Droid Initial Review

[paulmac]

I have had the Droid now for a little less than 24 hours, and thought I would give my impressions on this new phone for Verizon and Motorola.

Build Quality - I have not had a Moto phone since I owned the razr. This is built the same way. It is black rubberized metal parts. It has some heft to it as a result, but feels solid and sturdy in your hands. The slide out keyboard is not spring loaded, but slides very easily and very smooth. More on the keyboard later.

Screen - Very big, and very nice. Touch works well, good tactile feed back when you push any of the 4 buttons near the bottom of the screen. Flick scroll works well. Has a touch screen keyboard available when needed in both portrait and landscape mode. I would suggest using it in landscape mode, buttons are spaced better and easier to type that way.

GPS - fast. Not sure what else I can say about this. Finds your location very quickly. I have not tried navigating with it yet. But a co-worker did and liked it. After he bought his droid he set it to navigate him back to the office approx 10-12 miles. He said it worked very well, and he got a phone call during the navigation, it minimized the navigation then brought it back up when the call was done. He was so impressed he is thinking of getting the car mount for it.

Camera - not the droids strongest point. For a 5mp camera I would expect more out of the pictures I took. They were not bad, just not as crisp or clear as I would have expected. But I don't buy a phone for the camera, so as long as it works I am happy.

E-mail - I was impressed with this. I only have the $30.00 plan and had no problem getting it to connect to our exchange server and synch up contacts, calander, and get my work e-mails. Verizon will try to tell you that you need the $45.00 plan to make this work, not sure you do. I also set up my private e-mail on the device with little effort. One thing to point out is the droid creates one common mail box for all your e-mail. But you can create shortcuts and create a seperate shortcut for each mailbox, which works well.

One note, you do have to have a G-mail account to initially sign in on the phone. You do this while at the verizon store. So if you don't have a G-mail account do yourself a favor and create one before buying the droid. Saves you time at the store. Otherwise they will have to have you create one there.

Web Browser - fast, no really fast. Pages load quickly albiet a litte hard to read on the screen. But simple double tap on the screen magnifies it so you can read it easily.

Slide out Keyboard - OK a lot of the pre-release reviews gave this somewhat poor marks. But I have to say I like it, and found it very easy to type on. Which pleasantly surprised me. Has a good touch and click when you are typing making it very easy to type with. I will admit it takes a little getting used to, but one you do it works well.

Battery life - Not sure yet, been less than 24 hours. But I have hardly put the thing down, and it still has a lot of battery left. So I think that will be good also.

Phone Calls - sound is good, and had no problems making or receiving calls.

Android OS - works well. No lock ups, or re-boots. Market place seems to have a lot of apps you can add to this phone.

Overall I would give this device a 9 out of 10 rating. It is solidly built and seems to work well. Only thing a little disappointing is the camera, but like I said I don't buy a phone for its camera. In fact if it did not have a camera that would be fine also. Is it an iphone killer probably not. But I can tell you having been a blackberry user\fan for years I am very impressed with this phone. And will probably be selling my storm1 on e-bay shortly.

[Jodi]

I'll 2nd everything paulmac is saying here. I've had the Droid for a week now. LOVE IT! I've had to reboot one time yesterday, but otherwise the phone is stellar. The battery life is so-so, but I keep it charged in the car or at home much of the time, so you take what you can get. Phone calls are really clear and the GPS Navigation is wonderful! Instant $10/mo savings for me.

I left the BB Pearl for the Droid with the idea if in a couple of weeks, if I hated the Droid I'd return it and get the Storm 2. So far, nothing doing. I love the customization of the phone and all the shortcuts I've learned over the last week to make it "mine" and easy to navigate has been wonderful.

[paulmac]

One thing I am very impressed with is the ability to multitask. For example if you choose to download an application from the market place it will let you know your application will be downloaded. You can continue to do other things while the app downloads and installs. You are just notified when the app has finished it's install. One more cool thing a friend of mine had to have his droid replaced. Once he entered in his g-mail account and password, all his contacts, settings, wallpaper everything was put back to the way it was. Thats kind of cool. But I will agree the battery is not as strong as I would like. I have gone over 24 hours on a charge, but thats about it. I do like the charging cradle though. Like the way the display changes when it is in there, and you can turn your droid into a digital picture frame once in the cradle so thats a great feature. Overall I am pleased and looking to sell my unlocked storm on E-bay right now.