My First 24 Hours: A quick Review

P3Droid

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My First 30 Hours with Droid by Motorola
Okay thought I would give you a quick review. I am going to break this into parts. Part 1) hardware, Part 2) Eclair 2.0-O.S., Part 3) App marketplace.

Part 1. Hardware
Okay I played with this in the store and was very worried about the keyboard but I must say, the build quality of this phone is very good. I like a heavier phone and this phone feels hefty. Slide functions very well even though its not spring loaded. I like the absence of the spring, I don't know why but it feels good to me this way. Back to the keyboard, I am getting better at using it but it is still a bit awkward to use. I don't use the rocker preferring to navigate by touching the screen. The buttons are small but not too small. I think with time one will be able to adjust. (I remember having a hell of a time typing on the S1 when it first came out. The on screen buttons work well and feel normal and natural to use. I have had a problem with the camera, focus is not perfect and sometimes I have had to hit the button more than once to get it to work. Screen, well what can I say, this is the best screen I have seen on a phone. I have owned (iphone, iphone 2g, BB S1, BB S2, too many WinMo and Palm devices). Overall the hardware is impressive. (8.5 out of 10)

Part 2. O.S. - Eclaire 2.0
This is where the phone becomes a pure joy to use. I found the phone easy to learn the basic functions. This is a modern OS and will take a little time to learn all of the nuances. I have had a few (6 occasions) hang ups in programs but nothing major because you can force close apps. One thing that always bugged me was having to perform a battery pull or reset the device everytime you deleted an application or updated an application so it is nice to see that neither of these result in a rest of the Droid.

Keyboard: I was worried about typing on this device coming from a Storm but I was able to type very quickly and landscape softkeyboard is really easy to use. If you have typing issues the error correct has been fantastic for me.

Homescreens: I do wish that the homescreens would turn to landscape when the phone is turned, without needing to open the keyboard. That is taking some getting used to. The ability to add widgets is a major plus. I currently have 22 widgets on my homescreens plus a weather widget, youtube, and google search. You can change them around as you see fit and you are given a few different ways to add them to the homescreen.

Phone: The absence of hardkeys to make a phone call has not proven to be a problem for me. I have only made 1 call and received one call. I will add to this after I make and receive more calls. If moving from a blackberry the easiest way to add my contacts was to export my contacts from outlook and import them into my gmail account. From here they sync automatically with the phone.

Emails: This was a bit of a problem as I could not add my imap accounts at first but I then found the easy way to do it..I went to my bis account information online and looked into the account settings. From here I just typed the information directly as it appeared and I was able to add all my accounts back over. The email app works for me, its not as nice as the BB experience but its not a blackberry. I only wish I knew how to delete multiple messages because I get quite a few each day.

Overall this is a very expansive O.S. with lots of things that can be done, but the winning feature that pushes this over the top is the notification bar that can be pulled down. (Overall 10 out of 10)

Part III: Marketplace
This has been very nice to play with, there really is an overbundance of applications. The good thing about this is that I have been able to find most of the apps that I used on my BB in the marketplace. The only piece that I'm missing is BBM. The marketplace makes the BB app world seem 3rd world and archiac. Apps just look better and have more functions on the Android than they did on the BB. If you would like to find apps you can also look on the web, I have been using www.androlib.com to find apps as well. (Overall 10 out of 10)



This is just my early review of the handset. I will update this in the next few days.
 

djstar2k2

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i feel you it takes a lil time to dig it. but i love android and im not missin the G1 yet so thats good. calls sound great and the speaker this mofo is a beast sound sonds excellent. the beef i have is 1)the key board is a hot mess worst than the G1 didnt think that was possible
2)the on off switch is in a crappy locale. hard to hit without hittin the volume rocker.
3)it seems that u cant add sound clips to pics or just the clip to send in texts. it was in the 1.6 os android build. which sucks cuz i loved doind those types of text.
but still i love this droid for real.
 

New2u

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So far androlib is a place where you can go to scan the QR code from and search the marketplace for the app you want. To do that you need to download the barcode scanner, and then when you use the barcode scanner just scan the QR box and it will show you to search the marketplace.
 

DaHarder

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I've owned more dumb/smartphones than I can count, most recently the iPhone 3GS, and...

My new DROID tops them all as far as design, ergonomics, functionality, and expandability.

I'm extremely happy with this 'pocket computer', and consider it a keeper.

If there's one area of concern I have, it's that the battery cover tends to come loose a bit too easily, and the volume rocker lacks the quality feel of the rest of the device.

Other than those issues, It's the Perfect Phone For Me.
 

jbr13

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Quick question, How do you download apps from Androlib.com

I just don't see how to get apps from there!


Thanks
 

capitan

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Quick question, How do you download apps from Androlib.com

I just don't see how to get apps from there!


Thanks
u dont download apps from androlib.com, its just a different way to search for apps (comfortably from your comp)
 

eurosteve

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Hi
You wrote:

Emails: This was a bit of a problem as I could not add my imap accounts at first but I then found the easy way to do it..I went to my bis account information online and looked into the account settings. From here I just typed the information directly as it appeared and I was able to add all my accounts back over. The email app works for me, its not as nice as the BB experience but its not a blackberry. I only wish I knew how to delete multiple messages because I get quite a few each day.

I'm moving from the BB 8130 (Pearl). I looked for email settings in BIS but I didn't see anything to copy. Can you be more explicit as to where you found settings to copy (And an example of a setting?)
Thanks!
 
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