The only design flaw on this phone...

[OyVOid]

I am sure they did a lot of focus group research before they placed it in the market for public consumption.

LOL! I'm envisioning a room full of monkeys wielding Droids texting another room full of monkeys with iPhones! :icon_ banana: mikey

HAAAAAA!!! How do you know that isn't happening right now for the next model?

Have you ever heard of the The hundredth-monkey effect? I truly think we learn only by doing so that being said, we are really are just a bunch of monkeys teaching each other new tricks. Coooooooool....

 

[Grey Hawk]

Is the USB port. I hate how it sticks out and its like exactly where my fingers should be when texting in portrait view. Does it bug anyone else?

The "only design flaw?" In the past couple of days you've complained about the fact that the Droid battery won't support your 15,000 (!) text messages a month. You've complained about the sliding keyboard. You've complained about the pause between sliding the keyboard and the appearance of the lock screen. And now you're complaining about the placement of the usb port.

Not to mention complaining about the speed of the browser for this site.

And frankly, those are only the complaints I happened to notice.

Are you really sure this is the phone for you? Just asking.

*sigh*
As a person who has had several phones before, I can tell you I have never had a phone with this crappy of battery life. Face it, the battery life isn't great, don't sugar coat it. Don't believe me? Take a stroll through any Droid message board, complaint #1. And don't tell me its because the settings are all off. You shouldn't need to turn off/down everything to make a phone last half a day and thats without my texting. My girlfriends curve has been sitting idle for 2 days at my house and is still showing 2 full bars. If I set the Droid down, turn off sync/widgets, in 2 hours I'll be down to 80%. Enough said.

The sliding keyboard is on my replacement phone, and ISN'T NORMAL, why should I accept something that isn't right? I was merely asking if it was normal or not as I couldn't remember on my original.

 

[OyVOid]

Is the USB port. I hate how it sticks out and its like exactly where my fingers should be when texting in portrait view. Does it bug anyone else?

The "only design flaw?" In the past couple of days you've complained about the fact that the Droid battery won't support your 15,000 (!) text messages a month. You've complained about the sliding keyboard. You've complained about the pause between sliding the keyboard and the appearance of the lock screen. And now you're complaining about the placement of the usb port.

Not to mention complaining about the speed of the browser for this site.

And frankly, those are only the complaints I happened to notice.

Are you really sure this is the phone for you? Just asking.

*sigh*
As a person who has had several phones before, I can tell you I have never had a phone with this crappy of battery life. Face it, the battery life isn't great, don't sugar coat it. Don't believe me? Take a stroll through any Droid message board, complaint #1. And don't tell me its because the settings are all off. You shouldn't need to turn off/down everything to make a phone last half a day and thats without my texting. My girlfriends curve has been sitting idle for 2 days at my house and is still showing 2 full bars. If I set the Droid down, turn off sync/widgets, in 2 hours I'll be down to 80%. Enough said.

The sliding keyboard is on my replacement phone, and ISN'T NORMAL, why should I accept something that isn't right? I was merely asking if it was normal or not as I couldn't remember on my original.

Grey Hawk,

I do have to agree with you on the battery life of the Droid. It sucks! I could be doing a few searches on it and checking my emails and it's down 20%. I have a wall charger and a car charger and nothing keeps the beast happy except using it while being charged. It's like the Little Shop of Horrors plant --"Feed me, Seymour."

 

[claustin]

i honestly think the battery life issue is a perception thing. Use your device more, and it's going to drain faster, period. Just plug the damn thing in and quit whining. Expecting it to last longer than a laptop with constant use is fantasy. As for the design, I think the Droid is ugly as hell, but I love it's function. If VZ had this exact phone without that godawful slide out keyboard taking up space, I'd have gotten that one, but I'm loving it anyway. Maybe they could have even fit a bigger battery in there

 

[ToddClark]

new user here, but i dont see a problem with battery life. Does it last as long as my BB did? Nope, but then i didnt expect it to (hell, i never played with my bb the way i tinker with the Droid), but that being said, if youre not CONSTANTLY using the phone, i dont see a problem with the battery. Hell, its 715am here, and my Droid hasnt been on a charger since yesterday morning at 530am when i pulled it from the cradle, and im still showing 80% of a full charge.

 

[wil318466]

Is the USB port. I hate how it sticks out and its like exactly where my fingers should be when texting in portrait view. Does it bug anyone else?

Agreed. I dislike the placement, but because its off center. Either put it at the bottom, the top, or the sides, but put it in the center of any of those, but don't put it off-center. For some reason it just doesn't sit right with me.

The battery life also sucks. Agreed.

I've noticed that on these boards there tends to be a "stick my head in the sand" approach to criticism of the Droid. In all aspects of life, this is a mistake. There is no such thing as a constructive "It doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother anyone else" approach. That's selfish and in all honesty, pretty ignorant.

Its the same way in debates about politics and religion. Just because something doesn't bother YOU, doesn't mean there isn't something wrong with it. I've always approached things like this with an open mind, unfortunately I think most people in the world do not.

