dannydoes
Member
I've owned the phone since the day it came out. Many of my friends on Facebook were asking about it so here's a review I posted up there...
The Droid is very similar to the Iphone, so I'll be doing many comparisons to it, also as it's the only smart phone that I'm fairly familiar with.
First off, I really love this phone. It is my first smart phone so some of the allure my be attributed to the sudden expansion of possiblities with this phone, but I'm a stickler for interface, so the fact that I like it so much is a major statement, just ask the tools guys at my company. I make video games btw.
If you don't have time to read all this. I've listed the good, mediocre, and bad, first so you can get the jist. The rest is just lots o' detail of my own meandering experience.
Good -
- Screen (wow)
- Interface (for the most part anyhoo)
- Hardware
- Call quality (especially compared to iPhone)
- customization
Mediocre -
- Battery life (though not horrible, except the first few days when you can't put it down)
- keyboard ( I do well with it, but I can see why others don't like it, and it certainly could be better)
- No dedicated call button so making phone calls off the call log is not as quick as most phones.
- Video player can be choppy or slow, compared to Iphones, but still great for a phone.
Bad -
- Hard to know if programs are running. (though there is an app that fixes that quite well)
- Camera sucks balls. It's slow, and the quality is awful. 5 Megapixels, so what. Iphone or HTC have much better cameras. I can be a bit picky about this though. Some do like it. There's no accounting for taste.
Full Long-ass Review -
Holding it... (the hardware)
The size and weight is great. It's noticeably heavier than the iphone, but it's well balanced and the weight and materials offer a feel of a high end device. I like the design, it's masculine but elegant. I've seen reviews that state the slider wobbles, but mine does not at all. It feels tight and well made and snaps nicely into both positions. The power button which also is used for locking and turning off the screen is very well placed as are the rest of the hardware buttons around the phone. My only complaint with the hardware is that I accidentally hit the volume buttons often.
The "actual" keyboard seems a controversial subject. Many reviewers complain about it because it's flat and somewhat easy to roll onto other keys accidentally. It's true, but I found myself getting used to it in a matter of days and can now type much faster than the touchscreen keyboards. I don't find it as bad as they say, but, if you don't like it, you never have to use it since the touchscreen keyboards on this phone are actually better than Iphone's. I'm not sure how, but I get the right letter on this keyboard much more often than I did on the Iphone. It feels very elegant and also goes landscape in all applications. I've seen video reviews where they show typing on both, where the reviewer, who's owned the iPhone for 3 years, types on both keyboards and finds the droid worse because he made more mistakes, but that's like having someone play a electric guitar for 3 years, then hand them an acoustic and they don't play it quite as well. Obviously muscle memory has something to do with it, so I'd take a review like that with a grain of salt.
The screen is glass and looks better than the Iphones by quite a bit as it's a bit brighter and twice the resolution and just a bit bigger. Font is amazing on this phone and details are crisp. One negative effect to that however is very few videos on YouTube take advantage of this resolution and often play smaller than the screen. They should have added a play full screen somewhere, and though they may have, I haven't found it yet.
Playing with it... (the software)
The interface feels just like an Iphone. It's very responsive and very elegant and very smooth. Right next to the Iphone, It's slightly less responsive, but it's very close. It's also bit choppier in framerate occasionally, but only some would notice as the difference there is slight as well, usually only noticeable if the page is not done loading. To me it's very similar and it's the closest touch screen interface to the iphone than any other phone I've seen. One thing it does better than the iphone is the scrolling. It really goes the speed of your flick, and on a long list like contacts, you can flick it fast and it'll scroll forever instead of slowing down quickly as with the Iphone to where you have to keep flicking to get down to my buddy Zack. It's possible that iPhone has a setting to change this though.
It is certainly more complicated and technical than the iPhone which should not be much of a surprise, (think Mac to PC) The Droid is far more customizeable and open ended, and has tons of hidden options.
The desktop as I like to call it, or the homescreen is very customizeable, you can make it look like the HTC phones with the big clocks and weather graphics, you can have a desktop image behind the buttons, and you can move the buttons in any configuration you like, or make shortcuts, just like the desktop of a pc. There are custom widgets that allow you to perform many of the phones functions that are menus deep in one press, like turning on WiFi, bluetooth, screen brightness, data sync, Facebook status updates, etc etc. zub zub zub.
