Coming from a Pre... How reliable is the Droid?

[Elysian]

I'll be ordering it tonight as long as my Pre sells. Gonna order from Amazon for 149.99, and heard about the Droid Eris for free offer if you buy the Droid, so looks like my mom will also get an Android phone

 

[broosewee]

Cool man, glad to hear you're getting it. The Eris is also a great android device, so 2 thumbs up!

 

[keiichi25]

FYI, might also help to know how many months you had to go through 7 Pres. Hard to really judge reliability of either the Droid or Droid Eris for you without some context of how many months before you had to get another one.

On the flip side, I have only had to really deal with a battery pull on my Droid once in the 3-4 weeks I have had it, and I think it was some weird glitch. I plan on keeping it myself, as it is a nice phone for many things the Business Storm can't do, and my personal phone either.

And as always, the reliability of the phone is how well you use, or abuse, your phone in general.

 

[Elysian]

FYI, might also help to know how many months you had to go through 7 Pres. Hard to really judge reliability of either the Droid or Droid Eris for you without some context of how many months before you had to get another one.

On the flip side, I have only had to really deal with a battery pull on my Droid once in the 3-4 weeks I have had it, and I think it was some weird glitch. I plan on keeping it myself, as it is a nice phone for many things the Business Storm can't do, and my personal phone either.

And as always, the reliability of the phone is how well you use, or abuse, your phone in general.

I got my Pre on launch day, June the 5th I believe it was. The first one lasted a week, 2nd one was brand new as well, lasted 2 months, 3rd one a month, 4th one less than a month, 5th one less than a week, 6th one was fine, but they replaced it for the 7th which was brand new again, and this one seems fine, but I'm just tired of having to worry about my phone breaking, so I'm moving on for now. I like WebOS a LOT, it's excellent, TBH, it's just the hardware is so shady. Pre 3-6 were Prefurbs. All of my issues were covered under warranty, and were not the result of abuse(they all went back to Sprint damn near spotless, I take very good care of my phones). I've never, and I mean never, in 8 years with Sprint, had to replace a phone, they've all lasted well past upgrade eligibility.

 

[Elysian]

Ordered my Droid from Amazon

 

[fegul]

I was the same way. I had a Pre for the month and I liked WebOS because the interface was appealing but I felt like I was buying a work in progress rather than a finished product (and yeah the hardware was pretty bad) I felt like I was going to break the Pre if I ever dropped it.

The Droid is WAY better, feels very solid

 

[ntimid8r]

FYI, might also help to know how many months you had to go through 7 Pres. Hard to really judge reliability of either the Droid or Droid Eris for you without some context of how many months before you had to get another one.

On the flip side, I have only had to really deal with a battery pull on my Droid once in the 3-4 weeks I have had it, and I think it was some weird glitch. I plan on keeping it myself, as it is a nice phone for many things the Business Storm can't do, and my personal phone either.

And as always, the reliability of the phone is how well you use, or abuse, your phone in general.

I got my Pre on launch day, June the 5th I believe it was. The first one lasted a week, 2nd one was brand new as well, lasted 2 months, 3rd one a month, 4th one less than a month, 5th one less than a week, 6th one was fine, but they replaced it for the 7th which was brand new again, and this one seems fine, but I'm just tired of having to worry about my phone breaking, so I'm moving on for now. I like WebOS a LOT, it's excellent, TBH, it's just the hardware is so shady. Pre 3-6 were Prefurbs. All of my issues were covered under warranty, and were not the result of abuse(they all went back to Sprint damn near spotless, I take very good care of my phones). I've never, and I mean never, in 8 years with Sprint, had to replace a phone, they've all lasted well past upgrade eligibility.

After reading all this about your Pre....I'm really surprised to hear of the poor quality build. Typically Palm is top notch and I thought the Pre was to be a great mobile device. The Pre was only the first in their line of "getting back in the market place". I almost went to Sprint just for the Pre actually...but I was still under contract with Verizon and didn't want to pay my way out. So far I'm very pleased with the Droid.

