Motorola Droid

[Vdou]

well someone said that it shuts off the navigation if you get a call. so i was trying to find out exactly what it did. i dont see why there cant be an option to keep it up while talking though.

It didn't shut the nav off. Once I completed the call it returned to the navigation screen.

[Solesk]

i guess that's not horrible. but i would still think it would be preferable to keep the nav on the screen while talking. i mean what do you really need to see while talking. where as you might have a turn coming up.

do you have the car holder? and if so would you mind testing that when you get time? if the car holder somehow forced it to stay up, that would be acceptable.

edit: my point is that i already have a stand alone unit. if the phone cant do better than what i already have it takes away the incentive to upgrade. having it built in is great and all. but it needs to be just as good as a stand alone device. at least for those of us that already have them. maybe not for someone without a stand alone.

[Vdou]

I don't have the car dock, and I don't think I'll be getting it. Not worth $30 imo.

As for stand alone units, I have a Magellan that I don't think I'll be using any longer.

[Solesk]

thread necro. not trying to restart any of the arguments in the thread. but i'm probably a day or two from getting a droid now and i'm wondering what people that did get one think now after a month or so of having one. or even the droid aries for that matter. although i prefer the moto one.

i went and tried it out in the store and didnt think the keyboard was as bad as some of the reviews make it out to be. sure, i'll concede it's not the best. but you can still feel key presses, and i could still type without mistakes. so it's functional enough for me. of course i have fairly small hands.

i'm just waiting on a callback from att about whether or not they are going to waive my early termination fee. i have about $95 left on it, but i have a long documented history of bad service and i've tried all their fixes with no resolution. but i'm ready to switch whether they waive it or not. i'm just waiting the extra day to try and save $100. so far this week though i've dropped 2 out of 3 calls, spent most of the week in edge (despite 3g on, and capable of getting full bars), and picked up the phone once to make a call to find no reception. i'm just past the breaking point on this icrap.

[Gentex]

thread necro. not trying to restart any of the arguments in the thread. but i'm probably a day or two from getting a droid now and i'm wondering what people that did get one think now after a month or so of having one. or even the droid aries for that matter. although i prefer the moto one.

i went and tried it out in the store and didnt think the keyboard was as bad as some of the reviews make it out to be. sure, i'll concede it's not the best. but you can still feel key presses, and i could still type without mistakes. so it's functional enough for me. of course i have fairly small hands.

i'm just waiting on a callback from att about whether or not they are going to waive my early termination fee. i have about $95 left on it, but i have a long documented history of bad service and i've tried all their fixes with no resolution. but i'm ready to switch whether they waive it or not. i'm just waiting the extra day to try and save $100. so far this week though i've dropped 2 out of 3 calls, spent most of the week in edge (despite 3g on, and capable of getting full bars), and picked up the phone once to make a call to find no reception. i'm just past the breaking point on this icrap.

I got one launch weekend. I had a little buyer's remorse that day, but it disappeared pretty quickly. FWIW, it's my first smartphone and an upgrade from a crappy LG chocolate that spontaneously shut off all the time. After having it a month or so, I am still very pleased with the purchase.

The Good:

• integration of gmail/contacts/facebook friends
• ease of use for messaging/emailing
• the Google Navigation/maps integration is awesome
• I like the look a lot more than I expected to
• call quality is very good, easily better than my old phone
• the quality of the screen -- high pixel count and great colors
• build quality -- feels very solid, no hardware issues at all

The Bad:

• Nevermind. If you get the right format, you can watch all the video you like. doesn't play video other than youtube clips and video captured from the built in camera (.3gp)
  
• no flash integration (so most web videos don't work)
• camera is mediocre at best. 5 mega pixels, but often painfully slow shutterspeed

Other:

• battery life -- just using the phone and sitting in standby I get a couple days use out of it. But a lot of browsing and running aps sucks the battery and I'm lucky to get a full day. It appears to be standard for smart phones, but coming from a small handset that would sit on standby for a week, it takes some getting used to.
• The physical keyboard is growing on me.

