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Hands on with Droid. $199 on Nov 6th
- benofsky 17y agoLooks like a very nice phone indeed. Interface wise though, they're miles off, does not look easy to use in the slightest. Edit: clarification of point.
- natrius 17y agoWhat in the photos gives you that impression? People say that sort of thing often, but it seems more like a mantra than something backed by actual evidence.
- dannyr 17y agoAgree. It primarily has the Android UI which I have been using more a year now and has been great.
- Daishiman 17y agoiPhone fanboys don't need evidence to justify the superiority of their phone.
- benofsky 17y agoIt was more the video and the fact that the email for the woman's corporate email account and gmail account was called "Motorola", it made little sense. I dunno, it just really did not look like someone who does not read hacker news could pick it up and understand it.
- jrockway 17y agoWell yeah, there's no Apple logo. How could anyone use software without Steve Job's seal of approval?
- jrockway 17y agoI think I must be the only person in the world that likes the default Android UI. This and HTC's interpretation are ugly and unusable in my opinion. Looks like Verizon also killed off the unlock pattern?
- megaduck 17y agoDroid uses the default Android 2.0 UI. It's a "Google Experience" phone, which means that it's just running standard Android. AFAIK, Verizon didn't touch anything. If you don't like this, then you're probably not going to like any of the other Android 2.0 devices either.
- albertsun 17y agoUnlock pattern? What's locked down about the phone? I thought one of Android's main selling points was that it's a completely open platform.
- randallsquared 17y agoWhen you "lock your phone" to prevent others from using it, the G1 has a system for unlocking where you could draw a pattern on the screen rather than typing a password. It's pretty nice. Not sure why the grandparent thinks it's not available on the Droid.
- jrockway 17y agoThe lock screen shown in that video is a "slide-to-unlock" thing.
- randallsquared 17y agoBut the G1 had more than one unlock method, too.
- jrockway 17y ago"Press menu twice" and "draw your pattern" are the only ones I know of. But yes, you can write your own lock application, and there are a few on the market. ("Slide to unlock" is one, although it was very broken when I tried it.)
- rms 17y agoWhat's the screen resolution? It looks like 320x480... I guess Droid will be just another phone rumored to have 800 wide screen resolution. :(
- SwellJoe 17y agoThis article claims "400,000 pixels, gives twice the resolution of any other (smartphone)". So, it's gotta be a lot better than 320x480, or the Motorola spokesperson is simply lying. The only specific number I could find has it at 480x854, which is more than 400k pixels.
- CitizenKane 17y agoFrom what I saw of the videos the spokesperson simply seemed to be not too bright. She made somewhat stupid errors throughout the video. The resolution of the screen is 480x854 and you can see the full specs here: http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola-DROID-US-EN.alt http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and...
- rms 17y agoThank you. I guess I am getting a Droid then. I'm surprised more people aren't commenting on the screen resolution; that's enormous from a usability standpoint.
- randallsquared 17y agoYeah, I don't know of any similar phones on the market this year that have this resolution or better (except the N900; very similar specs, but not Android). I had a few specific gripes with my G1, and it may well be that the Droid fixes all of them.
- dustingetz 17y agoany newer rumors about how badly verizon nerfed it?
- steveklabnik 17y agoIt includes Wifi, which I was pretty suprised about.
- wmeredith 17y agoUgh. I had a lot of hope for this one, but the aesthetics do nothing for me, meaning that the GUI had better be a LOT better than my iPhone. W(hy)TF does there have to be a Motorola, Verizon and Google logo on this thing? It looks like it was designed by NASCAR.
- randallsquared 17y agoI think most people (like me) couldn't care less what logos are on it, so it's effectively free advertising. shrug
- cma 17y agoAll three of the logos combined are smaller and less conspicuous than the giant Apple on the iphone.
- tedunangst 17y agoconspicuousness of logos = (size of logo) * (number of logos ^ 2) * (1 + logo is text)
- mey 17y agohttps://developer.motorola.com/products/handsets/droid/ https://developer.motorola.com/products/handsets/droid/ Dev Specs
- jsz0 17y agoI'm skeptical of how well Verizon's network is going to hold up. Out of the 4 major US carriers they are probably the least tested due to their historically awful handset selection. There is such a huge difference between a modern SmartPhone and the last-generation of e-mail centric devices. AT&T has got a bad reputation in the lat 2 years but they are moving ahead with their 7.2Mbit HSDPA upgrades at a pretty good pace. Assuming they can fully utilize those channels and beef up their marginal coverage areas they will have have a pretty big advantage over EV-DO Rev A.
- dolinsky 17y agoI'd be much more skeptical if this wasn't already the nations largest and best network. They bounce between #1 and #2 in subscriptions regardless of the phone selection. And by the time HSDPA is rolled out Verizon will be rolling out LTE.
- marcell 17y agoI've noticed a pattern, that I'm calling the iPhone Asymptote Theorem. Basically, phone manufacturers are copying the iPhone experience best they can, and they're getting closer and closer to the iPhone, but they're never quite duplicating it or beating it. The second video showed the Droid loading a endgadget.com slightly slower than the iPhone. The interface, aesthetics, all seem slightly or somewhat worse than the iPhone (representative example: compare the back of the Droid to the back of the iPhone). The scrolling on the Droid seemed a bit less polished than the iPhone, and you could tell the first woman was fumbling a bit with the interface. To put it mathematically, lim t -> inf (non_iphone_quality) = iphone
- jrockway 17y agoiPhone advocates seem to forget all the features that the iPhone is missing. What if I want to be on IM and at the same time browse the web? Unless there is an external IM server sending me Apple-approved push messages, it can't be done. On Android, this is trivial.