Newbie getting his first smartphone

[izomiac]

Hello all! In the next couple of weeks I'll be getting my first smartphone, so I suppose I'll be trying to lose a bit of my newbishness here. After a bit of research, I'm thinking I'll go with a Droid X when it comes out in a week. A little advise about that would, of course, be appreciated.

I suppose I ought to share a bit about myself. Right now I'm a rising third year medical student just about to start rotations. There's quite a bit of medical software available for smartphones, thus giving me a reason to own one. I'm definitely a tweaker, so I'm glad I don't have to go with some fruity locked down device. OTOH, I keep telling myself that this smartphone will mostly be for "serious business", therefore I'm going to try to tone my tweaking down a bit, relatively speaking of course. By "tweaking" my point of reference is a person who triple boots DSIM'd Win7, Gentoo, and Haiku, plays around with OpenWRT on a couple of routers, and has a Pandora on the way (my "fun" device). Me rooting my phone is basically a given, though I'm going to try to not touch the firmware. (I'm aware of and irked at the signed boot loader.)

I'm thinking the Droid X will best fit my needs for a few reasons. First and foremost is the battery life, since it won't do for my phone to die a third of the way into my shift. Second is the speed, since I'll probably have the attending physician breathing down my neck while I'm looking up a drug interaction or something. Third is the resolution, because I'll be doing a lot of reading on the device (also why I'm shying away from AMOLED, since RGBRGB > RGBG for subpixel font rendering). Fourth is a preference for Verizon so I'll have a hope of getting a signal while I'm doing rotations in rural clinics.

As far as I can tell, that basically leaves just the Droid X and Ally. The latter is a bit behind in every area though. The phone price is such a low part of the TCO that it's not really a factor. Also, I think I'd prefer a thin phone, though I'm definitely a function over form kind of guy. (Heck, when I was looking for a laptop I almost wound up getting one that only came in pink because it best fit my technical specifications.)

So, is my reasoning sound, or is there another phone that I might ought to consider? Either way I'm sure I'll be spending a lot of time here figuring out how to use whatever it is that I wind-up getting.

 

[Backnblack]

Welcome.....

I would go for the X (I actually am) and hopefully it will be rooted shortly.

 

[hookbill]

:welcome: to the Droid Forums. It seems you've done some research into smart phones. I personally like for someone to start with a different smart phone then a Droid. Why? Because when they have spent a year or so with something like a Blackberry Storm they really appreciate how superior Droid is over other smart phones.

Now I don't know what you've found out about battery life on the Droid X but it's my experience that all smart phones have short battery lives. So future Doctor, I prescribe a trip to Amazon.com for inexpensive spare batteries, a charging cradle for your phone (I recommend Mikradle) and I also use the inexpensive wall chargers that you can pick up on ebay for a few dollars. Chances are that the battery life on the Droid X will be about 12 hours if you are lucky on average use.

Another thing too is that many people don't realize there is a serious learning curve coming from a regular phone to a smart phone. Many people give up because of frustration and not understanding how the Droid works. I don't think you'll have that problem, but be prepared.

You do have the advantage of having about 80,000 people here to help you out and a wealth of resources available. Right now the X hasn't been rooted of course but as time goes on I'm sure it will be. Should be interesting.

Anyway glad to have you here. If you need help finding something, just ask.

 

[kristoff125]

:welcome: to the Droid Forums. It seems you've done some research into smart phones. I personally like for someone to start with a different smart phone then a Droid. Why? Because when they have spent a year or so with something like a Blackberry Storm they really appreciate how superior Droid is over other smart phones.

Now I don't know what you've found out about battery life on the Droid X but it's my experience that all smart phones have short battery lives. So future Doctor, I prescribe a trip to Amazon.com for inexpensive spare batteries, a charging cradle for your phone (I recommend Mikradle) and I also use the inexpensive wall chargers that you can pick up on ebay for a few dollars. Chances are that the battery life on the Droid X will be about 12 hours if you are lucky on average use.

Another thing too is that many people don't realize there is a serious learning curve coming from a regular phone to a smart phone. Many people give up because of frustration and not understanding how the Droid works. I don't think you'll have that problem, but be prepared.

You do have the advantage of having about 80,000 people here to help you out and a wealth of resources available. Right now the X hasn't been rooted of course but as time goes on I'm sure it will be. Should be interesting.

Anyway glad to have you here. If you need help finding something, just ask.

80,000 members on this site? damn.
Oh yea, welcome to the forums.

 

[izomiac]

Thanks for the welcome! As for the battery life, I figure I'll get an extended battery and keep the normal as a charged spare. The extended is 1900 mAh IIRC, so 10 hours of "talk time", but since I'll probably use the school provided WiFi with PEAP I assume it'll be significantly less. Fortunately, my usage won't be continuous, so that should get me through, and if not I'll have the spare.

Speaking of which, are there external battery chargers available? In general, I mean. I realize there are no postmarket accessories available prerelease.