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883 of 892 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Verizon's best phone, and a worthy competitor to the iPhone, November 7, 2009
This review is from: Motorola DROID A855 Android Phone (Verizon Wireless) (Wireless Phone)
UPDATED 5/14/2010 WITH COMPARISON TO NEW HTC DROID INCREDIBLE
If you're considering getting a Droid with Verizon, you should probably also consider the HTC Droid Incredible. I have one now and can tell you how they compare. (My wife's new-every-two came up and she kindly took my 6-month-old Droid off my hands so I could use her discount to get an Incredible. Is that true love or what??)
The first difference you notice is that the Droid has a physical slide-out keyboard while the Incredible does not. This makes the Incredible thinner and lighter (4.6 ounces compared to the Droid's 6 ounces). The weight difference doesn't look like much on paper, but it feels significant.
Other differences:
- The Droid's battery lasts a couple hours longer than the stock battery that comes with the Incredible.
- The Incredible's MP3 player has better sound quality when using good earphones or plugged into the car stereo. The Droid's sound quality isn't bad at all, but it's not up to par with the iPhone or iPod touch. The Incredible's sound quality is similar to iPhone / iPod touch.
- The Droid has 3 customizable home screens, the Incredible has 7, plus a cool way to navigate among them by seeing a thumbnail of all 7 at the same time. (I can't imagine filling up all 7, I've only filled up 2 of the 7.)
- Multitouch pinch and zoom is implemented better on the Incredible than on the Droid, though the new 2.1 Android software update that all Droids should have now has improved it substantially on the Droid.
- The Droid comes with a 16gb micro SD card, the Incredible either comes with none or with a 2gb card (mine came with none, but Verizon sometimes includes one). However, the Incredible has 8gb of internal flash memory, which is plenty to get started, and you can add a micro SD card later if you want.
- The Droid's camera is definitely not below average, and sometimes takes really good pictures. The Incredible's camera takes better pictures indoors and similar or slightly better pictures outdoors. The Incredible's camera has 8 megapixels, the Droid's has only 5. But 5 is as good or better than the vast majority of camera phones, and besides, if you set your camera at the maximum resolution, your pictures will take up more memory. With any camera, 3 megapixels is plenty enough for most purposes, including getting sharp 4" prints if you want them.
- The Droid's speakerphone is a bit louder than the Incredible's. The difference is not huge, but it's noticeable.
- The Droid runs the standard Android operating system, version 2.l. The Incredible includes that plus includes HTC Sense, which adds a few nice tweaks to the basic Android software. I don't think the difference is enough to influence most people's purchase decision.
- On paper, the Incredible's internal processor is faster than the Droid's. But I do not notice any difference in performance when running the same apps on both phones side by side. And the Droid's processor is faster than almost every other smart phone.
Overall, both phones are really really excellent, both are very fast, both have huge beautiful displays, and both have tons of great features. You can't go wrong with either phone.
I think the choice for most people will come down to the physical keyboard vs. thinness/weight issue, and possibly the camera if you like using your phone to take a lot of pictures.
That's the end of my update. Here's my original review of the Droid (sorry for the length!):
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I wanted an iPhone bad, and finally gave up waiting for it to come to Verizon. Got a Droid and am very happy with it.
The screen is awesome - bigger than an iPhone's and more dense with pixels, so images are very sharp. The colors are great, and the screen is nice and bright. I had a Samsung Rogue for about 10 days. Everyone raved about the Rogue's screen. The Droid's screen blows it away. The touch screen is accurate and responsive, and very intuitive to use. About as good as the iPhone but much better than every other touchscreen phone I've tried and better than a few cameras with touchscreen controls.
The Droid's display is sharp enough and wide enough to view most web pages - including those not specifically formatted for mobile phone browsers. Because of this screen and because of the way that the Android OS implements the browser, surfing the internet is very easy, intuitive, and pleasant. Much less horizontal scrolling/panning. Much better than most phones I've tried, including the Samsung Rogue and Blackberry. The iPhone's browser is also a pleasure to use, but the Droid's screen is better at displaying full web pages.
