Top 10 Droid Features to Improve

ibewhoiam

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The comments below are being said so that a programmer somewhere may hear and improve the phone. Don't get me wrong... I love the Droid. I think it’s one of most impressive phones I have seen. I have never owned an iphone but it is just about as cool. I have owned a blackberry and this wins - for the most part. With that being said I must comment on the

Top 10 Failures of the Droid
(These are in no particular order)

1. Exchange email (Moving items) - I don't understand how this feature was left out. You cannot properly manage your email because there is no option to move a message from one folder to another. I was previously a blackberry user. This is a must fix.
Recommendation: Allow users to move mail between folders for Exchange email.

2. Physical Keyboard - Now I know what you are thinking, "he is going to say the same thing as everyone else". Nope. I actually kinda sorta liked the keyboard. I LIKED it until I put a case on the phone. There is no room no between the top row of the keys and the top portion of the phone that slides out. Utilizing the top row of the physical keyboard can be a little frustrating. I must say though the virtual keyboard isn’t too shabby.
Recommendation: In the next model give more room for the physical keyboard, improve the physical button shape and increase the size of the physical return key.

3. No verify for message functions - This is mostly for exchange users. Already I have prematurely sent and discarded a number of emails when typing with physical keyboard. The Send and Discard button are wayyyyyyyyy to easy to hit. I would have liked the option to have a verification message say "are you sure you want to send/discard?” Now, this message does appear in Gmail when you want to discard an email but not send. There needs to be an option to on to prompt the user for some input prior to any touch command when writing an email.
Recommendation: Add an option let the user decide if there is a verification notice to send/save as draft/discard.

4. Exchange Folder Management - Like most other exchange users I have a lot of folders in exchange. When you go to view your folders there is a huge list that pops up that is a pain to go through. You don't even get the big scroll button option like you do when you view your contacts. It’s just a big ass list. If I send an email I shouldn't have to scroll forever to go find it.
Recommendation: There should be a way go to a window to view "favorite folders".

5. Exchange Email Navigation - When I sent an email or created a draft of an email at 3pm, on my blackberry I could just browse my email at 3pm and find that sent or drafted email. This is nowhere to be found and is frustrating.
Recommendation: Please create a function that replicates the blackberry function to easily view your drafts and sent items.

6. Exchange Search Nonexistent - You can't search through your email if you are on exchange. Not Cool. You can do it through Gmail but not through exchange. This is also a feature commonly used on my blackberry that I found very useful.
Recommendation: Add search to exchange email.

7. Gmail's Reply, Reply to, Forward - Here is one area the exchange email wins against Google Gmail. When I open an exchange email I am present with an option to reply, etc right away. In Gmail I have to scroll all the way down to find those buttons. They are not even in the options menu.
Recommendation: Add the reply, etc options to Gmail from the moment you view the email - like they do with exchange email.

8. Password - Right now the password can only be based on a pattern you draw with your finger. For cooperate users this does not fit the bill. There are too many policies being created that require a certain lengthen password. I have to admit it is an amazingly quick way to unlock your phone but there should be other options.
Recommendation: Give the option for the user to input an actual password prior to unlocking their phone.

9. Calendar integration with email - I have not tested this out enough but I was send multiple calendar invites to meetings and such. The Droid would not recognize the attachment and allow me to put the item on my calendar. A little inconvenient.
Recommendation: Allow exchange calendar invites to be posted onto the calendar.

10. Exchange Folder refresh - When you are going through your folders in exchange you see nothing by default. At first one would think that there aren’t any messages in the folder. You must first refresh the folder before the messages come in. I think it is implied that if I open the folder I would like to see what is in.
Recommendation: Just tell the Droid to go fetch the mail from the folder when a folder is accessed.

Again these were mentioned to aid in the development of the software. I love my Droid but there are just some frustrating aspects to the phone. With these improvements the Droid would be sitting alongside the iphone and blackberry in email management and "cool".
Just my 2!
 
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Getaphixx

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and...

When Google Maps Navigation is running and I receive a call and answer it..

NAVIGATION IS YELLING IN MY EAR!!!

I have to hang up with the caller.. Kill the app.. and Call them back.. WTF is that crap?



(Looks like ibewhoiam is mostly ticked off with Exchange... lol)
 

oceangor1

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TINY text sizes everywhere!! Let us make them bigger or a zoom function something!! Maybe make some fonts bold some help plz we are all not 14 lol. Try and read the time stamp on SMS lol its funny its soooo small. Alot of that on aps. bigger text option PLEASE!
 

ryanc2

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As far as Exchange goes - GAL support! I can't believe when composing an email you can't search your corporate address book.
 

xkwwwx

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Bluetooth crashed my Droid twice today. The bluetooth software sucks on this phone. It does not Auto connect with My moto sound pilot or my plantronics earpeice. And when you try to reconnect it crashes. Also the Tts volume talkback is soooo much louder than any other media volumes. Also if a call interrupts the media connection, after the call sound will not reconnect to the media connection. Instead. It plays through the speaker And then crashes upon reconnection. Bluetooth Must be addressed.
 

