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Tell HN: Review of the free Motorola Droid sent by Google for Google IO
The Good:
- It's free
- As soon as I turned it on and activated it, it offered a software update which made pinch gestures work.
- Google Goggles are awesome.
- Actually all the google apps on this phone are very well done.
- The touch screen is very hard for me to use accurately, but this could be my fault. It seems like clicks don't quite register, etc. I do not have an iPhone though so I may just have to get used to it.
- The soft texture of the touch screen is disconcerting, but I may end up getting used to this too.
- Verizon 3G should be much faster and more reliable than my TMobile 2.5G.
The Bad:
- It's not a Nexus One. I'm sort of over this but not quite.
- Even though I signed in with google, there are two email apps, two calendar apps, etc... One is the google app and one is the "standard" one. How can I delete the non google ones?
- The droid form factor is a bit clunky, about 2x as clunky as my blackberry 8900 and in spite of this the phone feels fragile.
- UI is slightly sluggish compared to an iPhone 3G or Nexus One.
The Test:
1) Will I give up my $60 per month unlimited voice/data service with T-Mobile and switch to Verizon and continue using this phone after the 30 day free trial?
2) Will I find the phone so compelling that I build an app for it? So far my experience with the android SDK has been shock at how long it takes the simulator to boot (which I think needs to be done every time you want to test a fresh build of your app). Fortunately the phone itself boots much faster.
- elcron 17y agoOn 2. You don't have to boot the phone after a fresh build, just load the updated build onto the running simulator.
- grandalf 17y agoahh ok, then I will make an app :)
- cpr 17y agoRe: Verizon 3G data. Agreed; my Mifi is a godsend. Re: touch screen accuracy, it's been pretty well documented that none of the non-Apple hardware vendors have paid enough attention to this issue. E.g, http://lifehacker.com/5501814/iphone-touchscreen-accuracy-bests-the-competition-according-to-robot+driven-analysis http://lifehacker.com/5501814/iphone-touchscreen-accuracy-be... . Re 2): Could this possibly be true? I'd go nuts rebooting either the simulator or the iPad/iPhone just to test a new version. It only takes about 3-5 seconds to recompile, download and start my current app on the iPad hardware.
- grandalf 17y agoadditional notes: - the phone's screen smudges horrendously compared to my blackberry 8900. - The app store is awesome, with great apps that are easy to install. The app store seems to have been given tremendous thought. - I have not really wanted/needed the physical keyboard. Without individual keys it's not really much better than the virtual one, and nowhere near as easy to feel with one's thumbs as the blackberry's. - I really don't know why Google shipped these instead of Nexus One's... My guess is that these were somehow cheaper to give away... I can't imagine anyone would choose this phone over a Nexus One.