Droid Review
Background:
I am writing this from the perspective of a long time PDA and smartphone user. I owned one of the first model
Palm Pilots. I went through several upgrades to a
Palm IIIc just when we started to see
Palm converged devices, but I was not willing to give up the good color screen until the
Kyocera 7135 came out (The Samsung i500 had too poor a screen). After a couple of years with the Kyo, I switched to Windows Mobile with an i700, and have since had the XV6700, i760, Motorola Q9M, XV6900, and Touch Pro. I have also tried several Blackberries and hated them all (topic for another discussion). I have not used an
iPhone, and for fairness, I will mostly avoid comparisons even though Verizon invited them with their iDon’t, Droid Does campaign. I will mention a few areas that I think the
iPhone does exceed the Droid, but not many.
I received a Motorola Droid on November 3rd from Verizon Marketing, and have been playing with it constantly since then. Hopefully this review will be helpful for those thinking of buying one when it officially goes on sale tomorrow.
Overall, I am very very pleased. I will point out a couple of things that I miss from Windows Mobile. None are particularly serious, and I suspect that all will be fixed either in updates to the Android OS or by developers with updates in the marketplace.
Device Packaging:
Smallest box with the least extraneous material I have seen from VZW. Nice job on being environmentally friendly. Only thing lacking is a real manual, either in software or in the box. There is a getting started card, and the full manual from Motorola is available on line if you search for it. I suspect it will also be on the VZW support page post release.
Device Design:
I went to Japan for vacation two years ago, and every single phone had very hard, square edges. It was clearly the preferred style at the time. The Droid would fit right in there. It is a very thin (amazingly so for a device with a slide-out keyboard) square edged device. When I showed it to my wife, she said “This is their answer to the
iPhone? It has no style”. I think it does have style, but it is very masculine. My understanding is that is Verizon’s target market. Specifically males aged 15-35.
The build quality is excellent. This is a return to the good old Motorola that brought us the Razr and the Startac. It is all metal and built like a tank. The slider opens and closes with a satisfying click and everything about it shouts quality. Nice to see you back Motorola!
Keyboard:
Speaking of the keyboard. A lot of the early reviews were skeptical. I think some early mockups didn’t have the final build quality. Although I liked the slightly rounded, slightly larger keys on the
HTC Touch Pro, these are fine, and have good tactile feedback. I make far less typos then I did on my old i760.
Processor:
OMG!!! This thing ROCKS! It is lightning fast to open apps, change orientation, etc. I don’t know how they squeezed so much performance out of this
Processor. I can’t imagine how fast the “Passion” is going to be on a 1Ghz
Processor when this is so quick at half that speed.
Bootup is also really fast. This thing boot faster than most dumb phones. Way Way faster than Windows Mobile, and Way Way Way Way Way faster than any Blackberry I have used (maybe 10 times faster than the Blackberry Storm).
Battery Life:
One of the press releases said that it would get 6+ hours of real use (web browsing, navigating, email, etc….) and 240 hours of standby. As with all battery life claims, I find this a bit hard to believe, but it is certainly holding up better than my TouchPro.
I have been using it a LOT, and was out of the house all day yesterday, and it made it all day with still showing 20% at the end of the day. My Touch Pro would have been on its third battery of the day with this same usage.
Certainly using WiFi will use up battery faster than leaving it off, although there is a really cool application (Locale, changes various settings based on where you are, as well as more traditional things like time of day or appointments) that works best with Wifi on, so it may be worth picking up a second battery and expecting to change it or have the power cord available.
Pre-loaded Applications:
It comes with all the basics for a PDA, Email (standard and business, more on this later), Calendar (personal and business, again, more later), SMS, MMS, Google Maps and the new Google Navigation, Browser, Alarm Clock, Music Player, Video Player (although it is sort of hidden, you need to open video from the Gallery – picture viewer app, and it will start playing the video), A Facebook widget and some other useful widgets. Tons more are available on the Android Marketplace, available from the device. Many many apps are free or less than a dollar. Only a few are more than a couple of dollars.
The one real gap is it does not have built in document (even text) and spreadsheet editors. You can download Documents to Go for MS Office compatibility. The free version is read only, and this is one of the few fairly expensive apps to buy.
You can of course use Google Docs from the web browser, and there are free text editors, notepads, voice notes apps, etc on the marketplace.
I was really concerned coming from my background that I would have a hard time using apps without a stylus. Virtually all of the apps are designed to be used by hand. The only thing I have had any issue with at all was clicking some links in the browser when there are many links close together, but you can use the D-pad on the keyboard to navigate to links if you have the same issue. I am particularly impressed with the music player. It is very finger friendly and clearly was designed so that it could be used while driving without providing a huge distraction.
