Just got a Droid

[Geforce255]

The new Motorola Droid is the premier Android 2.0 based phone.

The Droid is a multi-tasking smart phone like Palm's Pre. The browser can be opened and you can cut and paste into a spreadsheet or word processor, switching back and forth like you would on a PC.

The physical slide out keyboard works well and the high resolution screen is the best I've seen at 854×480.

I set up Exchange email in a matter of minutes and the phone updated with no issues. So far it seems just as reliable as my Blackberry was.

The Google maps function is sublime - instant GPS positioning - vastly faster than VZ Navigator on the Storm. It has street view so you can see what the building you're looking for actually looks like - and of course turn by turn driving directions.

I have not yet played with any media functions. I assume the MP3 player is good, but can't really say. The Storm was flawed in that it didn't compress MP3's - so even the 8gb MSD card didn't hold very much.

The Android site has thousands of apps - most of which are nothing worth getting - so it's just like the iPhone in that regard.

The touch screen is MUCH more responsive than the Storm - but still lags slightly behind the iPhone in scrolling pages on Extremetech - though it loads pages easily twice as fast - which is due purely to AT&T being crap rather than the iPhone lagging.

The Droid has a great camera and video recorder. It's a 5 MP with duel LED lights and a low light CCD - this is a stand alone camera level set up - easily the best of any smart phone. Samsung's Behold has a 5 MP camera - but not the low light CCD of the Droid.

I'll post more when I get more experience with the Droid.

[MrDigital]

I had put the Droid at the top of my list until Nihilist pointed out in the other thread that it only has 256mb of storage and doesn't support SD app storage without hacking the phone... unbelievably weak. I get the feeling that I'll be waiting for the iPhone 4g or whatever Apple delivers to Verizon to get a phone done right.

Everything else about the Droid sounds awesome, I just can't believe they'd only stick 256mb of non-expandable app storage in there. My 4 year old iPaq has that much memory... and QVGA apps are gonna take 1/8th the amount of space as SVGA apps. Just totally ridiculous.

[Vindir]

Grats on the droid Geforce, I got to play with a buddies at work for about an hour yesterday and it blows the other android phones I've spent time with out of the water, can't believe they managed to fit the whole platform into a package that thin.

MrDigital, app sizes are typically very small on the market actually. Even before rooting the mytouch I had well over 100 apps installed from going through and taking a shot on anything that looked half interesting. Just about the only way to bloat the system app area is downloading loads of soundboards or buying tons of the larger games out there since most all apps that take up space for messages/audio/video/web/etc take advantage of the SDCard for storing stuff they pull in.

Totally agreed that it's rediculous, just wanted to say it isn't going to have that much effect until developers want to start porting over games like Resident Evil with it's massive install size on the iphone.

[OS-Wiz]

Prince Vindir of the OC Crusaders

OMG, long time no see. So, you still lurk here, huh?

[Vindir]

holy hijack batman. Heya OS-Wiz I'm pretty much always around, just usually don't post much, keeping up the invisible modfish image and all. It's been slowing down at work lately so I seem to be tripling my post count for the year this month.

[Hadsus]

I just ordered one.....Verizon has the best phone service I've experienced.....really interested in the iPhone but a bit concerned about AT&T (not to mention it will cost me to break my existing contract with Verizon). I've read rumors that the iPhone is coming to Verizon but it will be a bit smaller than the AT&T phone. I figure the Droid falls short of the iPhone but it's close enough for me.

[kpxgq]

spec wise, i think the droid is tops but i just cant trust motorola... the last good phone they made was the star tac back in 2000.

i think the htc hero with 2.0 software would be at the top of my list

[Hadsus]

Of the reviews I've read (or seen on YouTube) everyone is pretty impressed with build quality (a few keyboard sliding issues) of the Droid. But I've never owned a Moto.

[kent1146]

spec wise, i think the droid is tops but i just cant trust motorola... the last good phone they made was the star tac back in 2000.

i think the htc hero with 2.0 software would be at the top of my list

I own a droid. The build quality of the Droid is pretty good... the last great Motorola phone I owned was a Motorola Q... that thing was well built. I dropped, scratched, tossed, etc that thing so many times, and it still kept on ticking. I have never owned a Razr, but I did own a Startac... my experience with Motorola is that they build very solid devices.

[kent1146]

I had put the Droid at the top of my list until Nihilist pointed out in the other thread that it only has 256mb of storage and doesn't support SD app storage without hacking the phone... unbelievably weak. I get the feeling that I'll be waiting for the iPhone 4g or whatever Apple delivers to Verizon to get a phone done right.

Everything else about the Droid sounds awesome, I just can't believe they'd only stick 256mb of non-expandable app storage in there. My 4 year old iPaq has that much memory... and QVGA apps are gonna take 1/8th the amount of space as SVGA apps. Just totally ridiculous.