Email is very well-implemented in the Droid. I was already a Gmail and Google calendar user before getting my Droid, and the level of integration is amazing, thanks to the Google Android OS. But any Android phone will also handle most other popular webmail, like hotmail, and also can sync with Microsoft Outlook and similar programs.
The Droid's call quality is good, and the speakerphone is loud and clear enough to be useful in most places. I get slightly better reception with the Droid than with my previous Verizon phones, especially in places with poor network coverage.
The Droid's built-in Facebook app is good, but is not as full-featured as the iPhone's FB app, which has been around longer and had more time to be improved. Yet, the Droid's FB app is as good as or better than FB access I've seen on most smartphones, including Blackberry and especially the new Samsung Rogue.
One extremely cool thing is you can easily import the contact info from all your Facebook friends into the Droid's contact manager, including their profile photo, email, phone, birthday, etc. Then, from your contact list, you can tap on any of their names and with one touch either call, email, or jump to their FB page. This is very well-implemented and easy to use, and makes the Droid's contact manager highly useful.
The Droid has pretty good voice recognition. I can tap the microphone icon in the upper right corner of the screen and say "Starbucks" and the Droid will show a list of the nearest Starbucks - and then I can pick one and either touch the phone number and Droid will call it, or I can touch the address and Droid will show its location on a map and give me driving directions.
Droid like all Android phones has Google maps built in, including satellite view, and Droid can give you directions (from your current location or any location) just like Google maps on a computer.
What's more, Droid has built-in GPS functionality and can give spoken directions, just like a Garmin GPS. I tried it and it works pretty well.
Loading music and photos onto the Droid is as easy as dragging and dropping files from your computer to a thumb drive. Droid's music player is not as refined as iPod/iPhone, but it is easy to use and works great. If you have an iPod, you probably have lots of music tracks in AAC format. The Droid will play them no problem, as long as they don't have DRM copy protection (and most don't nowadays). The Droid also plays MP3 and other formats.
The Droid has the standard 3.5" headphone jack so you can use it with any earphones, unlike some phones that have a non-standard jack. To judge the sound quality, I listened to the same track on the Droid and on an iPhone. Using $100+ headphones, the sound quality was better on the iPhone, but the difference was harder to notice with cheaper earphones or through my car stereo. Yet, the Droid's sound quality is as good or better than other music-playing wireless phones, and I've tried quite a few.
I have not yet loaded videos on the Droid. But I have watched streaming video, and it is very smooth, studder-free, and looks really great, best I've ever seen on any phone, including the iPhone and iPod touch.
The Droid comes with a 16GB microSD card. These normally go for 40 to 50 bucks at least, so I'm really grateful that Verizon and Motorola included it with the phone. It can hold a ton of music, video, and photos. For comparison, the highest-capacity iPod Nano also has 16gb of storage.
Plus, the Droid has internal memory for apps and its own operating system, so your phone will still work in the unlikely event the SD card ever fails. (My Droid worked fine even though the Verizon store guy didn't insert the SD card correctly when he set up my phone and the phone didn't recognize it. I reinserted it later and all was fine.)
The Droid's interface and OS (Android) is not quite as polished as the iPhone's. But it is still excellent, VERY easy to learn, and very easy to navigate around and use. Like most phones, the Droid is highly customizable (ringtones, wallpapers, placement of your favorite widgets and icons on your home screens), and the Android OS makes it super easy to do so.
The Droid has one-touch access to the Android app market, which has 10,000 apps so far. I've downloaded a couple dozen. There are lots of good ones, but overall the Android app market lags the iTunes app store in selection and quality, and specific apps available for both platforms tend to be a little better on the iPhone/iPod touch than on Android.
