HTC Evo vs. Motorola Droid 2- My Big Switch

Hey everyone. I assume that just about anyone in here that as any interest already knows that I have already made the switch from Sprint to Verizon. I won't get into the details of why I switch, except to say I was done being envious of the better network, and was sick of Sprint failing to fix their own for months. I thought I would share my experience of switching from the worlds first non-iphone Super phone, the HTC Evo 4G to the Motorola Droid 2.

My first thought was, wow, this thing feels solid, and it really is. Motorola gets a big plus for building a rock of a phone, it just feels to put together. Not to say that the HTC feels like it will fall apart, but this just feels better. I'm not sure what it is. Hopefully the slider mechanism holds up over time.

Obviously, the biggest difference between the two is the screen size. The Evo is 4.3 inches, and the Moto is 3.7 inches. It doesn't sound like a big difference, but switching between the two is shocking now. The evo almost feels too big now. I like the size of the Moto over the evo, simply because it is more manageable int he hand, and makes it easier to do things that require the use of the entire screen (like fruit ninja). This was a welcomed downgrade for me.

What isn't a welcomed downgrade is the lack of HTC's awesome Sense UI on the Droid 2. Sense just makes android seem so much more polished than it really is. The Droid 2 has a little touch of moto blur in it, but that is not nearly the same. That simply adds in a few custom widgets, as far as I know. It's things like when I want to add an app shortcut to one of the home screens, selecting App's leads to a 10 second lag before the app selection menu comes up; that never happened on sense. In the grand scheme of things, not a big deal. However, sense was nice to have.

The biggest difference between the two phones is obviously, the hardware keyboard on the Droid 2. This was the sole factor in deciding to take the Droid 2 over the Droid X, which is much more of an Evo like phone. I hate software keyboards, so very much. They are impossible to type on while walking, I always find myself going back to correct a word that was put in wrong, and I just wasn't fast on them. While the Droid 2's keyboard isn't the best in the world, it is still a million times better than typing on a screen. There is almost no space between the keys, and very little movement in the keys themselves, but I have no problems typing on them. Love the keyboard.

Another big difference between the Evo and the Droid 2 is the camera. The Evo has an 8MP cam and takes 720p HD video, where as the Droid 2 has a rather 5MP camera and only takes 480p SD video. It seems like the only thing that did not improve from the Droid 1 to 2 is the camera, it is simply terrible. The auto-focus is slow and noisy, pictures are grainy, widescreen mode defaults to 3.2MP and not 5, and pictures in low-light are dark and without color. Bad on Motorola for not putting the Droid X camera in the Droid 2.

Everything else about the 2 phones is very similar. They both run android 2.2 (take that, Samsung), they both run on 1Ghz processors, so performance is very similar. It may be due to the smaller screen, but the Droid 2 gets much better battery life than the Evo, so that is a plus.

In the end, for me, it was all about getting a Hardware keyboard, and that is what I got. I didn't want to leave Sprint, but I like having data at faster rates than 8kbps. It's what I pay for ($10 premium data charge can suck it). 4G was nice on the Evo, when you could find it, and as long as you didn't move. I often got data speeds of over 10Mbps. However, it was rather useless, as hand offs were hard and coverage was weak.

Hello Moto.

 

It really wasn't the 1900 coverage that bothered me so much. I put up with that for 10 years, and just when I had to, roamed on Verizon. More recently, I have been having trouble with data speeds dropping down to nearly nothing. This is a combination of Sprint not adding backhaul to their sites for years, and a recent resurgence of subscribers, fueled by the Evo. I really think they did not see this coming, and they are now paying for it by losing a long time customer.

The phone is great! They got rid of that nav-pad from the Droid 1, as I never heard one good thing about it. The directional buttons are a much better choice. I really do wish that the D2 had a better camera, that is a huge downfall.

 

I tried swype, and I never really got the hang of it. It just still isn't nearly as fast as good ole buttons for me.
I will have to try one of these camera apps, the stock one is just terrible.
I don't think it is possible to put sense on a non-HTC phone, as they are really tailored to the phones.

For the most part, the switch to vzw has worked out. Data speeds are great most of the time, however, just like with Sprint, I experience major slowdowns during the day. I can't win.

 

What happened today is why I switched to Verizon. Yesterday, I had called Verizon tech support to see what they had to say about the very slow data at certain times of the day. The call took an hour, as the "tech" had to go through the usual troubleshooting steps. Finally, she opened up a network ticket.
26 hours later, Verizon calls me back, saying that the real techs took a look at the local site, and decided that within the month they would be adding additional EVDO channels to the site. Now, I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes, but any increase is welcome.

Sprint, this finalizes your failure. Verizon's response and projected resolution of 1 month beats your lack of response and 6+ month time frame.