State Your Droid PRO'S & CON'S

[nka]

lol @ ONLY cons and then a huge list

Well the Cons are what is supposed to be fixed lol as those are the most acute problems. There are a lot more Pro's than Cons, so I can't post all of them. I will post an extensive list of Pro's later ;-)

Did you read the list, is there anything egregious that I missed?

 

[lowtech]

Excellent list! I hope some brilliant developers and the guys at Google will read it and pay serious attention. Some of these things are making me miss my Treo 755P today - but I am going to keep the faith...!

 

[metsnfins]

so Im assuming everyone is having batter problems? Get less than 8 hours if you have widgets running and use the web sporadically

 

[nka]

so Im assuming everyone is having batter problems? Get less than 8 hours if you have widgets running and use the web sporadically

I talked for about 1.5 hrs, surfed web with wifi, did some gps navigation, played some music and sent some sms' and I had to recharge to go out for the night. The battery isn't up to snuff. Hopefully software changes can make it last longer. I even have apps to one-touch turn off wifi, gps, bluetooth, and put the brightness to zero.

 

[lowtech]

Watching/hoping for extended-life battery from someone~

 

[metsnfins]

so Im assuming everyone is having batter problems? Get less than 8 hours if you have widgets running and use the web sporadically

I talked for about 1.5 hrs, surfed web with wifi, did some gps navigation, played some music and sent some sms' and I had to recharge to go out for the night. The battery isn't up to snuff. Hopefully software changes can make it last longer. I even have apps to one-touch turn off wifi, gps, bluetooth, and put the brightness to zero.

this is completely ridiculous, i am almost ready to return

 

[gardobus]

I'd maybe be willing to add a tumor to the back of my droid if increased battery life could be had.

 

[Ralo]

Pros:
Clear Display
Great Call Quality
Voice Search works Great
Build Quality
Speed

Cons:
Where do I start? Believe it or not, I like the phone, just may not be able to use it.
Some of these things may be address in the manual but I haven't read it yet. Will do shortly but these things should be intuitive if they exist

• Ok, when on a call and the screen goes blank, how am I supposed to hang up the call? Once I say goodbye, the screen is still blank. I don't know if it's hung up or not, which leads to my next grip;
• The one/off switch on the top of the phone. Why? Once pressed, the phone is still locked so that switch could be much more easily accessible and if pressed accidently, no problem, as the screen is still locked until you slide you finger across the screen.
• When in a call, there is no memo or note option. Hopefully an update will fix that but I will likely return the phone by then.
• Screen sensitivity is erratic and the four icons are often hard to active or activated accidentally. I always find myself in a screen I was not trying to open, clueless how I got there.
• Some commands exist but I can't figure out how to active them (manual reading time). I know they exist because they show up when I'm not looking for them, yet I can reproduce them once closed.
• No native Outlook sync. I tried using CompanionLink and although it worked initially, the next day all my contacts were gone from Outlook but still on the Droid and on Google. Although not the Droids fault, it was the last straw for me. I immediately went back to my trusty Treo 700wx which really does all I need and does it very well. I just wanted something more modern; however, I use it for business so I have to be able to enter and retrieve info very quickly, and often one handed. The Treo is great for that. The Droid, well we will see. So far, its been very stressful.
• Copy and Paste. I still have not figured out how to select just the text I want to copy and not all or nothing. Hopefully that's in the manual.
• The Keyboards. Although the onscreen keyboards are better than the iPhone, I'm still nowhere near as accurate as I am with the keyboard on my Treo 700wx. Not even the physical landscape keyboard is as comfortable, but maybe with time...
• Oh, how about this...on the iphone you can hold your finger down on the virtual keyboard and slide it over if necessary to get the key you are after. If you do that with the Droid, this accent? menu jumps up which is not what I need. Just another annoyance. I notice it doesn’t do that while texting though.
• Oh, I just trying typing and email, got mad and just kept typing even though I was making tons of mistakes. I see it tried to figure out what i was typing once I entered a period. I never knew that feature existed. It would be nice if it would make the correction when I hit the space bar. I least I would have known it was there.
• When composing an email, why doesn't the virtual keyboard popup automatically? I have to use my finger to highlight the "To:" box, which incidentally is already highlighted, to get the keyboard to come up so I can start typing. Geezzz....
• When the phone rings, I have to unlock it before i can answer it. I got use to my Treo doing that automatically. Maybe that's a setting somewhere, but I can find it.
• When receiving a text msg, the screen stays black even though I get an audible alert. Be nice it the screen would light up, even just for a few seconds. I have to reach to the top of the phone to unlock it, then slide my finger across the screen to unlock it again, then slide the notification bar down, just to see who text me. Boy....
• Some text is ridiculously small. Look at the time stamp on the text messages. But my eyes are almost 50 so maybe it’s just me.