Market:
The marketplace is awesome. 10K apps and growing. Note: It includes comments and the ability to comment, and some of them are NSFW or not appropriate for children. Also, since Google does not exert nearly the level of control on the market as Apple does on the app store, some of the apps are not appropriate for children. Apps are divided between applications, games, and Verizon. Verizon includes Visual Voicemail, My Account (which is really just a web link) and several recommended apps which also appear in the regular store. The search engine seems pretty good.
You can review the available apps at
AndroLib, Find all applications and games available in the Android Market for your Android Phone, HTC Dream, HTC Magic etc... including the comments. The Verizon ones don’t appear there, and some that are specific to other networks but don’t yet work on Verizon appear there but won’t appear on your phone until they support Verizon. The one that disappoints me is Mobile Defense, an award winning remote security application that currently only works on AT&T and T-Mobile, but is expected to have a Verizon compatible version out shortly.
One of the first apps you should download is Barcode Scanner. It can scan the 2D barcodes that appear on Androlib and in many online review and take you right to the app in the marketplace. It also scans other bar code types and will do a search on Google Shopping, but there are at least two other apps that are better for that (I liked Shopsavvy).
I won’t go into detail on other apps in this review, but for pure “wow” factor, download Google Sky Map.
Screen:
Just amazing. Big, high resolution, sensitive capacitive screen. I can’t say enough about how beautiful this display is.
Browser:
The build in browser is fantastic. Fast, real web browsing experience. Double tap to zoom, plus a zoom button appears when you touch the lower right. Only three complaints.
1) There does not seem to be a way to go back to your home screen other than making a bookmark of it.
2) Visual Bookmarks. They are cool, but if you have lots and lots of bookmarks, I think they will get old fast. I would prefer text.
3) No bookmark synchronization. I would have thought it would at least synchronize with Chrome browser, or Google bookmark sync from the google toolbar, but if it can, I haven’t found it, and I haven’t found any apps in the marketplace either. There are instructions and apps for importing bookmarks, but that is one way. I have sort of solved this however. I use Xmarks for synching multiple machines with Firefox and IE. It creates a web page you can log into and see all your bookmarks, so I just bookmarked that web page, and can now use all my desktop bookmarks. Not perfect, but it will do for now.
Music Transfer:
There are no fancy applications like iTunes or even Windows Media for copying music. You just plug the phone in, tell it to mount the SD card for file transfer, and your computer will see it as a drive. You can drag your music files anywhere on the card. I put them in Music, but I was using the card from my TouchPro rather than the one that came with the Droid (16 gig by the way. Very generous of them) and it had music in \My Music and it found all of it in both locations.
I believe you need to reboot after copying files for the music player to catalog changes, but it reboots really fast, so no big deal.
Well, that was fast. Motorola has posted a media syncing application. Motorola Media Link - Motorola USA
Email Integration:
When you start the Droid for the first time, it will ask if you have a Gmail account, and if you don’t, it will offer to set one up. As soon as you enter your Gmail credentials, it will instantly sync your Gmail inbox, and you can tell it if you want other folders visible as well. Google pushes new email to you instantly. As fast or faster than Exchange or Blackberry push. It can accept multiple Gmail accounts.
It can also accept POP and IMAP accounts from different providers. It can check them as often as every 10 minutes. If it supports IMAP Idle push, it is not documented, and I haven’t tested since my email domain is hosted as a Google app, so I get google push as if the address was gmail.com.
If you have a corporate Exchange account, and your IT department has enabled Exchange Active Sync OTA, you can also get Exchange push. This is set up in a separate mailbox so you can keep your personal and business mail separate, and so if your Exchange administrator sends a remote wipe command, it only wipes your corporate mail. Organizations with high security requirements probably will not allow the Android to connect to their exchange servers however since it does not allow the full level of security policy control that Windows Mobile does. My employer doesn’t even support Windows Mobile, just Blackberry
My one real complaint about email is that there are not commands to mark all as read, delete all, or even select and delete an email without reading it. Using Gmail, I don’t get much spam, but I do get a lot of routine notifications which I sometimes don’t really want to bother reading and just delete right away. I am sure someone will write an app, just like they needed to write one to enhance the Windows Mobile email program with those commands.
Calendar and Contacts Synchronization:
If you use Google Calendar, and/or keep your contacts in Google mail (either Gmail or google apps), you are in luck because they will sync automatically. It will also pull contact info for all your Facebook friends if you give it your facebook credentials, including their current picture for the caller ID.
Again, if your company allows it, you can also sync business calendar and contacts through Exchange Active Sync OTA.