 

[darreno1]

Hey I know you (op) from Pre Central. Welcome aboard! I had very little issues in terms of reliability concerning my Pre so I was one of the lucky ones. With that said however, it was quite clear after just holding the Droid, that physically, it was a better built phone. There are some reports of wiggles but I believe it's not the norm as the 3 I played with before owning mine, had no side to side movement at all (just like mine).

My Pre's problems were all software/form factor based. WebOS has tons of promise but it needs a great deal of code optimization or a full rewrite to take advantage of the hardware. I was a staunch defender of it (as you may know), but now after experiencing the competition, it has become more clear to me what Palm's issues are. I think if they can get it done sooner than later, they'll have a hit on their hands. I wouldn't count them out yet.

In a nutshell I believe my Droid is better built and probably more reliable, but only time will tell. I can say with surety though, I won't be going back anytime soon.

 

[Elysian]

Got my Droid today Loving it! It's fast, and feels SO much more polished and solid than the Pre!

 

[lite blue]

I am thinking of making the jump. I have little kids and would like to take video on the fly. I like my pre but am tired of the "apps". How do you like the droid compared to the droid?

thanks

 

[Laurence5905]

I got my Droid on day one. (Well, I ordered it on release-day; received it the day after -- I even paid for Saturday Delivery LOL) Anyway, I've had ZERO trouble with mine... I've still got my original Droid...

Like you, I've read about people who've had problems with the battery door coming off, or constant reboots, or what-have-you. I think these folks tend to be a bit more vocal than the folks who've had a perfect experience, so you might hear about the problems more often than you hear about the successes.

As far as I'm concerned, the Droid has been a complete success. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I have.

 

[916 type-s]

I too am coming from a pre and I'm loving my droid so far. For those of you who want to get out of your sprint contract without having to pay the ETF should check this out Sprint Changing Contract Terms in January, Small Opportunity to Cancel Contract Sans ETF | PreCentral.net. I called in and got out of my contract without paying the ETF. Hope this helps.

 

[garradkiss]

Ditto

Hi elysian. I just switched from the pre to Verizon + droid 2 days ago and im loving it. The pre had too many lag issues after a while and constantly waiting for little updates + almost no apps really got me annoyed. The pre updated so much i kept having to remove hacks like roam only or more launcher pages blablah i got sick of it and now im selling it. Its cool when you first get it but the phone slows down after a while. The droid iv had for 2 days and im playing with it like crazy so many apps its much more powerful. There's no pinch zoom like you'd find on pre but im sure someone will add it in the future since its capable of multi-touch.

I even ported to Verizon while still in contract with sprint. I couldn't take the service they kept saying i had good service in my area but anyone with sprint here had 1 bar to no bars and tons of dropped calls so i really just switched plus Verizon gives me a lot more corp discount.

If you don't want to cancel your contract because of ETF you could always sell the pre and get a Hero. Its pretty nice with the Sense UI much smoother and better to use than the Palm pre.

I did almost exactly the same thing. I just got to the end of my first month with my Verizon contract and I haven't been anything but totally satisfied by my droid. I have a palm pre with sprint thats still active, however when I relocated from TN to FL the pre became all but unusable. I havent looked back. The hardware design on the droid is far superior in my opinion and I think Android beats webOS any day of the week and twice on Sunday!

 

[natty_lite]

7 Pre's ?!!? Yikes.

Yeah, and I was through with them with #3, it just took me 4 more tries to get the Sprint store to finally get me a brand new one(but to be fair it only took me 1 conversation with the Store Manager). Only reason I'm switching from Sprint is because I'd have to spend a bunch(479) on a Samsung Moment, or spend a bit less on ETF and get the Droid(roughly 400 after ETF). I'd stick with Sprint if I didn't have to wait until next summer for another upgrade.

Are you aware of Sprint's new regulatory fee increase that constitutes as an adverse change to your contract, ie: Get out of Sprint ETF free card?

Its what I did.