The Verizon iPhone 4 was one of 2011's most hotly-anticipated smartphones, after years of the iPhone's AT&T exclusivity. And with the launch of the iPhone 4S in October, another major United States carrier was added to the iPhone's lineup: Sprint.
Verizon already has a carrier-exclusive series of smartphones, however, in the form of the Droid brand. And the Droid 4, announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show and coming to stores soon, is in many ways a 2012-updated, 4G LTE-enabled sequel to the original Droid.
Here's a quick look at what sets it apart from the iPhone 4S:
Hardware design
The iPhone 4S looks basically identical to 2010's iPhone 4. It's a flat piece of glass and aluminum, with a 3.5 inch multitouch screen. Reviewers like "superhero" Dustin Curtis have noted that this size is convenient to reach across with your thumb while using it one-handed, and its size plus its pixel density make it what Apple calls a Retina Display, where the individual pixels are too small to be seen with the unaided eye.
The Droid 4 crosses the original Droid's horizontal slider keyboard with the Droid RAZR's angular styling. It has a five-row physical keyboard with edge-lit keys, as well as a four-inch screen, and has a "water-repellent nanocoating". At half an inch thick it's the " thinnest and most powerful 4G LTE QWERTY smartphone", but is still thicker than the iPhone 4S.
Hardware specs
Apple doesn't publish many of the specs used for comparison between Android devices, including how powerful the iPhone 4S' processor is. The most direct point of comparison is that the iPhone 4S starts at $199 for the 16 GB model, while the Droid 4 will sell for $249 with 16 GB of memory and a microSD slot. The iPhone 4S also lacks 4G LTE wireless speeds.
User experience
In contrast to how tight-lipped it is about the iPhone 4S' specs, Apple goes on at length about iOS 5's new features, like the Siri personal assistant. The iPhone 4S also does not include "crapware" apps that can't be uninstalled, and has what is widely considered to be the best selection of apps on any mobile platform (although it has fewer free apps than Android smartphones like the Droid).
The biggest things setting the Droid 4's experience apart from other smartphones running the Gingerbread version of Android are its hardware features, like its slider keyboard and its 4G LTE wireless speeds. Compared to the iPhone 4S, almost any Android phone offers greater customizability, but also has more carrier crapware. Android Gingerbread is less polished in many ways than iOS, but an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich will be available soon.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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