Droid

[BasiliskWrangler]

Looking forward to seeing the Droid. The iPhone is cool, but the phone+plan is just too expensive. If priced right, Droid could kick ass.

[Necromis]

Ah, but Thom just get the iPhone, unlock it, and go to another carrier like T-Mobile. in the long run that is the cheaper way to go. Though personally I like the HTC Touch Pro 2. That is what I will be upgrading to from my HTC Titan. Unlocked, running great apps like Pocket UFO, Garmen GPS, WiFiRouter to link my lappy while driving, not me but my wife using it....just to name a few things. iPhone has that iTunes issue, too. Unless you unlock it. I am happy.

[geishaboy]

That thing looks pretty intense

I somehow doubt they will be sold in my little corner of the world

[Necromis]

oh and it is verison only, plus they are going to charge you extra if you want to use M$ Exchange Activsync on it. Besides the $30 for internet, they will bill you another $15 a month. Kinda sucks.

[CrazyBernie]

I ordered my Droid this morning @ 8:17AM Central. It was picked up by FedEx an hour later, 30 minutes before they even recieved the shipping information. 0_o Total up front cost for the phone: $163.86 w/tax and free overnight shipping. Monthly plan cost: 69 and change ($20 more than I was paying before). I can live with that.

If the Google Voice app's data usage (for SMS) properly applies to the "unlimited web browsing," I'll likely drop the five dollar per month, 250 text message feature and be that much closer to my original bill.

Merry Early Christmas to me.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Looking forward to your Droid review!

[CrazyBernie]

Well, after using the phone for not quite two weeks, I can honestly say I like it a lot. But let's start with what I don't like, ok? It doesn't really matter if you think it's ok, I'm not changing the order.

1. The OS/Hardware is a bit quirky. Sometimes it doesn't register properly when I rotate the phone from portrait to landscape... I have to give the phone a quick shake so it'll kick in. Occasionally an app will need to force close. Shouldn't be anything future updates can't fix. I may swing by the local Verizon and ask about the rotate issue, just to be safe.

2. The battery cover isn't on very solid... I've had it slip off when taking it out of my pocket. This should be remedied when I invest in a case, but still...

3. There's already dust under the glass! I doubt even a case will prevent this annoyance. I have yet to own a phone that doesn't suffer from this problem, however.

4. This is my first smartphone, but not having dedicated call/end buttons feels weird. I sort of wish the touch-buttons at the bottom of the screen were real buttons, as I seem to be prone to accidentally setting them off. I don't actually talk on the phone alot though, so absence of the call/end buttons is definitely not a deal-breaker.

5. While only marginally wider and slightly longer than my Dare, it feels much more substantial, and that's before I get a case.

6. The camera is in the perfect spot for me to smudge all over it while I'm holding the phone. A lot of people have talked up the quality of the camera, but I'm not overly impressed. It's certainly good enough for facebook posting, but so far in less than optimal lighting the pictures are so-so.

7. I've downloaded a couple of emulators for nes and gameboy. The NES is definitely the smoothest, but the control pad on the Droid is kind of "meh." As far as I'm concerned, the emulators are only good for RPGs, which isn't a bad thing, but I'd prefer someting action-y on a small handheld device. Needless to say I have three different Bejeweled clones... one I even paid for.

8. Battery life is nowhere near what I'm used to, even though I am using the phone a lot more than when I had the Dare. Extending the battery life does require some micromanaging, but fear not, there is more than one app for that. 0_o I need to invest in a travel charger along with that case.

9. Speaking of apps, there's no option to download them to the SD card by default. Another minor annoyance.

10. The latest update changed the unlock swipe from a curved motion to a straight line... with no option to change it back. I preferred the curve... and I'm not a fan of the custom swipe creator.

I'll follow up with the good stuff tomorrow. And for me, the good far outweighs the bad. I'll probably throw up some pictures as well.

[CrazyBernie]

Ah, the good stuff. Let's not waste any time.

