The Droid I was looking for
A brief review. The phone is pretty much awesome. All sorts of free apps that work well. And it comes with a lot of gizmos. The voice activated search is pretty cool, though the kids aren’t that good at it since they tend to say ‘b’ instead of ‘v’.
The AK47 app is lots of fun and the kids like the bubble game.
Bar code scanner is nifty. Scan the bar code of anything and it will look up product reviews online.
I said earlier that I thought it had some sort of proprietary cable. I was wrong. It’s apparently the new micro USB and I had the older USB cables.
GMote is cool. Use your Droid to as a remote for your PC. Handy for watching netflix on the TeeVee and for operating media player.
Turn by turn directions are free. That is slick.
A few complaints:
There is a number in contacts that I did not put there. And I cannot delete it. Odd.
Keyboard was a bit difficult to get used to. I’d constantly hit two keys at once. Getting the hang of it.
I cannot uninstall some of the preloaded apps that I’ll likely never use.
The cool feature that it runs multiple apps at once has one drawback. It doesn’t really close a lot of them when you think you’ve exited. But there’s an app to close them called TasKiller.
Quite a few of it’s features rely on having a gmail account. I already had one so not a big deal.
Since I’ve played with it a lot, battery seems to drain pretty quickly.
I never owned an iPhone but I played with them a lot at the store. Always tempted to buy one but, at the end of the day, I just couldn’t switch to the horrible AT&T service. But in a day, I’ve decided I like the Droid better. If I’d owned an iPhone, that might not be the case.
Droid is an awesome gizmo.
Update: The manual leaves a lot to be desired and I haven’t found a help file yet.
November 8th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Does it use Google Contacts to maintain your contacts list? I go on my PC to edit my list which is then synced with my iPhone.
I finally broke down and got an iPhone in June after waiting for T-mobile to release a decent android phone. I’m really kicking myself now with the droid being released by Verizon. I hate supporting Apple and their closed source and big brother business model.
November 8th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Yes. It uses google contacts.
November 8th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Always tempted to buy one but, at the end of the day, I just couldn’t switch to the horrible AT&T service.
If I give up the iPhone it will be because of this. I love the iPhone, but AT&T sucks monkey balls.
November 8th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Does it interface with Motorola Phone Tools?
Rabbit.
November 8th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Try dropping your screen brightness a couple of clicks – that’s what did the trick on my current smart phone.
I’m thinking of replacing it with the Droid but there are a couple of things I need to find out first. Lucky me, I can ask you.
I currently use Verizon’s system that pushes my email down to the phone. Does the Droid work with that or is it GMail only?
Also is there anything like a desktop for on your PC? Back when I had a Palm-based phone I had the Palm desktop – quite handy for keyboard intensive things like fiddling with contacts. The current phone is Windows 6 based and there really isn’t a desktop unless you want to use a lot of cruddy MS apps.
The Droid looks really good from my five minutes playing with it.
November 8th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
droid does regular email and gmail. not sure what you mean by desktop.
November 8th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
I love it. MSFT finally has a competitor to the iPhone, and it has all the same bullshit quirks that Windows has, including needing a program to unfuck the poor programming on other programs that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
November 8th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
err Sebastian it’s a linux based OS developed by Google, and the TasKiller thing just reads from ps and allows you to issue kill commands.
November 8th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
What are you paying per month for the Verizon data service? I don’t want to have to give up shooting for this neat toy. ;^)’
November 9th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Sebastian,
I feel your pain, and I’m a AT&T employee..(hence the anonymous post).
Strong rumor has it that Verizon is working out a deal with Apple to use the iphone. Expected time frame is early next spring.
Good luck.
PS I don’t work in the wireless group, and I have to use AT&T’s wireless service…..
November 9th, 2009 at 9:10 am
As much as folks bitch about AT&T’s service, it’s done me pretty good the past 2 years.
I live in Houston, and a number of times I’ve had co-workers talk down AT&T and talk up whatever they used, only to be able to make calls and get data where they can’t.
I’ve been using HTC products the last two years though, and I believe the phone makes a lot of difference with regard to reception.
November 9th, 2009 at 9:44 am
i’m actually tempted to switch to AT&T myself. i’m sick and tired of the lousy reception i get with virgin mobile, and the one friend i have in town who uses AT&T has nothing but good to say about his phone and service. and that’s with him living much further into the boonies than i do, where i’d normally expect the reception to suck eggs.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:05 am
If Gmote is a IR remote control, Don’t forget about in an restaurants/bars with loud TVs 😉
November 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am
I wonder how legal that is?
November 9th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
There are very few “desktop” interfaces to Android. Certainly nothing like Palm Desktop.
Android really assumes you can reach out through the cloud to get everything you need. So it supports server side Exchange email/contacts just fine, but getting at notes and tasks stored locally within an Outlook install doesn’t fit the model. If you also store your email and contacts locally to Outlook you’ll have trouble there too.
I’m looking for a way to sync (or replace) Outlook notes, for example, because I used them heavily under the palm/outlook sync model. Haven’t found it yet, but I’ve only been playing with this new toy for about 5 hours.
Verizon dings you for another $30 a month data plan if you didn’t have it before. They won’t let you just have it and work off the WiFi. A Verizon problem not a phone problem.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Thanks guys!
I haven’t been using Outlook Notes – nor Outlook anything.
Verizon has a Wireless data synch that works with other phones – https://www11.wirelesssync.vzw.com/
Lets you hit everything from a bigger screen / keyboard.