DROID

[Virgil]

any compatibility issues (related to synching email) with Outlook Exchange?

 

The phone is obviously meant to be synced with gMail. However, it can be used for Outlook Exchange as well. In fact, it will actually push your eMail to your phone in real time. The phone can work with all eMails, just some are harder to set up than others. Basically, just think about who is in the most competition with Google as a company, and you'll know who's the biggest pain to setup.

 

....okay fine, it's yahoo. You have to type in the settings in a specific way. Just do a google search for how to set up a Yahoo eMail account on the Android OS and you'll see it.

[Virgil]

I have a question about tethering.

 

Are there any phones/wireless providers that allow tethering for cheap/free? When I first got my verizon LG flip phone a few years ago I looked up ways to hack it and found out that many people were using their phones to tether and verizon didn't know about it. Then when verizon figured it out they started charging extra for tethering.

 

Can you currently use your iPhone to tether to a laptop and connect to the internet?

 

To do it on your iPhone, you have to jailbreak it unfortunately. I don't recommend that cause you could brick your phone and it voids any form of warranty you have.

 

To do it for free on other phones, you have to find someone who build an app for it on the phone. All windows and symbian phones have one. Most of the other phones have an app, but the carriers have caught on and try to charge you by monitoring your usage.

[Virgil]

Got the phone on December 13. They made sure to do the update in store before giving it to me. When I go into the phone's settings, it says I have 2.0.1

 

The 2.1 update coming OTA in a few weeks is supposed to address this as well as some of the battery concerns.

[Virgil]

A brief Motorola Droid Review...note that most of these comments aren't comparing the Droid to iPhone or Blackberry or whatever. I've never used a Blackberry and have only spent about 15 minutes total on an iPhone. My previous phone was a Moto Razr.

 

The Good

 

- Screen is gorgeous and everything is extremely responsive.

- Browser renderings have been good...tested both the default WebKit based browser and Opera Mini.

- Highly customizable. By default you only have 3 screens, but I downloaded an app that lets me customize wallpapers, icons, etc....and it adds four more screens for a total of 7. Having seven separate screens is really sweet.

- Battery life is good so far. (~Make sure you have an App Killer Program, makes it last longer)

- The selection of apps in the Marketplace is sufficient and should really grow now that these new phones should increase demand and attract a larger base of developers. (50,000. 2nd largest and growing strong).

- If you Twitter, try out both Swift and Twidroid. Everyone talks about Twidroid, but I found Swift to be better.

- I like the hardware keyboard. Having both a hardware keyboard and a touch screen keyboard was a bonus for me because I wasn't sure which I was going to prefer. Here I have the best of both and find myself using both.

- Totally integrated with Gmail which is my primary email.

- Favorite downloaded apps/widgets so far...

1. Pandora - You can listen to Pandora while doing other tasks.

2. Swift - Nice Twitter app.

3. One touch buttons for turning on/off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Silent Mode.

4. SportsTap - Scores, standings, news and alerts for most major sports.

5. Shazam - Listens to a song, analyzes it and tells you the name of the artist, song and album.

6. Toddler lock - My 20 mos old daughter inevitably gets her hands on everything around the house. If she gets my phone I can turn on Toddler lock by pressing one button and it locks out everything on the phone except for the touch screen which she can then use to doodle and create shapes on. No more calling random people from my Contacts

7. NewsRob - All my Google Reader RSS feeds pulled down into one app.

 

 

The Bad

 

- The battery door keeps falling off when I pull the phone out of my pocket. It's just a simple slider with no locking mechanism. This thing has a hair trigger. I'm taking it back to the store to have evaluated. A phone cover may fix this but I don't really want a $200 phone that relies on a cover to keep the door on.

- The touch screen is difficult to use when the phone is laying on a flat surface. It just isn't very responsive. This sucks because sometimes I just want to set it down and work it with one hand, but it seems like I have to hold it in my hand to work reliably.

- Needs more apps (specifically a browser) with pinch to zoom functionality. The phone supports it, but I haven't found a browser that includes it yet. The double-tap to zoom is okay, but pinch zoom is one iPhone feature that I miss. (the 2.1 update will have a pinch to zoom on it. If you want it now, download the free dolphin browser app. Works great.)

- Camera is kinda slow between pics. I realize this is a phone and not a DSLR, but when I was trying to take pics of my daughter playing in a pile of leaves and around the yard I feel like I missed a lot of good shots because the phone took too long between shots. Don't know how this compares with other SmartPhones. (There are a few camera apps out there that don't have the lag. This has been a common complaint on the phone though).

