Recently, I was asked for my opinion of what the best available Android devices currently offered on Verizon were. Verizon offers somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-16 different Android devices (last I checked), and finding a good one can be somewhat of a struggle if you don’t know specifically what you’re looking for, what Android is capable of, or what you want out of Android and your new smartphone.

To start this off, let me say that this all strictly opinion. As a developer, I have a pretty solid sense of what I look for in an Android device, but you may not agree with everything I say. Take it with grain of salt. That out of the way, lets get into it.

There are three main Android devices I would recommend from Verizon: The original Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Incredible, and the Droid X. There are a number of Samsung phones also available, but from what I’ve heard, in terms of build quality, they dont hold up to Motorola and HTC, but Ive never actually used one, this is just hear-say.

The original Droid was a beast when it first came out. It was the first Android powered smart phone to be able to directly compete with the iPhone. This in and of itself earns it some respect from me. A year and a half later though, its still a very solid phone, capable of running everything Android 2.2 (the latest build Verizon has distributed) can throw at it. It has a 550MHz Arm Cortex A8 processor, not as fast as some of the 1GHz SnapDragon powered phones, but no slouch by any means. With some of the newer apps (particularly graphically intense ones) though, the Droid does start to show its age a touch. Its also got slightly lower RAM than most current phones, 256MB as opposed to the standard 512MB. For the average user though, this shouldn’t really make a noticeable difference. Externally, its got a nice big 3.7 inch screen, and an external keyboard (a feature some people hate, but I personally love). Battery life is decent, mine is usually about 50% charge at the end of a day of solid use. The best part of all this, you can get a refurbished Droid from Verizon with a two year contract for $30. Easily the most affordable option for what you get.

Next up, the HTC Droid Incredible (. This little guy came out about 8 months after the original Droid, right around when 1GHz processors were becoming more common. It sports a QSD8650 SnapDragon 1GHz processor, as well as 512 MB of RAM, basically double the system specs of the Droid. This phone runs extremely smoothly in all aspects of its operations, from general use to gaming. It also has a 3.7 inch screen. My one complaint about this phone is the fact that it uses HTC’s proprietary Sense User Interface on top of the Native Android UI. Im not a fan of Sense, but rooting the phone allows you to get rid of it easily enough. This phone can currently be picked up for $99 with a two year contract with Verizon.

Finally, the Droid X. This phone falls into the “Almost too big to use for some people” category. The main feature of this phone is the massive 4.3 inch screen. Its got a 1GHz TI OMAP 3630 processor and 512MB of RAM. Very similar to the Incredible. The main sell for this phone is how big the screen size is. Trust me, the first time you hold a 4.3 inch phone as opposed to a smaller 3.7 inch phone, the difference is huge. This phone, in my experience, performs very similar to the incredible, with one major difference: Motoblur. Motoblur is to Motorola what Sense is to HTC, a custom UI overlay for Android. From my time spent with this phone, both rooted on non rooted (without and with Motoblur, respectively), Motoblur holds the phone back. It runs much slower, screens dont refresh as fast, apps take longer to load, etc, etc…If you ask me, Motoblur takes an awesome phone, and ruins the whole thing. On top of all of this, Ive also heard rumors of a scorched earth bootloader, but I never actually noticed this. One other thing to note, a friend of mine who owns an X had his camera stop working one day, hasn’t worked since. I’m sure this is an isolated incident, but worth pointing out none-the-less.

So, there you have it, my synopsis of the three Android phones I would recommend on Verizon. If I had to recommend one above the others though, it would be the original Droid. Ive had one since they launched a year and a half ago and haven’t had a problem with it since. The thing is a workhorse of a phone. And for $30 bucks, you can beat it.

If you have any specific questions, post ‘em in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

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