I just went with my brother to get the new Moto Droid from Verizon. To preface, I'm an iPhone user and I love my iPhone. Anyway, showed up to the store early (he had them save him one the day before). They acted like it was a big deal, employees were coming out to cars and handing out numbers and info sheets, acting real excited like it was a huge rollout. Only 4 or 5 people showed up lol. Not to knock it, but it was just funny - it's like going to the birthday party for the kid that no one likes - there's a cake, balloons, a clown, a party atmosphere...and 3 people, haha. That didn't stop the employees from acting uber excited though :biggrin:
Anyway, setup was pretty easy. The Droid requires a Gmail account, which is weird - you can use other accounts, but the phone requires a Gmail account, which they can set you up with when you buy it. It struck me as odd, but I think the iPhone requires an iTunes account, so meh. The phone size is decent. It's easy to hold - thick enough to grasp. Not quite as "ergonomic" as the iPhone, but I found it much easier to grip because it didn't have slick rounded edges (iPhone = bar of soap without a case). People at the store were complaining about the weight, but it felt the same as my iPhone - no big deal.
I liked the idea of having a slide-out keyboard, but the implementation was kinda crappy. The keys are just over the small side - usable, but you immediately say "man these are kinda small". They're also not really bumpy like most landscape keyboards, so it's a bit harder to type. Typing overall was pretty easy tho. I preferred the hardware landscape keyboard on the Droid to the software landscape keyboard on my iPhone, but I like the iPhone's vertical keyboard a lot better. I didn't like the software keyboard nearly as much as my iPhone's. The Droid's vertical keyboard was too...skinny. The iPhone has a multi-touch keyboard, while the Droid doesn't, and the droid's vertical layout is kind of cramped. I prefered typing on the hardware keyboard on the Droid.
The screen is not very bright. In fact, not very bright at all. It looks fine on it's own, but next to an iPhone it's just not very bright (maybe there are some settings to boost it, I'll have to check later). In sunlight though - WOW! It's really fabulous in sunlight. It looks just as good outdoors as it does indoors. I believe it's the best screen I've ever seen outdoors. The iPhone has kind of a transflective layer so you can see the screen outdoors, but it looks like color e-ink, or kind of like a calculator's LCD. The Droid's outdoor screen looked exactly like it did indoors. Amazing outdoor readability. A+ in that department. The screen is also thinner than the iPhone, so it looks a bit taller and a bit more cramped. But you really only notice it when holding it side-by-side with the iPhone.
Call quality is good, typical for a Motorola phone. My phone standard for call quality is the Motorola Q, which was one of my favorite phones ever. I liked the Q so much that I ditched my house phone, the call quality was just phenomenal. I would put the Droid at a notch below the Q - really really excellent, not *quite* as good as the Q, but really really good. Calls to landlines were crystal clear. I think the ear speaker on the Q was better. Combined with Verizon, the Droid's phone quality aspect is much much much better. AT&T is terrible, and the iPhone isn't a super awesome quality phone as far as calling goes.
My brother chose the Motorola over the other one (HTC Eris or something?). I played with both in the store. The Eris or whatever it was called was very sluggish, the Droid is somewhat sluggish. It has some really neat graphical things like the Palm Pre mixed with the iPhone. It's basically a combination of the two, but with lag in the GUI. It's fairly quick, but the slowness is noticeable. Not so bad you can't use it, just something that you're like, hmm, iPhone feels super fast compared to it.
The touchscreen works decently well. You have to get used to dragging apps and stuff around, definitely not as up to par as the iPhone in the touchscreen department. When the guy was demoing it, he was really embarressed because it took him like 90 seconds to get the Gmail icon to delete off the home screen, it wasn't recognizing his finger properly lol. I felt bad for him. He kept twisting the phone and trying different angles to get it to work properly.
The interface is not nearly as fluid as the iPhone's is. It's a pretty good knockoff, but it just feels like a high-quality knockoff - pretty good, but not the real thing. It feels a bit clunky. Clunky and a tad laggy, instead of fluid & smooth like the iPhone. I didn't care for the touch buttons at the bottom of the phone, like the Home and Back buttons. It kind of acts like the touchscreen, but you have to be more careful about how you actually hit the buttons - they didn't seem to respond sometimes unless your finger was directly on them from the front. I would have preferred some real buttons, or just a larger touchscreen. Touch buttons with a touchscreen doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You'll have to try it in person to see what I mean - you slide your finger from the screen, then lift it up, then touch the touchscreen "hardware" buttons...I dunno. Not my thing.
I really like the concept of Android a lot. There are 10,000 apps available last I read. That's pretty hard to compete with Apple's App Store, which has 100,000 apps now (despite most of them being useless, lol). You can also jailbreak the iPhone and add folders, background apps, etc.; I don't know what you can do as far as hacking Android. I do like the idea of a bit more extensibility as far as the software goes.
Overall, neat phone. Feels like a high-quality iPhone knockoff. Actually it feels like the slightly-slow lovechild of a Palm Pre & iPhone. Good call quality, excellent outdoor screen readability. The apps are fairly well laid-out; it doesn't have the same GUI consistency as the iPhone (like each app is a little different and not *quite* as intuitive as the last app, if that makes sense - the iPhone has a very consistent interface, which makes learning new apps, especially those from Apple, very easy). Email readability is extremely good. Very, very simple to setup - I got his work's POP account setup in about a minute. Nice, readable text. Probably a bit more readable than the iPhone - they use a nice, large font. I liked it.