[Inuy]

# doesn't play video other than youtube clips.
# no flash integration (so most web videos don't work)

This really surprises me.

I don't see why they think this will compete with the iPhone on any major level. The integration stuff is pretty par for the course lately, as is e-mail/texting and naviation.

I'd like to be on Verizon which probably helps the call quality. But shit it doesn't do anything special and actually has less features than the iPhone.

[Solesk]

I'd like to be on Verizon which probably helps the call quality. But shit it doesn't do anything special and actually has less features than the iPhone.

depends on what you consider less features, and how you plan to use it. i also did not know about the no video thing. and find it disappointing as well. but in the year and a half i've had an iphone, i've never actually watched any video on it. partly because i have no need to, and partly because the battery life just isnt long enough. not for movies anyway. i used my iphone on and off for web surfing just the other week, not straight all day, and it still didnt make it past 7pm before it died completely on me.

that was from maybe half an hour total of surfing the web and check score updates with a quick turn on / turn off fairly regularly whenever a new update notification came in. the iphone also has no flash support. so that's pretty much an even trade.

on the other hand the droid has free turn by turn directions. you can leave aim apps running in the background, use google voice, and get better call quality.

thanks for your experiances gentex.

[Vdou]

I haven't tried video yet, but there are several video players on the market and I'd be very very surprised if it didn't play the standard video codecs. If not, that is why they have a mobile phone filetype.

As for lack of flash, there isn't a single phone on the market (except for the new Nokia) than handles flash natively.

Overall I'm still very very happy with the phone, and with new apps coming on the market all the time I'm sure it will only get better.

[Gentex]

Need to clarify the video comment. It's probably more negative than it should be.

The phone takes videos with the built in camera, and will play them. With a little looking, I see the file type on those video files is .3gp, which you can email and playback on a pc without trouble. However, playing back videos you may already have is a different story. I emailed MP4 and AVI files to the phone and was unable to get playback. I haven't looked for 3rd party players that support the common file types though.

So, right now, my phone will play youtube videos and natively captured videos. It will not play online flash videos or the two common video files I had readily available to test.

All that said, I still am very happy with the phone. Those are relatively minor nits to pick about the phone, which may be fixable through 3rd party players and/or updates to the existing Android software.

[Vdou]

Need to clarify the video comment. It's probably more negative than it should be.

The phone takes videos with the built in camera, and will play them. With a little looking, I see the file type on those video files is .3gp, which you can email and playback on a pc without trouble. However, playing back videos you may already have is a different story. I emailed MP4 and AVI files to the phone and was unable to get playback. I haven't looked for 3rd party players that support the common file types though.

So, right now, my phone will play youtube videos and natively captured videos. It will not play online flash videos or the two common video files I had readily available to test.

All that said, I still am very happy with the phone. Those are relatively minor nits to pick about the phone, which may be fixable through 3rd party players and/or updates to the existing Android software.

3gp is the mobile video filetype standard I mentioned in my previous post. There are LOTS of free programs that will convert video files to this format for you. It is no different than having to convert a video for ipod.

[Gentex]

Okay, Okay! I guess the only real downside is that the built in camera isn't great (and I have limited knowledge of mobile video formats). I knew there was a reason I liked this phone.

[Vdou]

Okay, Okay! I guess the only real downside is that the built in camera isn't great (and I have limited knowledge of mobile video formats). I knew there was a reason I liked this phone.

The camera isn't great, but they have identified that there is a bug in the camera application http://blogs.consumerreports.org/ele...kas-video.html

[aazdazen]

You will also want to check the resolution on the camera. The default on most phones is vga and you need to change it to the higher resolution.

[Solesk]

just got a callback from att, they have indeed waived my eta. so i'll be switching either today or tomorrow.

edit: looks like amazon is still offering it for $150. anyway to make the verizon store match that price? i know usually they only match stores, not online sites. but it is amazon we're talking about. not exactly an unknown retailer.