For those who are not already Google users, it is a bit more complex. A lot of people have asked about directly syncing with Outlook on the desktop. Google offers Calendar Sync, and it works fine. You install it on your desktop, and tell it how often to sync calendars. It will sync to your Google calendar, which then instantly updates your Droid. Changes on the Droid instantly update the Google calendar, and are updated in Outlook on the next sync interval. Note: if you use Microsoft Livemeeting, Cisco Meeting Place, and possibly some other appointment plugins, Google Calendar Sync skips those appointments. Google has known about this for a year and not fixed it, so I am not sure when to expect a resolution.
Contacts are trickier. There do not appear to be any free solutions for synchronization, although there are some pay ones (that also resolve the livemeeting issue of Google calendar sync).
You can do a one way import by exporting your contacts from Outlook to a CSV file and them importing it into your Gmail account, and it will instantly sync to your Droid, but change made on the Droid will only sync back to Google and not all the way back to Outlook. One oddity here. Imported addresses will put the whole address in the Address 1 field and not fill in the city, state, and zip. This can cause issues with the Navigation App trying to find an address from a contact.
Screen Locking:
The screen will automatically lock when manually powered down or when it times out and suspends. Default is a simple slide to unlock, which also has a slide to mute function. All other buttons and screen taps are blocked when locked. You can alternately activate a pattern unlocker where you need to touch the screen in a particular pattern to unlock it for security. If you prefer higher security, there are apps in the marketplace for locking.
The Alarm application unlocks the screen to allow cancellation or snooze of the alarm, but unfortunately, the entire screen unlocks, not just those buttons.
An incoming call will unlock, but just the slide to answer/slide to ignore functions.
Voice Calls:
This is the best voice quality I have had on a phone since my
Kyocera 7135 and my wife’s Motorola Razr. Also, extremely good signal strength in areas where my other phones have had poor signal. I say again, welcome back Motorola. They always used to be absolutely the best radio and sound, and clearly they are back.
Ringtones/Pics/Notifications/Alarms:
This doesn’t appear to be documented, but someone found and posted.
Make a directory on your SD card called Music.
Make three subdirectories:
\Ringtones
\notifications
\alarms
Place files in these folders. Can be most audio formats including OGG, WAV, MP3. Not WMA and I am not sure about AAC, AU, VOX and some others, although I expect being Linux based it would recognize any of those.
If you do this through USB with the card in the device, you will need to unmount the card (can be done from settings) and then reboot before it will see the files as available for these functions. This is one area where Android shows its Linux roots and is clearly not for beginners.
Google Nav:
Excellent for a free voice guided navigation application. I think the big hit to Garmin and Tomtom stock was perhaps a little premature. Yes, this is free, but it is not as mature an application as the “pros”.
It needs an ability to save favorites other than just contacts.
It needs a “night mode” display
It needs the ability to tell it you need a detour (although if you just go off route, it will instantly recalculate, so maybe it doesn’t need that too badly).
I have some concerns with the map data. Google recently ended their contracts with Navteq and TeleAtlas for map data, probably due to the restrictive licensing those companies impose and their plans to offer this free app. However, that means that the map data is based on the free US Census Tiger database, and updates from Google users and the Street View project. I have found a number of errors already that don’t exist in the more mature products. However, since this is a “cloud” application, I am sure Google is collecting data automatically whenever someone goes off their planned route and is using this to update the data to be more accurate over time.
The routing algorithm and traffic avoidance seems very good. Due to a computer glitch, my county traffic lights lost their rush hour synchronization for the past two days, and these were days that I had to drive in rush hour (rare for me as I work from home). Google did a great job of finding unusual routes I would not have thought of that were much lower traffic than the main routes.
Voice Search:
Another awesome thing. There are three voice search apps, but they are kind of integrated and each will really do any of the functions. There is a google search widget where you can type or speak your search terms and it will search google. However, if you prefix it with Navigate To: it will jump to the navigation app if it gets an obvious return. Otherwise, it will being up google in the browser, but there will be “get directions” buttons that will transition you to the navigation application. You can also say Call: and it will search your contacts list.
The Voice Dial app, does the same things, but also opens applications if you say “open:” followed by an app name.
I have not gotten it to play music, although I think it is supposed to.
The “Car Home” application also has a voice search button that seems to try to find addresses prior to other searches, but will default again to google.com if it can’t fine one.
Bluetooth:
Paired easily with my headsets, and answers calls fine. However, I am disappointed that the call button on the headsets do not start the voice search or voice dial app. Pressing and holding, or double tapping depending on the headset will redial the last number, but I am so used to Voice Command on my WinMo devices that I am going to miss that feature. I hope either Google fixes it in Android or someone writes an alternate application.
Login
Panel
