HTC Droid Eris

“Despite its slim profile, the Eris' hardware is far from perfection. Most annoying are the four touch-sensitive controls (home, menu, back and search) that sit below the screen. These buttons easily blend into the screen and offer vibrating feedback for users. But they can be temperamental. Slight pressure is not always enough to activate an icon and it can get annoying to keep pecking at it to elicit a response. Also, you're pretty much hosed if vibrating feedback annoys you. There's no way to turn off that feature.The Eris' major problem is that it feels sluggish. Running a Qualcomm 528-MHz MSM7600 processor, it's slower than the Palm Pre and the Motorola Droid, both of which run the much faster 550-MHz Arm Cortex A8 processor. Oh, in speed tests the similarly priced iPhone 3G (not even the 3GS) proved to be quicker, too.This translates to every task on the phone taking a second or two longer than you want. Apps such as Google Sky Maps (available exclusively for Android OS) feel lethargic and the browser isn't very zippy.”

“The Desire is yet another fine piece of work from HTC – build quality is top notch as usual, and there's little to complain about the software except for the Flash performance. Some may argue that the Desire lacks freshness since the Nexus One's already shown it all, but we'd disagree – at the end of the day it's mainly about the software and service, plus the Desire is available from more carriers to begin with (outside the US, anyway). So, circling back to our earlier questions, for the extra cost of the Desire over the Legend you get a larger and sharper screen, faster processor, live wallpapers and video capture at a slightly higher resolution. On the other hand the Legend's button positions may provide better single-handed operation, and some may even prefer its silver metallic look and feel to go with certain Apple products (sorry, it's unavoidable), so you'd best get your hands on the two devices before handing over the cash. As for the Nexus One, despite the fancy dual-mic noise cancellation, unibody frame, touch-sensitive buttons and a trackball that glows, the only real advantages we see in it are its voice-to-text input and its slightly better camera (and this might only apply to certain batches since HTC might be sourcing from multiple sensor suppliers).”

“For the average smartphone user who wants to stay connected with friends and family, as well as surf the web and watch videos, the HTC Hero for Sprint and the DROID Eris for Verizon are fantastic. Even without hardware keyboards, they are super easy to use and offer a slick and truly enjoyable user experience.There are other devices out there with better hardware specs, like Motorola's DROID, but no Android smartphone on the market offers a better user experience than these two. I therefore give the HTC Hero and DROID Eris well deserved Highly Recommended ratings.”