A week of Droid 2 (Review)

[hookbill]

After reading the OP's review I thought, sounds good to me. I'm glad I ordered one yesterday.

Fortunately I've read other reviews from other people and they didn't give it the (slightly?) negative review you gave it.

Preparing the backup of my SD now as we speak so I'll be ready to go on Monday when it gets here.

 

[Deidein]

I will respond to your review with my review! For those for whom this will be too long to bother reading, synopsis = great phone.

I've had my Droid for 11 days. I absolutely love the phone, having come from an enV2 and my only Smartphone experience coming from the god-awful Blackberry Bold I use for work. (Phone isn't bad, AT&T is.)

I found the learning curve steep but manageable with this being my first Android phone. After just 11 days, I've figured out the tweaks and changes necessary to make the phone exactly as cool as it is capable of without rooting.

~I hate the bloatware too, but since I do not intend to root my phone, I'll just deal with it. Perhaps at least Blockbuster might become uninstallable if they really do fold soon.

~I have experienced freezes, lockups in the Gallery, and complete crashes with the phone, but I attribute that to things I did that the phone didn't like. For example, I put .mkv movie files on my SDCard to play with the RockPlayer app, and they worked, but the gallery would find them and try to preview them, thus screwing up the gallery. I've yet to figure out how to hide them from the gallery, so they're off the phone for the moment. Not a major issue.

~I've had extremely brief outages of the 3G. It tends to resolve itself fairly quickly though, but it was worrying the first time it happened (when I was sitting literally 20ft from a Verizon signal booster that is installed in my office building)

~Manipulation of the operating system and applications is NECESSARY to be satisfied with this phone, but I'm assuming that's true for all the android phones. I have over 60 applications installed, and without apps like Smart Shortcuts, Launcher Pro, and Astro File Manager, I would be lost.

~Choosing to install the facebook app for android from the market rather than using the built-in social networking thing saved me tons of grief. Now the only contacts I use are my google and phone contacts, and I don't use my google contacts often. That really simplifies the sending/receiving of things. I hated the initial settings that included all my facebook contacts in my contacts, because I'd played Mafia Wars and thus bloated my friends list to ridiculous proportions.

~Battery life has been fantastic for a smartphone. On first full charge, I had 7 hours of HEAVY use (tons of installing/uninstalling apps, browsing, gaming, etc) solid before I was down to 20% - seriously, I was sitting at my desk at work and the entire time I was there I was tinkering with the phone. On a 'normal' usage day (several texts, WordFeud, news/weather/engadget news, a call or three) I've never gotten lower than 40-50%, and often would have 60-70% battery remaining.

This is what my phone looks like now on the homepage: Featuring LauncherPro. the shortcuts in the dock are linked to my Smart Shortcuts app, and bring up Communication, Multimedia, Tools, Games, and Toys applications in that order. The 2nd row of icons in my dock (if I was to swipe it over from there) have the default dialer, contacts, app list, text, and browser shortcuts with much cooler icons than the default.

 

[polebridge]

random freeze

I've had my D2 for almost three weeks. Twice in the past week it froze, not responding to any touches or buttons, required a battery-out reboot. The first time i was on the home screen, second time browsing the stock wallpapers.

Someone back a few post on this thread mentioned a Cntl-Alt-Delete. What is that on a D2?

While i was futzing with the battery i noticed some tiny hardware under the battery cover, top right corner of the battery compartment (water damage indicator is top left). What is that hardware? It looks maybe like a pushbutton, but it would need a pin to push it. Perhaps it's part of the USB plug.

 

[texasPI]

Well, I've had my D2 for two days after receiving it as warranty replacement for a D1. Compared to stock D1, the D2 is snappier but like has been already mentioned, the bloatware and blur UI are detractions. Also, the lack of Picasa web album sync with the gallery bites.

 

[Dragoro]

Well, I've had my D2 for two days after receiving it as warranty replacement for a D1. Compared to stock D1, the D2 is snappier but like has been already mentioned, the bloatware and blur UI are detractions. Also, the lack of Picasa web album sync with the gallery bites.

Get the apk for the 2.1 gallery. Works for me and I got picassa sync and everything!

 

[Redflea]

Had my D2 about a week now...upgraded from D1 under warranty replacement:

- Zero freezes/lock ups. That's with running stock initially, and then over the past two or three days installed a theme. Push the phone pretty hard sometimes (concurrent Nav, Pandora, Browsing web, email) w/out any issues

- Had a rooted/overclocked D1 (1Ghz running CM6) and the D2 is faster, and is MUCH less likely to get bogged down than my D1 was

- D2 was simpler to set up accounts during initial setup than on than D1, but managing them after the fact is "messier" due to lack of clarity on how things work together (or don't) that was likely very clear to the Moto developers but won't be clear to users in general.

- Blur Facebook integration is a bit of a mess...no choice in what FB accounts to sync w/phone accounts, phone numbers blocked out on some records after FB sync

- Wifi works better than w/D1...connects reliably and holds connections that D1 had some difficulty with

- Battery life has been better than w/the D1 - using the same battery and usage patterns...used to be lucky to get to 30% at night, now I'm usually around 50% at 10PM

- Swype keyboard on D2 w/integrated microphone is one of my favorite features

- Gallery may not sync Picasa, but it is faster and easier to use than the D1 Gallery, much prefer D2 Gallery

- Email app is much better than the stock 2.2 Email app - I am actually holding off running any custom ROMs as the ones released so far are using the stock Email app, and i don't want to give up the one on the D2

The D2's faster processor (no OC really required) and greater memory help to "future-proof" it - I feel like it will roll into future Android releases more comfortably than the D1 may.

Overall I'm quite pleased, and would not be willing to trade back for a new D1.

 

[devinhfox]

Hopefully the picassa sync will work eventually, I love that feature.