So, enough of that rant. Yes, the USB port placement isn't ideal. Yes, the battery life on the phone is questionable, at best. Agreed. Still love this damn thing though.


-Wil

 

[FlipBack]

I get an entire day (6:00 AM - 10:00 PM) worth of battery life out of my droid. I text, browse the internet, listen to music, check my email, and make calls all day long. Oh yeah, and play pokemon...Haha. And it's overclocked to 800Mhz/125Mhz.

I don't know why it's a problem for everyone else. I guess they just don't use power control widget to make sure everything is off like I do. Or maybe my battery is special.

But from my past smart phone experiences, the batter life is good. I'll admit it sucks in contrast to my old samsung flip phone...but that wasn't a smart phone. It's a completely different ball game.

 

[JimmyD]

LOL! I'm envisioning a room full of monkeys wielding Droids texting another room full of monkeys with iPhones! :icon_ banana: mikey

HAH!! :icon_ goofy:

I honestly would pay DOUBLE the data usage fee for 6 months if I could witness these events in person!

 

[JimmyD]

Is the USB port. I hate how it sticks out and its like exactly where my fingers should be when texting in portrait view. Does it bug anyone else?

No. It has never occurred to me, but that's probably because my Verizon leather snap on case makes the USB port flush with the edge of the case.

Although, I can see how that might be annoying though in your example, (if I did not use a case and the little corner of the port was poking my finger while I was texting)

 

[nerdbox08]

how the hell do you guys text? You are all weird. lol

But seriously I use Swype and it's awesome for texting. The functionality keeps me sane and I feel I can produce more text on the time I spend typing.

 

[iPirate]

I use 3g and don't turn anything off or kill tasks and I get to about 30-50% battery at the end of a day. USB doesn't bother me either.

 

[Grey Hawk]

Is the USB port. I hate how it sticks out and its like exactly where my fingers should be when texting in portrait view. Does it bug anyone else?

Agreed. I dislike the placement, but because its off center. Either put it at the bottom, the top, or the sides, but put it in the center of any of those, but don't put it off-center. For some reason it just doesn't sit right with me.

The battery life also sucks. Agreed.

I've noticed that on these boards there tends to be a "stick my head in the sand" approach to criticism of the Droid. In all aspects of life, this is a mistake. There is no such thing as a constructive "It doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother anyone else" approach. That's selfish and in all honesty, pretty ignorant.

Its the same way in debates about politics and religion. Just because something doesn't bother YOU, doesn't mean there isn't something wrong with it. I've always approached things like this with an open mind, unfortunately I think most people in the world do not.

So, enough of that rant. Yes, the USB port placement isn't ideal. Yes, the battery life on the phone is questionable, at best. Agreed. Still love this damn thing though.


-Wil

Thank you. Everyone else will defend this phone's flaws till death.

 

[JimmyD]

how the hell do you guys text? You are all weird. lol

But seriously I use Swype and it's awesome for texting. The functionality keeps me sane and I feel I can produce more text on the time I spend typing.

I'm a huge fan of Swype as well.

However; I think you're missing the point of the OP. His gripe isn't with the keyboard input method, it's with the protrusion of the USB port poking into his finger when he holds the phone (sideways I'm guessing) to enter text messages.

(Just clarifying for you. It's not an issue for me.)

 

[jsh1120]

Frankly, the complaints about battery life strike me as equivalent to complaining about gravity. It's physics, folks.

The Droid has the largest, brightest display of any device on the market. It has a built-in navigation system that constantly seeks satellite-based location information for any application that utilizes it. It has a multi-tasking operating system that can literally balance the demands of dozens of applications simultaneously. It incorporates "push" email from multiple sources and it supports unlimited on demand texting.

All of this is being supported on a phone with a 1400 mAh battery. Could Motorola have chosen a battery with more capacity? Sure. And if they had, the Droid would have been significantly more expensive, bigger and heavier, or both. Could Motorola have extended battery life by putting a smaller, dimmer screen on the Droid? Sure. Could they have extended battery life by eliminating full GPS functionality? Yup. No problem.

Should Motorola have designed the Droid to support 500 text messages a day without draining the battery significantly? It would have been easy to do. Just increase battery capacity two or three fold and eliminate the big bright screen that isn't needed for texting. Is that a capability I'm looking for? Nope. I have a life and don't need to send/receive 30 text messages an hour for 16 hours a day.

In short, the Droid provides nearly the same computing capabilities as my laptop computer and exceeds those capabilities in some areas. The battery life on my laptop is about 5-6 hours. Period. And its battery is nearly a foot long and weighs nearly 2 lbs.

Face it. All of the capabilities that make the Droid so compelling take power. Don't like it? Put a bigger battery on the phone, carry an extra battery, or a rapid standalone recharger. Physics is a stern mistress.

As for me, I want a minimum of a 5"x8" display, a near full-size keyboard, and at least 24 hours of battery power in a phone that weighs six ounces and fits in my pocket. The fact that I can't buy one is NOT a "design flaw." It's the limitations of technology.

 

[allikanbe]

I would like longer battery life, but then again, I think that is true of every battery-powered device I've ever owned. Oh, and include my car and motorcycles in that statement.