- OS isn't quite as intuitive as the iPhone. I had to really play around with a few things to figure out some pretty basic functionality like switching between apps. Once I figured it out it was no problem though. Also, I'm a Mac guy so some of the visual cues that Apple used on the iPhone may have already been familiar to me. (Pro and Con in my opinion. Yes, the iPhone guides you more, but because you can only do what it says. The Android is much more open and can take more time to learn, but because you can personalize it that much more.) - The touch screen keyboard is very difficult for me to use...especially in portrait mode. Landscape isn't too bad plus the phone is excellent at making suggestions based on past use. Also, you can download other keyboards as separate apps if you don't like the default.

 

Additional Notes...

- I haven't tried out the free text-to-speech GPS yet, but I like knowing it's there in case my wife needs the Garmin for the day.

- I bought two media docks that are being shipped to me this week. I'll update on how those are once I get them.

 

Let me know if anyone has any questions.

[Virgil]

I picked up the Droid yesterday after having my Verizon LG flip phone for 3 years. I am extremely satisfied with it thus far and, being a Mac guy, I have noticed the Android operating system to be very easy to navigate and have utilized various message boards to help me acclimate to the different/helpful capabilities this phone offers.

 

I really wanted the iPhone, but couldn't justify switching to ATT&T. I was also considering the HTC Touch Pro 2 after my girlfriend got it last month, but I found that the browser was difficult to navigate. It suited her needs nicely because of the conferencing capabilities plus the fact that it is a Windows phone with the Windows operating system.

 

I'm still new to the smart phone game, so I'm still getting used to some of its capabilities as well as some of its short comings. Here's what I've discovered thus far about the phone, good and bad:

 

Pros thus far about the Droid:

 

It was easy to mount my phone to my MacBook (one of the major concerns I had) computer to put music on it and other media files using a drag-and-drop method. The music player is great and I can organize playlists.

 

The shortcuts on it are fantastic. On the home screen, if you just press down on an empty space for a couple of seconds, you can set up a one-touch shortcut (ie preload your favorite webpage, your favorite contact, commonly used widgets/apps).

 

The Google Voice Search option is awesome. Just say what it is that you're looking for or who you want to call from your contact list and it will either open up your search results on a web page or direct you to the person who you want to call. Really helpful hands free feature.

 

The Google Maps turn-by-turn navigation is phenomenal. There is a reason why the Tom Tom, Garmin, and Magellan stocks took a plunge when Google announced it was going to provide FREE GPS with this phone and thus far, it hasn't disappointed. Just Voice Search what it is you're looking for (either an address or establishment) and using Google Maps, it will navigate to it for you. The Droid does come with a car mount witch makes it easy to use in the vehicle.

 

The fact that Google has put its thumbprint on the phone is quite remarkable because if you have a Google online profile, you can easily sync up your phone number to it and manage tasks (calendar, status, current location, etc). If you have a Google Voice account, you can utilize it to send and receive text messages so they aren't taking up messages according to your phone plan because the Google Voice messaging counts towards your data plan.

 

The camera on the phone takes quality photos and DVD quality video. However, there are some issues with it.

 

 

Cons so far about the Droid:

 

The camera, although its 5 mega pixels which is the largest on the market, does a lot of lagging, meaning, when you want to take a picture, it won't take one immediately. It takes one just a few moments afterwards, which can be tedious and cumbersome.

 

You can only store 256 mega bytes worth of Apps on your phone. Even though it comes with 16 giga byte storage SD card, you can't utilize that for Apps. The Apps go on the phone's internal storage. I'm not a huge App guy and only install ones that I know I will use the most (NY Times, TasKiller, Weather, Pandora, Last.FM, Cooking Recipes, etc) along with a few others, and I still have 227 MB worth of storage available, which is more than plenty.

 

The Facebook App is very basic in comparison to other the iPhone and the Blackberry Storm, but it is not a deal breaker.

 

You are being heard my friend. Apparently, the 2.2 update they are talking about for June will allow you to save apps to your SD Card

[Virgil]

Thoughts please. Upgrading from the crackberry soon, very soon.

 

What are you looking for in a phone? How would you rate the following in order of importance?

 

Talking

Texting

Internet

eMail

Apps

Gaming

Mp3

Camera

Work

Video

[The Poojer]

Virgil, thanks for all of this information you have provided. I am still trying to figure out my Droid Eris...the settings indicate I have 1.5 firmware.....is there something that updates the OS automatically? I at least want the 1.6, but I am having trouble getting that info....

 

What are you looking for in a phone? How would you rate the following in order of importance?