It has a great interface for locking the phone which is as quick as the slide right to start the phone, but you draw a custom pattern to unlock it so I'll never accidentally dial anyone. I usually hate locks on phones but this one is so quick it's not annoying at all.
Another great feature is the notifications bar. At the top of the screen is a white bar that will have little icons from anything that comes your way, be it facebook, corporate emails, app downloads, texts, missed calls, whatever. Anything new, will be here, you just flick it down like a window shade and it's all in one place. Everything in the notifications is like a shortcut that opens the appropriate program. Great interface idea. There's also a blinking light to let you know in case the screen isn't on.
Another convenience for us FB users, it'll sync your contacts with facebook and if you like will download the current pictures of your contacts to the phone's directory, it also has a great app for facebook custom for the phone to make navigating quicker and easier than using the actual web page, though certainly you can do it either way. This is also true for Gmail.
It uses Mini USB to both charge or transfer files with a PC, and it's works flawlessly for both. You just copy music, movies, ringtones, etc. over to it like a jump drive. That's it.
Gaming - (finally)
The games and apps available for this thing are truly awesome. This is the first phone I've ever played games on and truly enjoyed them. Very impressive. For example I play a stripped down RTS game often called Robo Defense which is very addicting and done very well. The phone has the power to have about 100 units on screen all firing away.
The accelerometer on this phone is amazingly precise. There is a game called Labyrinth which is modeled off of the wooden box maze where you turn the knobs to navigate the ball and avoid dropping in the holes. You tilt the phone to get the ball to move on this digital one and it's very impressive.
Google search on the phone is awesome. Pick it up and just start typing and it searches contacts, and the internet with blazing speed (for a phone). Although I do think that when you do have a signal on AT&T, the internet on the iphone is slightly faster. Also, there is voice searching for the internet which is amazingly accurate. It's not perfect, but it's impressive.
Talking on it, (the phone)
Call quality is great. I never drop a call, I never hear static, and it sounds very clean. That's the single greatest benefit to this phone over the iphone. Everyone I know who has an Iphone, in both Austin and in Los Angeles, complain often about dropping calls or losing service. They drop calls on me all the time. I"ve had Verizon for 5 years now, not one dropped call. BAM! The speaker phone is also very loud and clear. Good speakers in general for a phone. Also, when I talk to people in loud crowded areas, the peeps on the other end hear me very well as it doesn't pick up much background noise if any.
Driving with it,
Droid comes with free navigation software and a car mode, with a car dock that adheres to the window. This software works almost identical as my Garmin, but with added features like doing it in Satelite view, a picture of my destination, and a google maps search engine. The only thing I miss are the stats that my Garmin offers on a trip, of top speed, speedometer, trip time, etc. But IT's FREE! So put that in your pipe and smoke it!
Now I get where they get the term Crackberry. Since I've got this phone, I seem to want to play with it all the time. Often I surf emails or the web on it instead of the computer. As far as checking email for both Gmail and my Corperate accounts, it's just as fast as any high end desktop to do so.
BTW... Be careful of what some reviewers say. Since the phone is pretty robust and the instructions are poor, there are often better ways of doing things than they think and due to ignorance claim a flaw that is a mistake. For example the review from the NYTimes claimed, "On the flip side, selecting text on the Droid drives us nuts. The option is hidden behind a menu screen; there's no clever magnifying glass to help you grab the right section; and to copy, you have to again find the option somewhere in the menus." This is not true, as all you have to do is shift drag the text and it automatically copies it to the clipboard, or you can hold your finger down for a moment to bring up the list of copy, cut, paste, select, etc. I've found this is the type of device where having forums dedicated to this phone (Droidforums.net) are actually necessary, and not just for technocrappy ringtones or Star Trek wallpapers.
Wrapping it up...
I really like the phone, it's the best phone I've ever owned, and Ive been through quite a few, but I'm a technically minded person who enjoys the natural discovery of figuring things out, and usually does so pretty easily. However for people like some of my family members, who shall remain nameless, who can't figure out how to get an account going on facebook, I would recommend sticking with the Iphone, which is a bit more idiotproof. That is if it wasn't for the crappy service that AT&T delivers. And that is the number one reason to get this over the iPhone. The phone part of the phone actually works.
