[REVIEW] Motorola Droid Smartphone Review and What You Need to Know

[PHE-NOM]

DROID is Motorola's new handset, powered by Google software, on Verizon's network. It was released to the public on Nov. 6, and it took me a few days to track mine down. I have had it for four days now, and can give it a solid review. So far it's a nice device, and everything seems to be pretty stable. Cutting to the chase:

Pros:

• Apps, apps, apps. There's one, two, or sixteen for everything. A few are good and critical to have, see the Apps section below.
• User Interface is great. I have never used an iPhone, and probably never will, but my sense is that it is just as simple and elegant as the UI on the Droid. The design is intuitive and was fairly easy to figure out without reading the manual, in just a few minutes.
• Screen is bright, crystal clear.
• Haven't made many calls or received them, but the quality seemed good for those I did.
• Haptic Feedback - the little vibration it gives you as feedback when pressing a key, etc. It's really great.
• Simultaneous apps - run up to 6 apps at the same time. This beats the iPhone's purported *ONE*.
• Accelerometer, tilt gauges are very cool. they allow for lots of possibilities. (WiiMote app anyone???)
• Seamless interface with both my GMail account (you'll need one) and my Exchange server for work. Exchange client has a bug regarding nested folders, but oh well.

Cons:

• Cell Network Reception. Not so great. On my little E815 (old phone with an actual antenna) I always get full signal here at the house. With the Droid, best is 3 out of 4, and a lot of time on 1 bar. Still have 3G connection with data though, and can make and receive calls. The reception diminishes when either WiFi or Bluetooth is on.
• Bluetooth and WiFi interfere with each other and with the phone reception. I guess that is to be expected, since they are almost the same frequency. It's going to be hard to design a compact device that uses two near frequency radios without interference. I just use one at a time.
• Keyboard isn't the greatest. It's OK. I have never used a device with such a small keyboard before, and am still getting used to it. It probably should have been designed with the keys convex instead of concave, to give my fat fingers a better idea of what they are pressing.
• Battery life isn't so great. But it does a lot of stuff, it just uses a lot of juice. I am always near a USB port, car lighter plug, or power outlet, so this shouldn't really be a big issue. I figure it goes for about 6H in NOT power-saver mode (e.g. with services running, and checking for new mail).
• It gets a little warm with use. On a cold day this is a plus.
• Let's end things. Apps don't really have a "close and go away" concept most of the time, unless the developer specifically wrote in code to do this.
• Camera sucks. This is widely acknowledged. It takes almost a full second to record the image after it seems like it should have taken the picture. Resolution, images, and flash are fine, but unless you have a cooperative subject or unchanging landscape, you probably aren't going to get the shot. I kept putting my thumb in the way holding the thing, and have a few shots with flash reflecting off thumb. Auto-focus... does it? haven't yet figured that one out.

Apps you will need

These are the free applications you will want to make sure to download and install from Market.

• TasKiller (or one of the other task management apps that all do the same thing)
• MountUSB - Mounts the SD card so it shows up in the removable storage drive bay on the computer
  • I will just say that Verizon - YOU SUCK BIGTIME for not including this feature out of the box.
• AndroZip and/or FileDroid - file managers to manage files on the device. AndroZip supports zip/tar/tgz etc.
• WhatIsMyIp is a good utility to show the IP on all the interfaces.
• AK Notepad or some other notepad for taking notes, writing text files
• SambaExplorer (maybe) - syncs files on a Windows Share to SD card over WiFi (instead of USB). Not really ready for prime time yet, but give it a few months.
• Power Manager (or one of the other ones) - Manage your power settings to preserve your battery

Widgets

Widgets are little applications that don't have a full interface, they are meant to be dropped on the desktop as an icon.

• One-Click (settings: brightness, GPS, vibrate mode, WiFi)
• Droid Bluetooth Toggle - toggles Bluetooth radio system on and off instead of hunting through menus for it)

Apps you will want.

Hi MSN or Hi Yahoo, etc. - for IM client
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn (if you use these)
Twidroid - Twitter client
Pandora - Streaming music radio
Weather Channel - local weather and warnings, updated automatically.

So all in all it's a nice device, had it only a few days now so am still getting my bearings with it. I will post more later

Customer Service Experience

Bad. Lets just start there. First, I got a kernel level error message on the computer when I plugged in the device to Windows Server 2008, as Windows attempted to mount the SD card in the device on the removable storage bay, just as the device is making it UN-available... Windows guys: this is a bug in your code... Verizon guys: leave the card mounted (DUH). So, I got on the phone with Motorola technical support, had them expedite escalation to tier 2, and 90 minutes later, the tech says "yeah, well sounds like it's broken, go take it to the store for replacement." <sigh>. OK, it's NEW... I get it. BUT, there is NO way this tech had even ever seen one of these devices, just the emulator.

So I went to the VZ store. Stood in line. Finally when I got to talk with a sales guy, he had to go to the back room to talk with the uber-nerds. After a while, he came back and says "uh yeah, it isn't supposed to do that [mount the SD card to copy files to/from it]." Apparently they disabled it ON PURPOSE. Dolts. For me, this is a total deal-breaker. So like I am going to have to turn off the device, take the back off, take the battery out, remove the card, put it in a SD adapter, and plug it in to my computer to transfer files??? I don't THINK so.

Anyway, I finally found an actual solution to this problem despite the cluelessness at Verizon and Motorola - see Apps You Need above. Motorola Technical Support: FAIL. Verizon giving me the features I need that are already there [again]: FAIL.

How to sync Music to Droid SD card with Windows Media Player

I use WMP to manage my music on my devices. It's not the greatest thing around, but it works. You can use these techniques to use the player/manager of your choice to manage your content. I am on Windows, so this will be WMP on Windows but the same should apply no matter what your OS/player.

1. Download and install the free MountUSB app. It will make the card actually available once it is activated.
2. Organize your music with WMP into playlists (you probably did this already).
3. Plug Droid into USB, and mount the card with the MountUSB widget. The SD card now shows up in the drive letter for the Droid.
4. WMP will ask if we want to manage this device - we do.
5. Choose playlists to sync, and synchronize. WMP will copy the mp3's to a folder on the card called Music, organized by artist/album folders under it.
6. Now you got music on the Droid. BUT... ZERO playlists...
7. Find your .WPL playlist files on your hard drive and copy them to the Music folder on Droid's SD card.
8. These are XML text files. Open them all in a decent text editor (like Notepad++ or EditPlus), and do one thing - a global search and replace to fix the path for each media src entry so it starts with "\Music". Then, Droid can find the files on your card, and you are set.

Example:

original on PC:
<body>
<seq>
<media src="\\Server\Shared\Music\Various Artists\Jazz After Dark (2 of 3)\01 - Sophisticated Lady.mp3"/>

...

edited version on Droid:
<body>
<seq>
<media src="\Music\Various Artists\Jazz After Dark (2 of 3)\01 - Sophisticated Lady.mp3"/>
...


this review was made by Jonh boal, and the original blog can be found here

http://jboal.com/

[wentzeric]

I do not have a droid, but I run Android from a Vogue.
I'm holding out for a Passion
Your review sounds dead on, and I look forward to solving these problems myself because I read your review.