However, the Android app market is much younger than iTunes app store and is growing very quickly. Until the Droid, there were only a few phones running Android. That number will at least double over the next few months, and the number of people who use...
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282 of 289 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Verizon Smart Phone Ever!, November 8, 2009
This review is from: Motorola DROID A855 Android Phone (Verizon Wireless) (Wireless Phone)
I've own many of the Verizon smart phones including the Treo, Moto Q, XV6700, Sage, Omnia, Touch Pro, Blackberry Curve, Storm1, etc. The Droid is the best VZW smart phone I've ever used.
LIKES
- Nice, big screen. The touch interface is will done.
- Full exchange email support including calendar, contact sync, and email folders. Separate corporate calendar is cool too.
- Voice search is the bomb. I searched "McDonalds", "home depot", and "gas station" and found the closest ones to my location. I searched on "Phone John Smith Mobile" and droid made the phone call. I even searched "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and got the wiki page. lol
- The free GPS is excellent. The satellite layer is awesome. I was going to buy a GPS so the Droid saved me a couple bucks.
- Facebook contact integration is nice.
- Tethering is available via the PDANet app.
- Battery life is surprisingly decent. I returned many good windows mobile phones simply because of the lack luster battery life.
DISLIKES
- No Send or End Buttons. I'd much prefer initiating and terminating a call with dedicated buttons
- Flat keyboard causes some typos. The top row of keys are too close to the bottom of the screen.
- I don't like the window shade motion for notifications. I'd prefer a simple button press.
- When viewing emails in landscape mode, the on-screen Delete button is right next to the back button. I deleted 2 emails already. :-P
- I've observed some button press glitches when switching between landscape and portrait mode.
- No pitch and zoom in the browser. Browser seems a bit slower than with the iPhone and the Palm Pre.
- Many operations require a couple extra button presses compared to my old Blackberry.
- Right now, I'd only recommend the Droid to people with a bit of geek in them.
VS IPHONE
The Droid is a worthy alternative but it doesn't sniff the iPhone's total user experience. Syncing media with your iPhone is much easier. The iPhones web browser is still the best on any phone. The Droid's customization capability, voice search, awesome free gps, and comparable development platform does put it on the same playing field with the iphone. The Droid however still has to make the UI a little more polished and take steps to make syncing with your computer more seamless. Right now, I'd only recommend the Droid for people that have a slightly higher geek meter.
VS BLACKBERRY
Cha... I never asked my Blackberry to do much more than send messages and make calls. And to date, it still does it better than any other device I have ever used. The sleep case, keyboard, trackball, and typing short cuts makes the BB the most efficient device you will use for messaging. The Droid (and the iPhone) will require extra button presses to complete the same tasks. Heck, the sleep case alone allows you to check a message without pressing a button. ;-)
BOTTOM LINE
This is a great Verizon smart phone, possibly the best. The voice search works brilliantly. It's unbelievably good. The GPS is great. The Droid development platform seems decent. I especially like the Droid's full exchange support. The Droid's battery seems decent but I'll find out for sure after a couple weeks at work. It's certainly not as bad as the launch Palm Pre- the Pre's battery life would count down in front of your eyes. :-P
One major gripe I have with the device is the lack of Send and End buttons. I would never ship a phone that doesn't have Send and End buttons. I prefer to locate these buttons by feel rather than locating them on the touch screen.
Another gripe is that many functions on the Droid requires several extra button presses to accomplish the same task versus my old BlackBerry. I just have to wonder if phone manufacturers ever have business people test their phone. (I'm available, Motorola! ;-)
Should you try the Droid? Absolutely! BlackBerry users should hang on to their receipts however. You will give up some efficiencies in exchange for the Droid's advanced features.
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234 of 241 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fear The Droid, November 10, 2009
This review is from: Motorola DROID A855 Android Phone (Verizon Wireless) (Wireless Phone)
**04/10/2010 Update Below**
Is the Droid a phone? Computer? Personal media player? PDA? Navigation? It is all of the aforementioned. THE killer Verizon smart phone has landed with a resounding kaboom!
