The Star's television critic Aaron Barnhart wrote this review.

Droid, the so-called iPhone killer that uses the Android 2.0 operating system from Google, goes on sale Friday morning at Verizon Wireless stores.

Among iPhone nation, the reaction to Verizon’s in-your-face marketing campaign for the Droid — those “iDon’t” commercials that mock the supposed shortcomings of America’s favorite smartphone — has ranged from bemusement to irritation to litigation.

Andy Ihnatko, in his Chicago Sun-Times computer column, properly took umbrage, writing that “‘iDon’t’ is a terrible commercial. It provokes experienced iPhone users like me to get all Tyra Banks on the phone.”

AT&T, the exclusive wireless source for the iPhone in the U.S., filed suit this week against Verizon for ads that suggest you can’t use your iPhone in much of the country.

Before the iPhone-iDon’t hostilities escalate any further, may I say, on behalf of my fellow Verizon users, that iDon’t believe the Droid is an iPhone killer. And iDon’t need it to be an iPhone killer, because iDon’t plan on changing wireless providers.

The iPhone was released less than 2½ years ago, but for many of us who subscribe to the nation’s No. 1 cell phone service, it has seemed much longer. We’ve looked on with envy as iPhone users have sent us e-mail, tootled around town guided by the iPhone’s navigator and loaded truckloads of music and pictures onto their iPhone’s memory cards.

As a Mac user, I’ll confess that whenever I find myself in the Apple Store, I test-drive the iPhone. From time to time I run the numbers in my head, trying to justify switching to the iPhone when my Verizon plan expires.

But I always stay put. For me, the primary reason to have a wireless device is to conduct phone calls reliably. And since 2004, when I couldn’t place a Sprint call in western Kansas, that job has gone to Verizon in our home. Sprint’s rural coverage has improved greatly since then, but it’s too late. I’m locked into my plan, and frankly I have no reason to switch.
As for AT&T service — well, I don’t want to go to court, so let’s just say for me and other Verizon users I know, it’s a deal-breaker.

If we could have an iPhone on Verizon’s network, that would be the bee’s knees. But we’re reasonable people. We don’t need an iPhone if what we can get is something that has most of the features of an iPhone and none of the drawbacks.

I’ve been test-driving a Droid this week, and I’m happy to report that, finally, we have that phone.

It’s neither as powerful nor as stylish as the iPhone. But it is something you can pull out to take a picture, or shoot off an e-mail, or load piles of music onto, or clip onto your dashboard without having to issue a disclaimer, “This isn’t an iPhone, but…”

What the Droid has is a nice, wide, ultrasharp 3.7-inch touchscreen display, slide-out chiclet keyboard, 5-megapixel camera with flash, full-screen camcorder, replaceable battery and Android 2.0, the new release of Google’s open-source operating system that includes support for voice-activated navigation.

By far the most attractive feature of the Droid is its near-instant ingestion of all the data I’ve aggregated over the years as a Google user. My mailbox and contacts are on Gmail. My datebook is on Google Calendar. And of course, the Android browser opens in Google. After a brief initial setup, all I do in any of these apps is start typing — and instantly Droid starts offering autofill suggestions, saving me gobs of time. True, the iPhone is also tightly integrated with most Mac apps but (don’t tell Apple) I prefer all my Google apps to their Mac counterparts.
Verizon said earlier this week that more than 10,000 apps were available for Droid, and the total is growing exponentially each month as developers churn out products for Android 2.0. The majority of those are free, though it seemed a lot were trial or “lite” versions of premium apps. I downloaded the free music player from Pandora, the streaming music service, as well as a third-party weather widget and CardioTrainer, which uses the phone’s GPS to compute the impact of your morning jog.

I was dazzled by Pandora, which basically turned my Droid into a CD-quality radio station based on my music preferences. A Verizon rep showed me how I could also search for music and stream it instantly.

It may not be an iPhone killer, but Droid sure seems like an FM killer.

The desktop takes up three screens, offering plenty of room to arrange my favorite widgets and shortcuts. A rolltop menu at the bottom of the screen unveils all my apps, and another rolltop gives an overview of what’s running. Verizon brags about how “customizable” the Droid is. I assume this means I can turn off the sci-fi voice that loudly drones “DROOOID” each time I get a new e-mail. I did figure out how to make a ringtone from a favorite MP3 in my library.

Droid’s touchscreen is a notch above the LG Dare (my current smartphone) for scrolling, tactile response and clarity. But it’s quite sensitive, as are the iPhone-like hardware buttons, which I’m constantly triggering by accident. Its external speaker is outstanding, and any headphone jack will work with it. At 6 ounces, it’s twice as heavy as my Dare.

Battery life is rated at 6.4 hours talking time. What I wanted to know: Can it go all day and still be a fully functioning Droid? I turned on my Pandora player on Tuesday evening and kept it on for hours while checking e-mail, surfing the Web and so on.

It didn’t need a charge until Wednesday afternoon.

The camera does, as advertised, take pictures in no light, thanks to double LED illuminators, and the software instantly color-corrects to render decent pictures. Ihnatko asserts that his 2-megapixel iPhone takes superior shots, but that’s silly — a camera phone is only as good as the operator, and it took weeks for me to master my Dare. (Anyway, iPhone doesn’t do flash.) The Droid also shoots full-screen, 24-frame-per-second video, but in side-by-side tests with my Flip Ultra SD camera, Droid’s video wasn’t as sharp or fluid, and it looked grainy and dim when shooting in low light.

Using the USB adapter/charger, I was able to sync easily to my Mac and transfer files using drag-and-drop. It’s not as sexy as iPhone-to-Mac, but it’s the simplest data transfer I’ve had with a phone.

For now, Flash 10 is unsupported, so that limits much of your video, but it’s coming, according to my Verizon rep. (YouTube is, of course, supported. And iPhone doesn’t do Flash either.) Also, support for Google Docs is minimal.

Like the latest iPhones, Droid offers either 16 or 32 gigabytes of storage. The larger capacity would hold most of my MP3 library. The pre-installed Amazon MP3 app makes downloading new songs a snap.
If I decide to keep my Droid ($199 after rebate plus a two-year agreement), my data bill will double from the $15 a month I pay for basic unlimited service to $29 a month for a smartphone data plan. That’s on top of $70 for the minimum family plan.

(Support for Exchange e-mail costs another $15 a month.)

I’m iffy on the Droid for just this reason. There’s still some cheapskate in my blood, even if I am on the nation’s most expensive (but reliable!) wireless network.

Eventually, though, I’ll probably come around. Now that Verizon is giving us what we’ve been pleading for years to have, it would seem that resistance is futile.

Visit Star television critic Aaron Barnhart at KansasCity.com/entertainment.