by wildcherry on Monday, November 9th, 2009 | Deals, Products Review

The HTC Droid Eris is the second Android 2.0 phone that Verizon has launched this fall. This simplified Droid is basically the little brother of the Motorola Droid and is being marketed as such. Get HTC Droid Eris Phone (Verizon Wireless) for $99 and is so far the cheapest Android phone available.

Here is a quick feature rundown:
Android 1.5
5mp camera w/ autofocus
3.2in display
528MHz processor
288mb of RAM
512mb of ROM
8gb microSD card (class 2)
CDMA Rev A
Wi-Fi
GPS
Bluetooth
Magnetometer (compass)
3.5mm headphone jack

Applications
Pre loaded applications include:
Amazon MP3 store, Verizon Visual Voice Mail,Google Maps, Calendar, Talk, Gmail, Youtube,Quickoffice, PDF Viewer, Peep Stocks, Weather

I’m disappointed that this phone doesn’t come with Android 2.0. The phone has 1.5 (for the time being) Because of this there are many things missing when compared to the Moto Droid. The biggest things is are combined email inbox’s, universal search, and the Google Maps Navigation. Lame.

Another thing that I found weird: When taking a picture there’s an option to send to Facebook, and it works, but the facebook app is nowhere to be found. Maybe I’m missing something here?

I do like that HTC took some time to customize the home screen with their clock and weather apps. This adds a nice touch to the phone out of the box

Keyboard
Here’s a big reason you may or may not want this phone - there is no slide out keyboard, only on-screen. This is fine for some people, especially if you’re used to typing on a screen. The haptic feedback is really useful here.

Missing from the keyboard? Multi-touch. I just want to press shift and alt and then a letter at the same time. I hate that shift and alt are toggles. There’s no reason they couldn’t use multi-touch here. The hardware supports it. Also, keep in mind that the screen is smaller than the Moto Droid, so if you have fat fingers, you may have a hard time typing.

I should also point out that HTC programmed this keyboard and not Google. What does this mean? The keys are spaced out a little more, there’s a white background. There’s also, imo, a better predictive text layout. This makes it a little easier to type on than other Android phones with on-screen only keyboards.

Calling & Sound Quality
Calling quality is what you’d expect. It’s good and I didn’t have any problems. I like the proximity sensor that turns off the screen when the phone is up to your face. I’ve used phones in the past that don’t have this and I’ve ended up ending the call or muting it by mistake.

The external speaker isn’t as big as the Moto Droid. As a result it doesn’t reproduce sound as well.

Battery Life
The 1300mAh battery on the Eris is average. It is rated for 3.5 hours of talk time, and 15.5 days of standby. When compared with the Moto Droid, that’s a whole 2.9 hours less talk time, but a whole 4.25 days more standby. I’m going to assume that more things shut down when the phone is not in use.

Web Browser
Humm. I’m a bit contradicted here. The Moto Droid has a newer browser that appears to render pages faster, but the Eris has pinch-zoom and has Flash Lite support. I can’t decide which one I like better.

I like that with the Moto Droid, you have more options, like setting a default zoom, and turning off javascript & plug-ins. I also don’t mind that it doesn’t have pinch-zoom. I also like that when you select a form it zooms in on the form instead of giving you a text field to type in.

On the Eris, I like that I can view Flash (adobe will probably release a flash plugin for Android 2.0 soon anyway), and the pinch-zoom is kinda neat.

Media Player
There’s really nothing special here. The media players on the Moto Droid and Eris are basically the same. Out of the box there is no way to automatically sync your music with your computer. If you want to get music on the phone you have to connect the phone via USB cable and drag/drop the music files you want ‘into’ the phone. The other method is to buy songs from the included Amazon MP3 application. As I said with the Moto Droid, I’m surprised Verizon didn’t put Rhapsody on the phone.

The 3.5mm headphone jack is useful, but I did notice that due to the contour of the phone a 3.5mm plug won’t seat flush with the casing. No biggie.

YouTube comes pre-loaded on the phone, which is also nice. I appreciate that the whole screen is used.

Camera
The camera is 5mp and includes an auto-focus feature. Unfortunately there is no flash. However, I can say with confidence that the pictures look better on this phone when compared with the Moto Droid’s camera. Although, it’s missing some of the options like color effects, scene & night modes, I think the quality of the camera makes up for it. There’s also a setting for 3:2 aspect ratio.

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