The Droid is very similar to the Iphone, so I'll be doing many comparisons to it, also as it's the only smart phone that I'm fairly familiar with.
First off, I really love this phone. It is my first smart phone so some of the allure my be attributed to the sudden expansion of possiblities with this phone, but I'm a stickler for interface, so the fact that I like it so much is a major statement, just ask the tools guys at my company. I make video games btw.
If you don't have time to read all this. I've listed the good, mediocre, and bad, first so you can get the jist. The rest is just lots o' detail of my own meandering experience.
Good -
- Screen (wow)
- Interface (for the most part anyhoo)
- Hardware
- Call quality (especially compared to iPhone)
- customization
Mediocre -
- Battery life (though not horrible, except the first few days when you can't put it down)
- keyboard ( I do well with it, but I can see why others don't like it, and it certainly could be better)
- No dedicated call button so making phone calls off the call log is not as quick as most phones.
- Video player can be choppy or slow, compared to Iphones, but still great for a phone.
Bad -
- Hard to know if programs are running. (though there is an app that fixes that quite well)
- Camera sucks balls. It's slow, and the quality is awful. 5 Megapixels, so what. Iphone or HTC have much better cameras. I can be a bit picky about this though. Some do like it. There's no accounting for taste.
Full Long-ass Review -
Holding it... (the hardware)
The size and weight is great. It's noticeably heavier than the iphone, but it's well balanced and the weight and materials offer a feel of a high end device. I like the design, it's masculine but elegant. I've seen reviews that state the slider wobbles, but mine does not at all. It feels tight and well made and snaps nicely into both positions. The power button which also is used for locking and turning off the screen is very well placed as are the rest of the hardware buttons around the phone. My only complaint with the hardware is that I accidentally hit the volume buttons often.
The "actual" keyboard seems a controversial subject. Many reviewers complain about it because it's flat and somewhat easy to roll onto other keys accidentally. It's true, but I found myself getting used to it in a matter of days and can now type much faster than the touchscreen keyboards. I don't find it as bad as they say, but, if you don't like it, you never have to use it since the touchscreen keyboards on this phone are actually better than Iphone's. I'm not sure how, but I get the right letter on this keyboard much more often than I did on the Iphone. It feels very elegant and also goes landscape in all applications. I've seen video reviews where they show typing on both, where the reviewer, who's owned the iPhone for 3 years, types on both keyboards and finds the droid worse because he made more mistakes, but that's like having someone play a electric guitar for 3 years, then hand them an acoustic and they don't play it quite as well. Obviously muscle memory has something to do with it, so I'd take a review like that with a grain of salt.
The screen is glass and looks better than the Iphones by quite a bit as it's a bit brighter and twice the resolution and just a bit bigger. Font is amazing on this phone and details are crisp. One negative effect to that however is very few videos on YouTube take advantage of this resolution and often play smaller than the screen. They should have added a play full screen somewhere, and though they may have, I haven't found it yet.
Playing with it... (the software)
The interface feels just like an Iphone. It's very responsive and very elegant and very smooth. Right next to the Iphone, It's slightly less responsive, but it's very close. It's also bit choppier in framerate occasionally, but only some would notice as the difference there is slight as well, usually only noticeable if the page is not done loading. To me it's very similar and it's the closest touch screen interface to the iphone than any other phone I've seen. One thing it does better than the iphone is the scrolling. It really goes the speed of your flick, and on a long list like contacts, you can flick it fast and it'll scroll forever instead of slowing down quickly as with the Iphone to where you have to keep flicking to get down to my buddy Zack. It's possible that iPhone has a setting to change this though.
It is certainly more complicated and technical than the iPhone which should not be much of a surprise, (think Mac to PC) The Droid is far more customizeable and open ended, and has tons of hidden options.
The desktop as I like to call it, or the homescreen is very customizeable, you can make it look like the HTC phones with the big clocks and weather graphics, you can have a desktop image behind the buttons, and you can move the buttons in any configuration you like, or make shortcuts, just like the desktop of a pc. There are custom widgets that allow you to perform many of the phones functions that are menus deep in one press, like turning on WiFi, bluetooth, screen brightness, data sync, Facebook status updates, etc etc. zub zub zub.
