Enter Motorola’s Droid, a Verizon offering that represents the best refinement of Google’s Android mobile operating system to date. It doesn’t take long for it to prove that it’s better than nearly every other half-baked touchscreen phone out there.

But how does it stack up against the granddaddy of them all?

Let’s start with the basics. Droid comes with a 16GB memory card and sells for $199, though that’s after a $100 mail-in rebate. Apple’s 16GB model costs the same, though you don’t have to mess with the mail. Both require $30 per month data plans on top of the usual phone plan.

The Droid’s vivid screen is slightly taller than the iPhone’s, and the phone itself is a little bit thicker to accommodate the slide-out keyboard. Yes, you can use the physical keyboard at any time if you don’t like the touch keyboard, though the physical keyboard’s buttons are slick and don’t give much tactile feedback.

Navigating through the touch controls is smooth and easy, though Droid doesn’t support multitouch gestures like pinching. Everything is clean, convenient and easy to access, but as nice as the gestures work, they don’t recreate the same sense of fun that iPhone users get.

As advertised, you can have multiple applications running simultaneously, unlike Apple’s offering. This way you can have things such as instant messaging or Twitter running without

having to open them separately.

And there are plenty of Android apps available to use, since Google already has 10,000 of them up and running. It’s maybe a tenth of the size of the iPhone’s offerings, but the selection is still varied and robust, not to mention growing.

In a direct attack on Apple and its merely average 3-megapixel camera, the Droid has been given a 5-megapixel lens. Flash and auto-focus help make the pictures and video look great, though the delay between pressing the button and getting the shot is relatively lengthy.

Droid’s Internet browser is fast, relatively easy to navigate and much more solid than the depressingly shoddy smart-phone average, with only the occasional page error. That said, the iPhone’s capabilities are even easier with multitouch, and I still haven’t encountered a page error on that device.

Droid’s music player is certainly serviceable and clean, though the iPhone’s media capabilities still make it the best digital music player period. GPS is included in Droid, with turn-by-turn built in and working well. Apps can give the iPhone that function, but they tend to be quite expensive.

So which phone comes out on top? Taken as a whole, I’d say the iPhone is still superior — but the Droid is a very close second and does a number of things better. If you don’t like AT&T or the cult of Apple, then Droid is a fantastic substitute.