The Motorola Droid from Verizon, now in our Ratings
Photo: Motorola

We've just added some very hot smart phones to our Ratings, including the arch rival to the iPhone 3G S, the Motorola Droid. As we predicted based on our first impressions of the Droid, this $200 Verizon phone is a close match for the iPhone.

In fact, the two phones were only a point apart in overall score.

Both had displays we judged to be excellent, though for different reasons. iPhone's display proved to one of the brightest and easiest to see under most lighting conditions, while the Droid's was the clearly one of the sharpest we've seen on any phone—and the biggest in our Ratings.

The Droid's voice quality was good, better than the iPhone's, which is only fair. But the iPhone slightly outlasted the Droid on talk time.

But these high-scoring phones aren't the best at everything. For example, some other new Ratings additions, such as the BlackBerry Bold 9700 ($150 from T-Mobile), proved to be better at messaging.

Available to subscribers, the full smart-phone Ratings offer a detailed comparison of the Droid, iPhone, and more than 30 other phones.—Mike Gikas