It has a great interface for locking the phone which is as quick as the slide right to start the phone, but you draw a custom pattern to unlock it so I'll never accidentally dial anyone. I usually hate locks on phones but this one is so quick it's not annoying at all.
Another great feature is the notifications bar. At the top of the screen is a white bar that will have little icons from anything that comes your way, be it facebook, corporate emails, app downloads, texts, missed calls, whatever. Anything new, will be here, you just flick it down like a window shade and it's all in one place. Everything in the notifications is like a shortcut that opens the appropriate program. Great interface idea. There's also a blinking light to let you know in case the screen isn't on.
Another convenience for us FB users, it'll sync your contacts with facebook and if you like will download the current pictures of your contacts to the phone's directory, it also has a great app for facebook custom for the phone to make navigating quicker and easier than using the actual web page, though certainly you can do it either way. This is also true for Gmail.
It uses Mini USB to both charge or transfer files with a PC, and it's works flawlessly for both. You just copy music, movies, ringtones, etc. over to it like a jump drive. That's it.
Gaming - (finally)
The games and apps available for this thing are truly awesome. This is the first phone I've ever played games on and truly enjoyed them. Very impressive. For example I play a stripped down RTS game often called Robo Defense which is very addicting and done very well. The phone has the power to have about 100 units on screen all firing away.
The accelerometer on this phone is amazingly precise. There is a game called Labyrinth which is modeled off of the wooden box maze where you turn the knobs to navigate the ball and avoid dropping in the holes. You tilt the phone to get the ball to move on this digital one and it's very impressive.
Google search on the phone is awesome. Pick it up and just start typing and it searches contacts, and the internet with blazing speed (for a phone). Although I do think that when you do have a signal on AT&T, the internet on the iphone is slightly faster. Also, there is voice searching for the internet which is amazingly accurate. It's not perfect, but it's impressive.
Talking on it, (the phone)
Call quality is great. I never drop a call, I never hear static, and it sounds very clean. That's the single greatest benefit to this phone over the iphone. Everyone I know who has an Iphone, in both Austin and in Los Angeles, complain often about dropping calls or losing service. They drop calls on me all the time. I"ve had Verizon for 5 years now, not one dropped call. BAM! The speaker phone is also very loud and clear. Good speakers in general for a phone. Also, when I talk to people in loud crowded areas, the peeps on the other end hear me very well as it doesn't pick up much background noise if any.
Driving with it,
Droid comes with free navigation software and a car mode, with a car dock that adheres to the window. This software works almost identical as my Garmin, but with added features like doing it in Satelite view, a picture of my destination, and a google maps search engine. The only thing I miss are the stats that my Garmin offers on a trip, of top speed, speedometer, trip time, etc. But IT's FREE! So put that in your pipe and smoke it!
Now I get where they get the term Crackberry. Since I've got this phone, I seem to want to play with it all the time. Often I surf emails or the web on it instead of the computer. As far as checking email for both Gmail and my Corperate accounts, it's just as fast as any high end desktop to do so.
BTW... Be careful of what some reviewers say. Since the phone is pretty robust and the instructions are poor, there are often better ways of doing things than they think and due to ignorance claim a flaw that is a mistake. For example the review from the NYTimes claimed, "On the flip side, selecting text on the Droid drives us nuts. The option is hidden behind a menu screen; there's no clever magnifying glass to help you grab the right section; and to copy, you have to again find the option somewhere in the menus." This is not true, as all you have to do is shift drag the text and it automatically copies it to the clipboard, or you can hold your finger down for a moment to bring up the list of copy, cut, paste, select, etc. I've found this is the type of device where having forums dedicated to this phone (Droidforums.net) are actually necessary, and not just for technocrappy ringtones or Star Trek wallpapers.
Wrapping it up...
I really like the phone, it's the best phone I've ever owned, and Ive been through quite a few, but I'm a technically minded person who enjoys the natural discovery of figuring things out, and usually does so pretty easily. However for people like some of my family members, who shall remain nameless, who can't figure out how to get an account going on facebook, I would recommend sticking with the Iphone, which is a bit more idiotproof. That is if it wasn't for the crappy service that AT&T delivers. And that is the number one reason to get this over the iPhone. The phone part of the phone actually works.