I wouldn't worry about the 256MB of memory.

The Droid's 256MB of internal storage is only for apps themselves - and the apps that you download are typically small. For example, most of the apps I have are in the 50KB - 100KB range... the largest one I have is 3MB in size. You could literally fill your phone up with hundreds of apps before that 256MB becomes an issue.

The Droid comes with a 16GB MicroSD card for all of your media, plus storage space for the "data" that your apps use (e.g. Google Maps will store all of its downloaded maps on the SD card... a podcast sync'ing app that I use will store all of my podcasts there). There is plenty of space on the Droid for anything you'd want to do with it.

[kent1146]

I just ordered one.....Verizon has the best phone service I've experienced.....really interested in the iPhone but a bit concerned about AT&T (not to mention it will cost me to break my existing contract with Verizon). I've read rumors that the iPhone is coming to Verizon but it will be a bit smaller than the AT&T phone. I figure the Droid falls short of the iPhone but it's close enough for me.

I owned an iPhone 3G on AT&T, and dropped it for the Droid the day the Droid came out.

User Experience
The Droid is just a different experience than the iPhone - the iPhone is very much of an experience best described as "Let me hold your hand, and show you the world that Apple created for you." The Droid is much more of a "You tell us where you want to go today" kind of experience. The iPhone experience is much more polished, but restrictive in what you can do. Some people like that. Me, personally... I wanted a Droid, because I got tired of Jailbreaking my iPhone every time there was a new iPhone OS release so that I could use my tethering app (PDANet). The Droid... just lets me use it.

Hardware
The Droid and iPhone are about the same size and weight - the Droid does have a slide-out keyboard. It's not the greatst keyboard in the world, but I got used to it in about a day, and will never go back to an onscreen keyboard.

The Droid is also a LOT faster than my iPhone 3G... it's about as fast as an iPhone 3GS (I think they use the same CPU). So it's a moot point if you buy a new iPhone... but it's worth noting that the Droid is nice and zippy.

Oh, and the Droid screen is friggin BEAUTIFUL. It has 5x the pixel density of the iPhone. Comparing the two side-by-side is like going from SDTV to HDTV.

Apps
The iPhone has strong advantages when it comes to its media player - it can basically act as a true iPod. The Droid can act as a "mobile media device." Technically, it can play music, playlists, sort by artists, etc... but it's not as polished as the iPhone / iPod experience in terms of playback or syncing.

Where the Droid shines is Google Navigation, and Google Search. The Nav app is a true GPS-enabled turn-by-turn directions... it can replace a standalone GPS unit.

What makes the Droid REALLY cool is that it has voice-recognition in its search. That Search is integrated into the entire phone. You could literally say "Navigate to Post Office"... and it will find the closest post offices to your location, allow you to click on the one you want, and give you turn-by-turn directions on how to get there. Or you could say "O-C-Z Vertex One Hundred and Twenty Gigabyte Newegg", and it will perform a search for you in Google to find you the page for the OCZ Vertex 120GB on Newegg's site. It's friggin amazing.

Network
AT&T is $hit. They are the very reason why I switched - I use my phone for work 3 to 5 hours per day, and would get around 10 dropped calls per day. It is totally unacceptable for me to drop a call 3 times in a single hour when on the phone with a client. I have had zero problems with Verizon's voice service.

AT&T data service (especially their 3G) had terrible latency, and was often overloaded. I could sit and wait for up to a full minute after hitting a button for any data to come back. With Verizon, I have zero problems, and can download at up to 7Mbps downstream.

There is absolutely no comparison here.

[PointlesS]

The app storage isn't that much of an issue. From what I read, if say you have a game that takes up 100mb or something. Only 1mb of that is stored on the internal memory while the other 99% of it can be stored on a memory card. This is google's way of preventing piracy apparently.

[MrDigital]

Yeah maybe it's not a big deal then. I'll keep my eye on it. I'm not due up for a new phone until January.

[taggart6]

Cool, looking for a new phone so I'll check this out. My wife and i are on Sprint right now. Pay about 75 total on the Sprint SERO program.

How much are you guys paying for your plans? I have Verizon in the past but switched because sprint was cheaper.

[kent1146]

Cool, looking for a new phone so I'll check this out. My wife and i are on Sprint right now. Pay about 75 total on the Sprint SERO program.

How much are you guys paying for your plans? I have Verizon in the past but switched because sprint was cheaper.

I'm paying $150 per month

+ $100 Unlimited Voice
+ $30 Unlimited Data
+ $10 500 TXT messages
+ $8 Accidental loss / damage total coverage insurance
+ $2 Visual Voicemail