Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > November > 05 > Entry
Motorola Droid: hands-on video
Verizon Wireless allowed the American-Statesman to take a sneak peak at the new Motorola Droid smartphone. It debuts Friday with the Great Hills Trail Verizon Wireless store opening up at 11 p.m. tonight to offer the phone to early customers at midnight.
Other area stores will open at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning and retail sales manager Trevor Bissell says the company is expecting lines for the device, which competes most directly with Apple’s iPhone, as you might have noticed in recent ads.
Verizon let us borrow the phone and I’ll be posting more about my thoughts on it soon. My first impression is that hardware-wise, it feels a little heavy and dense, with harder angles than the iPhone.
That said, it has a beautiful, big screen (larger than Apple’s phone) and the Google Android operating system runs smoothly and quickly on it. It’s very tightly integrated with Gmail, Google Calendar and other Google services and I was pleased with the phone’s Web surfing speed. I’m still not a fan of tiny physical keyboards but this one has nice, large well-spaced-out keys for those who can’t handle an on-screen virtual keyboard.
One major annoyance: a sound effect that says in a creepy, deep robot voice, “DROID!” is cute at first and very annoying after the third or fourth listen. It’s easy to disable.
Like I said, I’ll post more about it soon. It’s far too early to say whether it’s better or worse than an iPhone, but it certainly has some unique features that might make iPhone users jealous.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Gadgets, Phones, Shopping
Comments
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By Observer
November 9, 2009 8:08 AM | Link to this
Good lord - can you imagine being "stranded" without a gizmo to update Twitter and Facebook for more than 18 hours? How would one survive? These gadgets, while somewhat useful, have seemingly sidestepped their intended purpose, which is to make life easier, not to control your life! "Droid" is a good name for this...and for the users, well, let's call them "thumbots". You've seen them, walking along with head down, thumbs flashing, oblivious to the world around them until they bump into something. There IS such a thing as being "too connected"!
By Robbie
November 5, 2009 1:12 PM | Link to this
Nice video, Omar. I look forward to your review. I just upgraded to the HTC Hero (Android-based phone from Sprint), and so far I'm pretty impressed with the ease of use, the speed and functionality, and the amount of apps already available.
My biggest concern so far with the HTC Hero is battery life, as I don't think I'd want to be stranded without a charger for more than 16-18 hours. I'll be interested to hear how the batter life compares with the Droid.
By Omar Gallaga
November 5, 2009 11:52 AM | Link to this
The phone apparently has multi-touch, but it's not enabled in all apps at the moment, including the Web browser. Instead you double tap and then zoom in or out with little + / - buttons. Not super intuitive, but workable. But I haven't used it enough to get a sense of speed compared to Safari.
I haven't looked into pricing, but will investigate.
By Dale Roe
November 5, 2009 11:07 AM | Link to this
Great video, Omar. The phone looks impressive. I really like the features that kick in as soon as you dock it. Did you get any time with the Droid's Web browser/ Any thoughts on how it compares to Safari on the iPhone?
By Dale Roe
November 5, 2009 11:01 AM | Link to this
Hey Omar … can you give us some idea of the pricing of the phone over its contract span? I think I read someplace that price- and plan-wise it's more expensive than the iPhone, but that the Palm Pre is the least expensive of the three.