Let's start with the facts :
The DROID is powered by an Arm Cortex A8 CPU, 256MB of CPU RAM, and 512MB of ROM which is comparable to the hardware of the iPhone 3GS, leading to a very responsive user experience : all application opened swiftly with almost no lag upon flipping through pages or scrolling.

The screen has a 3.7 inch diagonal and 480-by-854 pixels, the resolution per square inch is high, allowing good results when reading text or watching video.

The DROID boasts both a virtual and a physical keyboard, both keyboard styles allow great accuracy, the virtual keyboard works so well that some of the virtual keyboard sceptics in our office were so impressed that they ended up using the virtual over the physical one.

Exiting news for those who use their phone as a GPS: the DROID offers turn-by-turn directions through a Google Maps application, that basically mimics the full functionality of a dedicated GPS devices. There really is not longer a need for a addtional GPS device if you have the DROID.

The DROID comes with a 1400mAh battery leading to around a full day of intensive use which is not bad for phone this slim and small given processing power, screen brightness and dimensions.

What's interesting about the new Zune HD :  it was released a few months after the latest iPod touch, allowing it to actually incorporate a few technological advances that the iPod touch 2nd Gen doesn't offer. For starters, it comes with a 3.3 inch OLED screen - that generates a crisp, bright and high res image. That screen is driven by the Nvidia Tegra GPU offering high resolution video stream decoding that let's you use the Zune HD as a high definition video player with your HDTV.

So why don't all my friends have one? Why don't I seem to want one? If you want to transcend the Apple mainstream, you really should consider the Zune HD. The Zune HD is a great opportunity to exlore the leading edge of media player technology off the beaten Apple path and essentially hold more advanced technology in hands than an iPod touch 2G.

However, that comes at the price of feeling a little bit detached from the wealth of innovation that's happening in the appstore. While there are apps for the Zune, and Zune apps are free, there is no commonly available app-infrastructure for programmers yet, like it has existed for the iPhone and iPod touch for almost two years. You will not have the same range of apps available, but if you are looking for a pretty futuristic media player and don't intend to spend all that much time exploring new apps anyway, the Zune HD is a great option.