There probably more but that's plenty. I’m going to play with it a little longer but I don’t think it’s right for me. I am use to a vertical, physical keyboard and more intuitive screens. I know the Droid is evolving so it should get much better. Maybe I’ll try it again in about a year or two.

 

[normwerner]

I suppose that I had the "advantage" of not having any smartphone experience under my belt when I bought my Droid. The leap from a three year old Moto Razor to the Droid was like stepping off a Wright Brothers flyer and into the space shuttle for me. As I read lots of these "reviews" I get the sense that many buyers are never going to be happy unless the phone somehow works just the way that the phone they replaced works and then some. Ain't gonna happen people!

Like every other device that we buy these days, someone somehwere has made "user interface"" choices for us - some we'll like and some we won't. Some things that we don't like may be fixed with apps or widgets or later by actual OS and interface fixes - one is already scheduled for the Droid for December. It is up to us to adapt to the capabilities and UI that we are given or go someplace else.

I haven't got a clue what an iPhone is like, although I imagine that it si a great user experience and would live to have the 90,000 apps availabel to use asd needed; however, the phone coverage of ATT here is spotty and I did buy this Droid as a "Phone" first and foremost. It has to work as a phone or all of the other things it might do wouldn't matter. Love em or hate em Verizon is the best game in town in my area for phone coverage, so case closed on the iPhone.

So, one week after picking up my Droid, I continue to wander around the Market finding things that look interesting or that I need to make my life and/or job easier. I've de-installed about 1/4 of the apps that I've tried so far, many because they were actually written for an earier version of the Op sys and don't yet work on the Droid. Right now I'm on the hunt for a good call recorder and a voice recorder, which both make sense to have in my line of work - Real Estate.

I remain impressed with all of the things that the Droid will do and how I've been able to integrate it into my home office WIFI net. Are there things that I'd like to see done differently - sure - but there are so many thinga that it does well that I certainly wouldn't abandon ship on it in the first few weeks of ownership. Let's face it, I'm screwing up as many things or more than it is as I get over the learning curve with it.

Norm

 

[cLovis_ll]

pros:
great screen!
really head to head with iphone with regards to browser
most apps are free
customizable
feels really solid (for the most part)

cons:
web browsing makes the phone warm.. especially in 1X signal
KB both onscreen and hardware takes getting used to
phone call bug just like everyone else
side buttons wiggle like crazy
camera auto focus is usually a miss than a hit
coming from a backberry, notifications and notication light is a bit awkward

 

[dannydoes]

Hey Denlem, I have a solution for you on a few things...

Advanced Task Killer will save your battery like crazy. Bad part is you have to hit it often, but I hit it everytime I lock the phone to put it in my pocket and the battery went from half a day to two days easy.

The power control widget... it puts a quick interface on your home screen to turn on and off things that drain the battery. one benefit here is that you control the brightness of the screen and it locks it at that brightness. Also keeping the sync button off for email notifications seemed to save battery quite a bit as well. I'm in the habit of turning the sync button on for a moment to sync my emails, only takes a few seconds, than turning it back off again.

 

[dannydoes]

Pro's: battery lasts for a longer period vs the imagio I returned to get the moto droid, also the battery recharge is very fast (last night it went from 15%-90% in about 40 minutes

Cons: keyboard is a tight for space especially along the top row of keys.
No speeddial especially for voicemail access.
No manual included, had to find on internet to download to PC
Not having a cool weather app like htc has on their phones (hopefully there will be a hack for that!)
Other than that it is a cool phone so far.

speed dial does exist. Just hold down the number you've assigned. long press "1" for voicemail.

 

[dannydoes]

There is speed dial for voicemail access. Just go into phone and hold down the 1 key and it will dial your voicemail. You can also edit the number so that it adds your password in automatically every time you call.

How do you edit the number so the password is included? Also, how do you program other keys?

 

[Ralo]

To edit the vm phone number to include the password, from the home screen, click the menu option and select settings, call settings, then voice mail setting. There you can add two commas for a two second delay and then your voice mail password.

It should look poke this "*86,,1234" where 1234 is your password.

 

[nka]

Pro's: battery lasts for a longer period vs the imagio I returned to get the moto droid, also the battery recharge is very fast (last night it went from 15%-90% in about 40 minutes

Cons: keyboard is a tight for space especially along the top row of keys.
No speeddial especially for voicemail access.
No manual included, had to find on internet to download to PC
Not having a cool weather app like htc has on their phones (hopefully there will be a hack for that!)
Other than that it is a cool phone so far.

speed dial does exist. Just hold down the number you've assigned. long press "1" for voicemail.

Speed dial is only available for voicemail.