Leckert123

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I'd love to hear if workarounds exist for any of these which are better than what I'm doing. Maybe I'm dumb and don't yet know where/how to access some of the features

Contacts


  • Add means to disable the "joining" of contacts. It provided unexpected and undesired results and took me 2 days to un-screw it up.
  • Add means to sort contacts by last name.
Visual Voicemail
This application is not integrated with the phone app and is flat out inconvenient to use, especially at an extra $2.99/mo.

  • Integrate VVM with the Phone app. See how iPhone does it and copy it.
  • Bluetooth does not work with visual voicemail.
  • Visual voicemail cannot operate while Wifi connection is established.
Notes/Memo
No native Notes/Memo application - and no way to sync downloaded apps to Outlook

Motorola Multimedia Link
Provide this photo/music/audio sync application as part of the setup. Verizon doesn't know it exists but it works well for me.

Email
Update the non-Gmail email package to offer the same features as the GMail version

  • BCC oneself
  • assign signatures
  • HTML pictures in email cannot be zoomed in or out and run off side of page - add zoom feature.
Battery Life
Battery life is horrendous. Fix the inability to close down open apps in an intelligent, automatic, integrated way. This will help.

Browser
Add a "forward" button or arrow. The lack of it is just dumb.

Haptic Feedback

PLEASE let me disable it on the phone keyboard...I HATE how it feels in my hands when it buzzes.

Camera

Make it not suck - it would be handy if it actually snapped the photo within a second or 2 or 3 of when I click the shutter.

Next Version of the Droid.

Add a simple on/off button to silence the phone.

Provide Tech Support from Knowledgeable People
Apple supports the iPhone and it's OS directly if AT&T doesn't have the answer. Who from Google supports Android?
 
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medicTHREE

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Battery Life
Battery life is horrendous. Fix the inability to close down open apps in an intelligent, automatic, integrated way. This will help.

Browser
Add a "forward" button or arrow. The lack of it is just dumb.

Haptic Feedback

PLEASE let me disable it on the phone keyboard...I HATE how it feels in my hands when it buzzes.

Camera

Make it not suck - it would be handy if it actually snapped the photo within a second or 2 or 3 of when I click the shutter.

Next Version of the Droid.

Add a simple on/off button to silence the phone.

Provide Tech Support from Knowledgeable People
Apple supports the iPhone and it's OS directly if AT&T doesn't have the answer. Who from Google supports Android?

AM I missing something. To get the forward button in browser, push menu button. Click forward?

My camera takes pics in under 2 seconds. It takes like 7 to get the camera to start, but I can live with that. When focus is better, we're golden(ish)

My battery life is about twice as good as that on my storm. I had it off charger from 0300 yesterday to 1900 and it had 30% still. I played with it all day, installed 11 apps, received 98 emails, and over 100 text messages, as well as about 45 minutes of phone usage. Disabling GPS, Bluetooth, and wifi will help. Setting screen timeout to 30 seconds instead of default will save more battery life than the above.
 

Spr0ckEt

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Lol @ Getaphixx... I was thinking the same thing... @onecleanjetta
1. are you old enough to drive?
2. Even if it were on speakerphone, the NAV is still talking... That means that your caller gets to hear all of your directions, and not much of you.
 

Leckert123

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Battery Life
Battery life is horrendous. Fix the inability to close down open apps in an intelligent, automatic, integrated way. This will help.

Browser
Add a "forward" button or arrow. The lack of it is just dumb.

Haptic Feedback

PLEASE let me disable it on the phone keyboard...I HATE how it feels in my hands when it buzzes.

Camera

Make it not suck - it would be handy if it actually snapped the photo within a second or 2 or 3 of when I click the shutter.

Next Version of the Droid.

Add a simple on/off button to silence the phone.

Provide Tech Support from Knowledgeable People
Apple supports the iPhone and it's OS directly if AT&T doesn't have the answer. Who from Google supports Android?

AM I missing something. To get the forward button in browser, push menu button. Click forward?

My camera takes pics in under 2 seconds. It takes like 7 to get the camera to start, but I can live with that. When focus is better, we're golden(ish)

My battery life is about twice as good as that on my storm. I had it off charger from 0300 yesterday to 1900 and it had 30% still. I played with it all day, installed 11 apps, received 98 emails, and over 100 text messages, as well as about 45 minutes of phone usage. Disabling GPS, Bluetooth, and wifi will help. Setting screen timeout to 30 seconds instead of default will save more battery life than the above.


