A lot of people have asked me how I liked my Droid, so I figured I would play with it for a week then let everyone know. My previous phone was a BlackBerry Storm on Verizon, so many of the comparisons will be to that phone.
So far it's been great!
The txting is better than my Storm. It's overall just very snappy. The browser is great, fast and extremely clear.
So far the app store seems fine, there is apparently 10,000+ apps so I don't know if anything is actually missing compared to Apple. A lot of the Apple apps are fluff, although I understand they have a solid games selection. I have not been able to dig into the games for my Droid yet. I was able to find and install every app I had used on my BB in like 10 minutes. This is an accomplishment in itself, each app installation/upgrade on my Storm would take at least 5 minutes.
The Google navigation is amazing. The resolution helps make the screen visible, and the connection to Google allows it to route and re-route quickly and accurately. I used it to travel on a couple several hour trips and I love it. It caches the trip information so you still have a map and directions if you lose GPS and data. If you lose data or you are talking on the phone, it will continue to navigate but will not re-route if you go off course. I find this to be a fine compromise.
One of my favorite features is being able to see the different notifications on the top of the screen, and then actually being able to click them. The Storm allowed a bunch of programs to run, but in order to see a new AIM I would need to open up the program again.
The battery life so far has been comparable to my Blackberry. It runs a day with moderate use, and can run several days with light use. I did install "Taskiller" to help me keep battery usage down. One of the problems for someone not paying attention is that apps don't really close, they keep running in the background. Taskiller lets me go in and kill the processes I don't want running anymore.
I find the lack of full support to Google Wave and Google Apps (Docs, Spreadsheets, etc) interesting but not surprising. You can view documents but not edit them. Google Wave doesn't load most of the time, but I understand it's like that on the iPhone too.
The keyboard is mediocre. It's a shame that they couldn't do better than the Samsung Alias, Blackberry Bold/Tour, or even the HTC g1. The keys are too flat and I constantly bump my fingers against the screen. Luckily the on-screen keyboard is top notch.
There are currently no working IRC apps, but this is a Verizon issue. Let me know if anyone has got around this on any phone on Verizon.
All in all I love this phone, it's superior to the Storm/Storm2 and right up there with the iPhone.
Let me know if you have anymore specific questions.
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So I picked up the htc droid eris over the weekend, and I've got to say that I'm a big fan. It lacks the the full keyboard of the moto droid, but ultimately that's not a huge thing for me, especially since the on-screen keyboard has worked excellently for me. I wanted to hear what type of utility/performance apps you're using. Beyond a task killer and a file manager, I'm wondering what other performance optimizers I can get.
ReplyDeleteFor phone performance I turned off screen animations, reduced the screen time and tweaked a couple other settings. Because I already organize most things (email, calendar, to-do) with Google, the built in apps work very well for me.
ReplyDeleteI added you to the google phone google wave, if I find anything crazy it will probably be mentioned there.