 

Talking

Texting

Internet

eMail

Apps

Gaming

Mp3

Camera

Work

Video

[stevestojan]

As I've said in other threads, i have gone through countless cell phones. I could never find one I loved and could keep for over a month. I did LOVE the iPhone, but once I moved to AZ, I realized I just couldn't keep a cell phone that couldn't, well, make a phone call. AT&Ts reception is just amazingly awful. In Buffalo, I had to sit the iPhone on the perfect spot on my desk to get one bar of reception. Here in Tucson? Zip.

 

Anyway, I still have the Droid and LOVE it. I use GOOD messaging for my work Outlook email and calander. On any Windows mobile phone (my last one was the HTC Touch Pro 2, awful phone), GOOD basically took over the phone. On the droid, its just another app. I LOVE IT!

 

Best apps:

Chomp SMS

Better Keyboard

OpenHome

Pandora

Google Maps

 

Best Games:

PapaStacker

Space Physics

[Virgil]

Virgil, thanks for all of this information you have provided. I am still trying to figure out my Droid Eris...the settings indicate I have 1.5 firmware.....is there something that updates the OS automatically? I at least want the 1.6, but I am having trouble getting that info....

 

In one of my many responses (I promise I wasn't trying to spam), I listed the 1.5 and 1.6 software versions together. The reason being, they are almost identical except for how the pull up menu's at the bottom of the screen look. They are so similar, that any phone with 1.5 will not see an update to 1.6, because there really is no reason to do so. All of them will be updating straight to 2.1.

 

The HTC Eris is going to get the 2.1 update and it will be OTA (Over The Air). I don't know the date, but I know it was accidently leaked this week and a few phone owners already got it. I would expect the official update any time now.

[MattyT]

Rhapsody has made their beta app available in the Android Market. I've never been a fan of Rhapsody or subscription-based music in the past, but for my phone it makes perfect sense. And the $10 per mo price point is pretty good too considering I spend probably 2-3 times that in music downloads from iTunes per month. Now I can preview a ton of music and only download the albums that I absolutely have to own.

 

They have a free 14-day trial and I'm giving it a shot. So far it's a big

 

Rhapsody blog post about Android App

 

And on a related note, Rhapsody announced that they have broken free from Real Networks and Viacom/MTV. I thought this was a good sign since they will be focusing entirely on music without those other interests diluting their product. I've always thought that everything about Real was teh suck so this is nice.

 

Blog post about the ownership change

[Corp000085]

I've had the droid for about a week and a half now. It's really awesome. It had a few knocks though

 

-the keyboard... I hate the slider. It is a mechanical part that could easily break. Virtual keyboard took me a few days to get used to it. I like it now, but it does take some practice. I'm hoping that in 2 or 3 months, I'll totally forget about the hardware keyboard and slider all together.

 

-The screen. This thing is a massive scratch, fingerprint magnet. This was addressed with the holster, screen cover thing that I got. Now its great, and protected.

 

-My work exchange server disabled activesync till literally yesterday. I had to use the browser to get to OWA to get my email... Now, I have it fully pushed to the phone. Not really a knock on the phone, just my work who apparently has finally emerged from the early 2000's.

 

-Battery life. I'd go 8 hours before it had to be charged again. It was obviously a software issue because since updating to android os 2.1 on monday, I have yet to charge the phone.

[duey]

-the keyboard... I hate the slider. It is a mechanical part that could easily break. Virtual keyboard took me a few days to get used to it. I like it now, but it does take some practice. I'm hoping that in 2 or 3 months, I'll totally forget about the hardware keyboard and slider all together.

 

The slider keyboard is what kept me away from the Droid. I had one on my previous phone and really didn't like it. I went with the Eris instead and am very happy. The virtual keyboard does take some getting used to, but that only took a little while. I love the Eris.

[MattyT]

The slider keyboard is what kept me away from the Droid. I had one on my previous phone and really didn't like it. I went with the Eris instead and am very happy. The virtual keyboard does take some getting used to, but that only took a little while. I love the Eris.

You realize that the Droid has a virtual keyboard too right?

[Acantha]

You realize that the Droid has a virtual keyboard too right?

Yeah, but for the slider keyboard you also gain serious weight. That's what kept me from it.

[Just Jack]

-My work exchange server disabled activesync till literally yesterday. I had to use the browser to get to OWA to get my email... Now, I have it fully pushed to the phone. Not really a knock on the phone, just my work who apparently has finally emerged from the early 2000's.

I was curious about that, since we use Exchange also. On my BB Storm, I just need to provide my email and a password for Enterprise Activation. Is the Droid similar? If it is, I might convince them to let me switch once my free upgrade comes up.