[Delaregar]

I think I read flash will be available for the android platform sometime in early 2010.

[Solesk]

oh also. i'm looking at their internet plans. for 29.99 a month i can get unlimited surfing, and up to 10 pop3 accounts. but for 44.99 i get free over the air synchronization? i dont understand what exactly i'd be paying an extra $15 for.

are they saying i cant connect to an exchange server for instant email notificaitons unless i pay $15 extra a month? or do they have some exchange server of their own that i'm paying to access? cant i just setup everything through google without their extra fee? i'm not really understanding what that price hike is doing.

edit: looks like the language just says unlimited email and web browsing, not data. so do they try to charge you extra for aim connecting, or google voice? or is it just a way to prevent tethering and downloading large quantities of data?

[aazdazen]

oh also. i'm looking at their internet plans. for 29.99 a month i can get unlimited surfing, and up to 10 pop3 accounts. but for 44.99 i get free over the air synchronization? i dont understand what exactly i'd be paying an extra $15 for.

are they saying i cant connect to an exchange server for instant email notificaitons unless i pay $15 extra a month? or do they have some exchange server of their own that i'm paying to access? cant i just setup everything through google without their extra fee? i'm not really understanding what that price hike is doing.

edit: looks like the language just says unlimited email and web browsing, not data. so do they try to charge you extra for aim connecting, or google voice? or is it just a way to prevent tethering and downloading large quantities of data?

The $45 option is for corporate email usually through some type of server. If you are just using web based email or the one provided from your isp you should be ok with the $30 option.
VZW will provide a server for email but it is a business option and costs a nice chunk of change.
Tethering is a seperate charge, $30 or $15 a month depending on which internet plan you have. Either way it comes to $60/month. If you do get tether know that you will have a 5GB limit. You have unlimited data on the phone just not as a tether.
You can connect to aim but you will get charged a text message for every message sent over aim.
I'm not sure what google voice is so not sure if that will be covered by the data plan.

[Solesk]

The $45 option is for corporate email usually through some type of server. If you are just using web based email or the one provided from your isp you should be ok with the $30 option.
VZW will provide a server for email but it is a business option and costs a nice chunk of change.
Tethering is a seperate charge, $30 or $15 a month depending on which internet plan you have. Either way it comes to $60/month. If you do get tether know that you will have a 5GB limit. You have unlimited data on the phone just not as a tether.
You can connect to aim but you will get charged a text message for every message sent over aim.
I'm not sure what google voice is so not sure if that will be covered by the data plan.

i went and signed up. turns out you're right. all i needed was the $30 data plan. my total monthly bill is $75, over a $40 drop from the iphone, per month. i'm extatic with that.

are you sure about aim messaging counting as a text message though? i know this was true on older phones, but i thought smart phones counted it as data messaging. especially since the app is not part of the standard installed software.

[aazdazen]

The only free messaging I knew of when I worked for VZW was pin messaging on a Blackberry. My recommendation would be to sign up for the myaccount thing at VZW.com(it's free). Send a couple messages and then do not send any for a couple days and check online to see what you are charged for txt messages.

If you do go the whole month messaging and find out on the bill that you got charged as text messages you will want to call national customer service and tell them you told sales rep you were going to use the phone this way and he did not tell you you need a txt plan. They will probably waive the txt fees as long as you are willing to add a txt plan.

Also did the sales rep see if where you work gets a discount? Many companies have deals with VZW for their employees to get discounts, they range from 8% to 25%. Home Depot gets the best discount at 25%. Most state or federal employees are around 15%, some are higher and some lower. Military gets a discount also. Some companies you also get a discount on equipment and waived activation fees.

[Zaes]

The battery life on this phone is diarrhea. It also stops charging once it's full so when I plug it in while I sleep like I normally do for my old phones, it probably finishes charging within 4 hours of me sleeping and then starts wasting the battery so when I wake up I'm already at 75% again.

I'm not a total fan, because the thing that sucks is the battery is being depleted entirely from the backlight and I have brightness and sleep time set to the lowest stuff.