  • Thanks for the helpful tip on the Browser Forward button. I did not realize it was in the menu button. I'm an idiot (or a typical user?)
  • Camera - of all the smartphones I've owned (since the first Treo 600, thru various Treo's and iPhone) this one is the only one with this autofocus hunting delay and high proportion of delayed, out of focus photos. Can't believe how Google/Motorola screwed up something so basic.
  • Battery life - Yup, I've disabled the same things as you (except for GPS) and even have a shorter screen timeout than you. I wonder how much the GPS is hurting me. I'll disable it today. My battery life has been improving each day, compared to the horrific first day. As has been the case with my other phones, the lithium polymer battery gradually conditions, and develops its full capacity as it is cycled. However, it's still pretty wretched compared to my Gen 1 iPhone. With use all day, it would be rare for my iPhone to have less than 50-60% remaining by midnite each day unless I was surfing the internet for hours at the airport waiting for flights, etc. My Droid drops 10% per hour just sitting there and absolutely requires a mid-day snack (charge)
  • I'm hopeful that the battery life and functional use (including my own understanding of some hidden features) will continue to improve before the end of my 30 day trial period so that I decide to keep it and port my iPhone number over from AT&T.
Not included on my original list, but worth mentioning

  • Crappy documentation for how to use the many non-intuitive features. This phone, as shipped, is very likely to frustrate non-techies. It needs a better instruction manual and/or CD with manual to be included with the phone.
 

medicTHREE

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One thing to remember about these batteries is that they LOVE to be topped off. Full discharge hurts them, frequent charging is better. So if you have a dock, plop it in when you're around it.
 

sir

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- Lack of group name and password for VPN support
- Lack of adding in Corporate Contacts to emails (they have to be a contact on your phone, but there's no way to import them?)

Also - in regards to the user who wants a password to unlock due to corporate policy...

If you notice the layout of the dots, there are 9 of them (1-9 on a number pad) (1 less possible number sequence than 0-9). So let's assume a password length of 10.

With a password, you have 10 positions, each one having the potential to be any number from 0-9, meaning 10 numbers, 10 slots, that's a maximum potential combination of 10^10, or 100000000000 combinations.

With the drawing, you have 10 positions. The first one can be any position 1-9, meaning 9 spots to start from. After that, you only have 8 choices (you can't go to the dot you are one because it requires no movement). So your result is 9 * 8^9, or 1207959552 potential combinations.

The password is roughly 8.2784x stronger than the drawing. However, taking into account human simplicity, most people will choose a number that is relative to something in their life (re: birthdays, SS#, etc.), and I'm pretty sure passwords on cell phones are limited in length and simple because they are impossible to type.

This assumes only numbers in the password - the password only becomes stronger if you include letters (camel case) and symbols.

Just something to think about, but the end result is the same: the drawing isn't a simple thing to crack, and is most likely as secure as any simple password someone would use on a mobile device that's frustrating to type every time the thing locks itself.
 

Danthok

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I would really like an easy intuitive way to see all apps open and cycle through them or close them if I am done. I have the advanced app killer but it could be so much better. There may already be an app for this, if there is let me know please!
 

tablatronix

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Cannot filter contacts by category/group

Cannot access contacts alphabetically via letter filter or jump (unless you open the physical kb) No rolodex slide for real ?

Email checking doesnt work properly, fails to check email and or notify.

Button backlights are annoying, they have no brightness control or auto adjustments, they blind you at night if your watching video for example.

Screen sensitivity is not normalized across all apps. OSK is way too sensitive, dialer not as much. UI, I press things they turn orange and sometimes even haptic feedback but never perform their operation, something is majorly wrong with button debouncing.

The phone has all kind of sensors, so then if im holding the phone why is it sleeping when I read a web page? Giving skreeble a try soon to see if I can fix this.

Home buttons are way to sensitive, I press them all the time simply putting my phone down, especially the damn search one.

Camera autofocus, dont even get me started.

I dont see a way to change the phone lock timeout or change it to manual, I hate having to always unlock my phone when its sitting on my desk. Prefer it be binded to the sleep power button for manual locking.

Market still sucks, cant filter searches by costs, dates, vendor. There ARE some special google search params built in, I just cant figure them out.

Home portrait mode wastes icon space by keeping the layout the same for landscape, this is great for consistancy of where your icons are (4x4), but Id rather have more icons and be able to reorganize each mode individually. (6x4)(4x6) maybe
 

keiichi25

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- Lack of group name and password for VPN support
- Lack of adding in Corporate Contacts to emails (they have to be a contact on your phone, but there's no way to import them?)

Actually, there is a Corporate Directory app, provided by Motorola to fill in for the problem. While it is a bit annoying that you will need to look up people you want, it does have the option of adding them to your contacts without having to manually enter them in.
 
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