Why or wy not Droid 2 Global?

[supermaughan]

I have had the Droid 2 for about a year now and I really like it. It took a swim in the toilet the other day so I got a replacement from asurion but of course it was a re-manufactured one and had an issue with the speaker. I called and asked for a new one (not re-manufactured) and all they had was the Droid 2 Global. I said that would be alright because it could only be better than the Droid 2. So my question is, if I never plan on leaving the country, what other advantage is there to the Droid 2 Global? And what my be the disadvantages? I did read about the battery life, which I am a little concerned about.

 

[13th angel]

Battery life can be helped, there's a write up in the d2g section if I remember right. The only real benefit is that it has a better processor in it. However, a downside is there is less dev support for it if you like to mod your device. There's some roms coming out now (2 have come out in the past month and mine is getting close to release) but its still not as much as d2/dx.

Sent from my Liberated D2G

 

[supermaughan]

So you when you say mod that's the same as rooting, correct? I never did that with my other phone and don't plan on it with this one either. Someone on another side said something about the phone not showing the time and date of calls. My Droid 2 does and I can't see how that would be different on this device. The stock configuration shouldn't be that different, correct?

 

[13th angel]

Rooting is the first step in modding but there's more to it than that.

Not sure who told you that, it showed on mine while stock as far as I can remember.

Sent from my Liberated D2G

 

[mopar57]

I also read the screen was better...cant remember if its the screen or just better resolution.

 

[mopar57]

Also just compare my and the keyboard is a little different. D2G has more of a "button" to press.

 

[tothenet]

I used Droid 1 for more than a year. Droid 1 was excellent at that time but suffering from small internal storage and memory. Due to very small available memory, Android OS needs to flush periodically to load new application. With 256MB memory it wasn't easy and Android OS wasn't very good at that either. So, there were lots of devs working to make Droid 1 usable device.

You might not know how bad it was. I was in Costco one day and got a call. I wanted to answer but my phone was frozen for a few min and missed call. it ran very very very slowly. I dialed to caller and phone didn't respond. After paying, I pushed my cart and moved things to trunk and went to gas station. Then my phone finally dialed. I cancelled it but there were so many call since I pressed many times.

After eclair, it was better and Froyo definitely helped. Internal storage was problem but luckily I am good at Unix. So, I modified boot script to change a few directory permission and used cache partition for data storage. No other way to use the phone since program space was so small. So, rooting and modding is sort of mandatory business.

With D2G, I am stick to Stock ROM. Not because I am scared of modding or do not know how. I know how to create ROM image and modify so, if I need to, I will. But D2G has much memory and big internal space. After installing all necessary apps, I still have 6GB left. with Droid 1, I always worried about space and kept deleting email. Now, that's the past. I don't also worry about background process since I always have at least 140MB left. Compared to 10 or 20MB with Droid 1, it's day and night difference.

I don't think modding is critical for D2G. Just my 2 cents.

 

[draexo]

If I had to do it again.... I'm not sure which phone I'd get... TBolt maybe?

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using DroidForums

 

[13th angel]

I don't think modding is critical for D2G. Just my 2 cents.

I agree that its not "critical" however it is necessary to get optimum usage. Motoblur has alot of problems with it and as such severely hinders the device.

 

[dfuser312553]

OP you were asking for the differences other then radio; the D2G runs at 1.2Ghz whereas the D2 is 1Ghz. Not sure about the keyboards; didn't notice any differences anyway.

 

[pkw1]

From my experience, it is a good device on most areas, battery sucked (I carry 2 extra batteries with me every day)... BUT if you are buying this without warrenty, DON'T DO IT, there are so many cases of bad hardware.

 

[silver6054]

So you when you say mod that's the same as rooting, correct? I never did that with my other phone and don't plan on it with this one either. Someone on another side said something about the phone not showing the time and date of calls. My Droid 2 does and I can't see how that would be different on this device. The stock configuration shouldn't be that different, correct?

The reference to time and date of calls is probably referring to calls made recently. (See https://supportforums.motorola.com/message/306611#306611) The recent call log will give call times in the format two hours ago, 2 days ago, etc, up to 6 days. As suggested by that thread, I use Dialer One (free from the market) and it shows the date and time of all calls.


On the basic question, if you don't need a global phone, and live in a 4G area, or one that is getting 4G soon, I would certainly look at the Thunderbolt and may be the brand new Droid Charge (once enough people have used it to find out the bugs!). I like the Droid 2 Global *only* for its global capability and the hardware keyboard. Otherwise, not very special, but of course if you liked the Droid 2, your feelings might be different!

 

[supermaughan]

Thank you all for the replies. I'm not really debating whether to get the Droid 2 Global or not. In fact I all ready have it now. I didn't have a lot of choice. Because this is an insurance replacement, it was either a new Droid 2 Global or a re-manufactured Droid 2. The question was asked so that I could maybe one-up all my buddies that have the Droid 2. I was concerned about the battery life because it was never great on the droid 2.

On battery life, I followed some suggestions on how to improve and now I have some questions. I rooted using z4root and installed Titanium Backup so I could freeze bloatware. I followed the list by NiceGuysFinishLast (not all but most.) Now this morning my WeatherBug App is not updating. I'm not sure what happened. Is there a source that explains what all these bloatware apps are? (admin notifier, adService, etc.) They are generally accepted as bloat but I like to know what they do. Also something messed up my contacts and I lost about half my contact seemingly randomly.

I found another problem. My in-call volume is very low and the speaker phone didn't work.