I have had my new Verizon Motorola Droid phone since December 30—just over a week. I admit that I’ve barely scratched the surface of what the phone can do, but I wanted to give my initial thoughts on the phone.
I will give the bad news first. The phone is rather like a Volvo. It’s boxy and square and isn’t the most comfortable thing I’ve ever held. I bought a protective cover for it that actually has sharp edges on it, which is even worse, but that isn’t the phone’s fault.
The phone slides to reveal a keyboard, but it’s not easy to get it to slide out, especially without accidentally hitting something on the touch screen. Fortunately, the on-screen keyboard is pretty easy to use. I have had very few instances of hitting the wrong letter. Also, the accelerometer knows when you tip the phone on its side, so it switches the view—then the keyboard is bigger. The physical keyboard part of the phone is wider than the screen part, creating a strange lip in the shape of the phone that I think is unattractive.
I’ve also got to say this is the shortest power cable I’ve ever seen. The phone uses microUSB—big thumbs up for that, Motorola!—and the other end of the provided USB cable goes into a little adapter that plugs into an outlet. The provided cable, however, is only about 3 feet long. At least it’s a standard cable so I should be able to get a longer one no problem. The USB plug in the phone is a little hard to use. It may just be my phone but it seems like I have to jockey the cable around a lot to get it to go into the slot.
Ok, enough with the negative. I really like this phone! It’s got an amazing screen—large and high resolution—and I am overwhelmed at the list of features. The home screen is 3 screens wide, accessible by just sliding a finger over the touchscreen. I made a custom wallpaper that I easily put on the phone’s included 16GB microSD card. My phone’s front page currently shows me an agenda of the next few days’ appointments, the current weather, and links to the camera, a flashlight app (it uses the camera’s LED flash), and a folder with my most frequently called contacts in it.
The GPS using Google Maps is awesome. The web browser is crystal clear and has a double-tap to zoom feature that makes it easy to read. The camera takes decent pictures even in low light (it has a flash) and you can organize pictures into folders.
A few tips for new Droid users:
To add apps to the home screen, open the applications view, then touch and hold the app you want to move. It will pop out and you can drag it where you want to on the screen. To move it to one of the side screens, just drag it over to the edge and hold it until the window moves over. To rearrange things already on the home screen, touch and hold until it pops up and you can move it. A trash can will also appear at the bottom of the screen, if you are trying to remove the item.
To add widgets like the agenda app or weather, touch and hold on the screen and select “widget” from the popup menu. To make folders, touch and hold and choose “folder” then “new folder.” To rename a folder, click on it to open, then touch and hold the bar at the top of the folder and you will get a popup where you can enter a new name.
A great place to ask questions about your Droid phone is on the forums at www.droidforums.net. The people are friendly and generally you get questions answered in a couple of hours. There is also a lot of great information already there.
Some apps that I like:
Barcode Scanner – you can use this to scan regular barcodes or the neat GR codes. You can use this to go to urls or to look up products. For example, over on the left in the menu bar, there is a code that will bring up a link to this site!
ShopSavvy – another barcode scanner, this one uses your GPS location to tell you where you can get products you scan and how much they cost at various places.
Swype – this is a neat keyboard replacement. When you install it, you have to go into Settings > Language and Keyboard and un-select the Android keyboard and choose Swype. It isn’t an application that you run like other apps. To download it, go to this link and sign up for the beta, then open the email they send you from your Droid and follow the directions.
Handcent – a replacement SMS app. Puts your text message conversations into right-and-left talk bubbles and has a lot of configuration options.
Google Sky – hold your phone up and point it at the sky and see a map of the stars, with labels and everything. It’s amazing.
I’ll write another review after I’ve done more with the phone, but for now I am giving it a solid A for functionality but a B- for physical design.
— 02:31:07 PM
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