1. The UI is fast, really fast. My gamer's eye can occasionally pick up some stuttering, but in general the OS is very responsive.

2. The web browser is fast, really fast. While this is the first smartphone I've owned, I've used many others and have owned many phones. This one has some of the best page loading speeds I've seen.

3. The 3.7" screen is huge, crystal clear, the glass is a boon, the resolution is awesome, and the touchscreen aspect is almost too responsive. Text on it is razor sharp, and when viewing webpages, sometimes I don't even need to zoom in to read them.

4. Having a dedicated keyboard is nice. While the on-screen keyboard works really well, it's not so good in portrait mode and it's still better to have a physical backup. The placement isn't the best, and as stated before the control pad (aka "arrow keys") leaves much to be desired, but overall its a win.

5. The built-in wifi means I can piggy back onto my comcast connection when I'm at home or near a hotspot... and it makes the internet browser that much faster. I don't really use Youtube, but the videos pretty much load instantly.

6. There's a convenient widget that allows me to toggle the wifi, bluetooth, GPS, auto-sync, and brightness settings on the fly - two thumbs up.

7. Google Maps works great with the GPS, and being able to voice search a location directly within the app is badass. I searched for a McDonald's near where I was driving the other day... even though I already knew where it was. It's like the phone is my own personal attendant. Now if it could just do my laundry...

8. Speaking of GPS, having a built-in GPS vs an app+location is far more convenient. The gps feature on my Dare was dreadfullly slow.

9. The Google App Market... with 10,000 apps (and steadily growing), I've found plenty of handy/entertaining apps to download so far, and I've only had to pay for one of them. Sure, the iPhone has over 100k apps, but let me ask you this: Do you really need an app for that, let alone over 1000 apps for that? I would like to see better sorting/searching options in the market, however. Right now all you can do is list them by popularity, or search by name.

10. While I wasn't impressed with the camera itself, the video side of it was pretty good.

11. The Google Voice App. I have not yet installed this, but it was one of the features that pushed me into the Droid over some of the other smartphones in Verizon's lineup. It will allow me to integrate my Google Voice phone number into the phone, and use my unlimited web browsing to send unlimited free SMS and use visual voicemail without having to pay for those features. Currently I have a $5/month for 250 messages plan that I'll be able to drop, and Verizon's Visual Voicemail app requires a $3/month fee. That's $8/month I won't have to deal with, further reducing the gap between my new and previous bill. The only downside is that once I figure out which one of my two Google Voice numbers I'm going to use, I'll be superficially switching my number... and switching numbers is always a pain in the ass.

12. Gmail - The Droid has you sync a gmail account with your phone when you first fire it up. This allows you to use the gmail app, and load your google contacts directly into the phone. Regardless of whether someone has a phone number, they'll be in your contacts list so you'll still be able to email them directly from the phone. I admit it seemed odd to me at first, but now that I've used it and wrapped my head around it, it makes a lot of sense. You can change the contact list to display just contacts with phone numbers, but I left it alone since I don't do a lot of phone chatting to begin with (plus it makes it feel like I have more friends that way... ). Also, you can sync additional gmail accounts as needed... I have a secondary gmail account that I use for professional purposes - applying for jobs and the like. You can switch between them inside the gmail app, and when you get an email it notifies you from which account it lands in.

I'm sure I could find lots of other little things to list... but I think that's enough. I was going to post some pictures, but they came out shitty, and there's plenty of them floating around the web. I might throw up a couple later with some of the games/emulators.

Overall and despite some annoying quirks, I'm very happy with the phone.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Cool info, thanks Bernie. This will definitely be my next phone- have 6 more months on my AT&T contract though. Looking forward to seeing Google's Android, and Dell's as well.

[Randomizer]

Crazy Bernie -

The problem switching from portrait to landscape mode is probably hardware related. There are built in acceleration detectors that are activated when you change the positions. It's the same as in a Wii controller. So you might have one that is sticking.