thanks!

 

[ratchetjaw]

I think the Droid will be plenty fast. At some point when is more speed not worth it to sacrifice battery drain.

 

[CRPercodani]

The battery drain is another great point, with the extra room from not having a keyboard they might cram something a little bit bigger in, but who knows. Honestly if the Droid is the fastest Android phone yet then it must be really quick because my G1 with Cyanogen 4.2 is really fast, I never get any lag unless the phone actually freezes or an app force closes.

 

[johninbigd]

Explain those ROMs to me. Are these actually new ROM chips that need to be installed in the phone?

 

[CRPercodani]

Hahaha, sorry but that is a good one. No it's nothing physical, a ROM is basically a customized/tweaked version of Android. Cyanogen is the most well known one for the G1/MyTouch3G, and also some developers have "ported" the Hero ROM W/Sense to work on the G1/MyTouch3G. What you would do is download the .zip ROM file on your computer, then you hook your phone up and transfer it to the SD card, then you go into what is known as "Recovery" and you have the option to "flash"(install) the ROM to your phone. These ROMs are generally optimized to run faster, include more apps, exclude useless apps, change colors within Android and icons. They also provide a template for someone to create a theme, which would change all the colors and icons, plus whatever else.

Does that make sense?

 

[johninbigd]

Makes perfect sense, but I don't know why they're called ROMs, then. In my day (and this is dating myself), a ROM was a chip that was permanently coded. EEPROMs, of course, could be changed. Nowadays we have flash memory, non-volatile memory, DRAM, etc. I think the use of "ROM" threw me off. It sounds like Android users use "ROM" in the same was as people use the word firmware in my profession.

 

[CRPercodani]

Yes you could call it firmware. I honestly don't know why its called a ROM either, as I always thought of that as a memory chip. If you want to research it a bit check out www.forum.xda-developers.com and scroll down to the Dream forums. Actually WinMo phone users refer to it the same way.

 

[ajm144k]

im GUESSING most people wont be able to tell a noticeable difference in speed between the Droid and Dragon. The UIs themselves may play into it, with Sense possibly slowing down the snapdragon compared to if it ran stock Android. But I think an important thing to consider between the two phones is the manufacturers- HTC and Moto.

HTC phones, whether its Android or WinMo, seem to ALWAYS have a freekin camera lag. Click button, wait for it to focus...wait for it to focus... snap- damn, another blurry picture! (If you have a steady, patient hand the pictures will normally come out awesome though.) Moto has been said to have pretty bad battery life in the past (although BGR said the Droid lasted him 12 hrs).


fwiw I'm thinking Moto has it all right with the Droid.

 

[Doit2it]

Makes perfect sense, but I don't know why they're called ROMs, then. In my day (and this is dating myself), a ROM was a chip that was permanently coded. EEPROMs, of course, could be changed. Nowadays we have flash memory, non-volatile memory, DRAM, etc. I think the use of "ROM" threw me off. It sounds like Android users use "ROM" in the same was as people use the word firmware in my profession.

I love when you find an old EEPROM with the window on the chip. You can see the actual etched chip thru the window. The window was used to erase the EEPROM with ultraviolet light (Am I right about that?) Showing my age too up in here.

 

[CombatChuck103]

I just read something that seems to say that the Snapdragon processor is a Cortex A8. If that's the case, it would pretty much have to be faster than The Droid, right? Same processor but a few hundred MHz faster?

I can't say whether or not the snapdragon performs faster than the 3430, but Qualcomm has released multiple announcements clarifying that the Snapdragon is NOT based off of the Cortex A8 architecture. They have stated that it was build by qualcomm from the ground up, instead of using ARM's architecture. Whether or not that is a good thing remains to be seen.