Just my perspective as an iPhone fan. My brother previously had an iPhone 3GS, but sold it because his company offered to pay for a Verizon phone (he gets a big discount on it) and because AT&T gets craptacular service, which is not good for being used as a reliable mobile phone for work. Here in Connecticut, Verizon is as good as a landline. He liked the iPhone a lot, especially the easy usability, but he likes his Droid so far too. If anyone's interested, I can post back with his impressions after a few days of using it (vs. the iPhone & other phones).
Anyway, setup was pretty easy. The Droid requires a Gmail account, which is weird - you can use other accounts, but the phone requires a Gmail account, which they can set you up with when you buy it. It struck me as odd, but I think the iPhone requires an iTunes account, so meh. The phone size is decent. It's easy to hold - thick enough to grasp. Not quite as "ergonomic" as the iPhone, but I found it much easier to grip because it didn't have slick rounded edges (iPhone = bar of soap without a case). People at the store were complaining about the weight, but it felt the same as my iPhone - no big deal.
I liked the idea of having a slide-out keyboard, but the implementation was kinda crappy. The keys are just over the small side - usable, but you immediately say "man these are kinda small". They're also not really bumpy like most landscape keyboards, so it's a bit harder to type. Typing overall was pretty easy tho. I preferred the hardware landscape keyboard on the Droid to the software landscape keyboard on my iPhone, but I like the iPhone's vertical keyboard a lot better. I didn't like the software keyboard nearly as much as my iPhone's. The Droid's vertical keyboard was too...skinny. The iPhone has a multi-touch keyboard, while the Droid doesn't, and the droid's vertical layout is kind of cramped. I prefered typing on the hardware keyboard on the Droid.
The screen is not very bright. In fact, not very bright at all. It looks fine on it's own, but next to an iPhone it's just not very bright (maybe there are some settings to boost it, I'll have to check later). In sunlight though - WOW! It's really fabulous in sunlight. It looks just as good outdoors as it does indoors. I believe it's the best screen I've ever seen outdoors. The iPhone has kind of a transflective layer so you can see the screen outdoors, but it looks like color e-ink, or kind of like a calculator's LCD. The Droid's outdoor screen looked exactly like it did indoors. Amazing outdoor readability. A+ in that department. The screen is also thinner than the iPhone, so it looks a bit taller and a bit more cramped. But you really only notice it when holding it side-by-side with the iPhone.
Call quality is good, typical for a Motorola phone. My phone standard for call quality is the Motorola Q, which was one of my favorite phones ever. I liked the Q so much that I ditched my house phone, the call quality was just phenomenal. I would put the Droid at a notch below the Q - really really excellent, not *quite* as good as the Q, but really really good. Calls to landlines were crystal clear. I think the ear speaker on the Q was better. Combined with Verizon, the Droid's phone quality aspect is much much much better. AT&T is terrible, and the iPhone isn't a super awesome quality phone as far as calling goes.
My brother chose the Motorola over the other one (HTC Eris or something?). I played with both in the store. The Eris or whatever it was called was very sluggish, the Droid is somewhat sluggish. It has some really neat graphical things like the Palm Pre mixed with the iPhone. It's basically a combination of the two, but with lag in the GUI. It's fairly quick, but the slowness is noticeable. Not so bad you can't use it, just something that you're like, hmm, iPhone feels super fast compared to it.
The touchscreen works decently well. You have to get used to dragging apps and stuff around, definitely not as up to par as the iPhone in the touchscreen department. When the guy was demoing it, he was really embarressed because it took him like 90 seconds to get the Gmail icon to delete off the home screen, it wasn't recognizing his finger properly lol. I felt bad for him. He kept twisting the phone and trying different angles to get it to work properly.
The interface is not nearly as fluid as the iPhone's is. It's a pretty good knockoff, but it just feels like a high-quality knockoff - pretty good, but not the real thing. It feels a bit clunky. Clunky and a tad laggy, instead of fluid & smooth like the iPhone. I didn't care for the touch buttons at the bottom of the phone, like the Home and Back buttons. It kind of acts like the touchscreen, but you have to be more careful about how you actually hit the buttons - they didn't seem to respond sometimes unless your finger was directly on them from the front. I would have preferred some real buttons, or just a larger touchscreen. Touch buttons with a touchscreen doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You'll have to try it in person to see what I mean - you slide your finger from the screen, then lift it up, then touch the touchscreen "hardware" buttons...I dunno. Not my thing.
I really like the concept of Android a lot. There are 10,000 apps available last I read. That's pretty hard to compete with Apple's App Store, which has 100,000 apps now (despite most of them being useless, lol). You can also jailbreak the iPhone and add folders, background apps, etc.; I don't know what you can do as far as hacking Android. I do like the idea of a bit more extensibility as far as the software goes.
Overall, neat phone. Feels like a high-quality iPhone knockoff. Actually it feels like the slightly-slow lovechild of a Palm Pre & iPhone. Good call quality, excellent outdoor screen readability. The apps are fairly well laid-out; it doesn't have the same GUI consistency as the iPhone (like each app is a little different and not *quite* as intuitive as the last app, if that makes sense - the iPhone has a very consistent interface, which makes learning new apps, especially those from Apple, very easy). Email readability is extremely good. Very, very simple to setup - I got his work's POP account setup in about a minute. Nice, readable text. Probably a bit more readable than the iPhone - they use a nice, large font. I liked it.
Just my perspective as an iPhone fan. My brother previously had an iPhone 3GS, but sold it because his company offered to pay for a Verizon phone (he gets a big discount on it) and because AT&T gets craptacular service, which is not good for being used as a reliable mobile phone for work. Here in Connecticut, Verizon is as good as a landline. He liked the iPhone a lot, especially the easy usability, but he likes his Droid so far too. If anyone's interested, I can post back with his impressions after a few days of using it (vs. the iPhone & other phones).
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