PROS:
- Gorgeous 3.7-inch (480x854) screen
- Tight Google application integration
- Amazing HTML browser
- Microsoft Exchange support
- Good 5MP digicam
- Surprisingly good camcorder
- 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
- Google Maps Navigation makes standalone GPS units obsolete
- Large selection of free and paid apps available
- Slide-out full QWERTY keyboard
CONS:
- Power hungry device gulps battery life
- Touch screen is extremely sensitive
- Bluetooth/headset voice dialing unavailable
- Heavy (5.9 ounces)
- Lacks physical direct dial/end buttons
- Physical keyboard could use improvements
- Short USB charging cable
- Included microSD card is Class 2
My two previous phones were the LG Dare and the Blackberry Curve. Without much research, I walked into a Verizon store on the Droid's launch day and bought the Motorola Droid. Initial uneasiness turned into sheer joy. The Droid amazes me at every moment. Here's why:
SCREEN
The 3.7-inch, 480x854 resolution touch screen is stellar! Everything is crystal clear. I transferred Finding Nemo to it and wow! When I moved to the Blackberry from the Dare, the large screen real estate is what I missed most. I compared the screen with a friend's iPhone and we both concluded that the Droid's screen is better. My only gripe about the screen is that it is extremely sensitive. I put a snap-on cover on it as well as a screen protector and it has helped immensely. The snap-on cover surrounds the screen with a little extra space so your fingers don't accidentally touch the screen. I originally used the Verizon screen protector, but recommend the ZAGG. The ZAGG feels more "tacky" so when I'm using the screen, I feel I can be more precise when typing or swiping. As far as I'm aware, there's no setting to modify the screen's sensitivity.
KEYBOARD
I have a hard time with touch screen keyboards, which is why the slide-out keyboard on the Droid was so important to me initially. The screen slides up about half way up to reveal the physical keyboard. The keys are flat, right next to each other, with limited key travel and backlit. It takes a little while to get used to but I've gotten good at it with practice. Still, I can type at least twice as fast on my Blackberry Curve. The touch screen keyboard is actually better than I expected. After a couple of months of use, I've essentially ignored the physical keyboard in favor of the touchscreen keyboard. A really nice feature when typing on the touch screen is autocomplete. For example, if I type "hel", it will list "Hel, he'll, help, held, hello..." then you can just touch the word you want.
CALLING
The Droid has very good signal strength and the call quality is also excellent on both ends. Speakerphone is adequate as well. My first annoyance with making calls is that there are no dedicated dial/end buttons. In order to make a call, you must touch the "Phone" icon and dial the number or sort through contacts. I did find that you can create direct dial shortcuts on your screen. This allows you to dial a contact number with one touch of the icon. I have one of my 3 screens dedicated solely for direct dial shortcuts. The second annoyance is that you cannot initiate voice dialing via a Bluetooth headset! If you want to initiate a call, you have to use the phone interface. This is a major drawback as I always use headset voice dialing to place calls when I'm driving. You can still answer and end calls with a headset though.
GOOGLE INTEGRATION
If you're already a heavy Google user, Android OS smart phones are almost a necessity. If you're not yet a heavy Google user, the Droid will assimilate you. Gmail is such a joy to use I haven't checked my e-mail on my computers since the Droid. Google Maps is easy and fun to use and includes Latitude. Google Talk couldn't be simpler and heavy messaging sessions are fatigue-free with the slide-out physical keyboard. Swiping the chat screen left or right allows you to change chat sessions which lets you to carry on multiple chats with ease! Google Calendar is almost better on the Droid than on an actual browser.
HTML BROWSER
The Droid's web browser puts Blackbery's browser to shame, but that's not hard to do. For kicks, I also installed Opera mini on the Droid and almost immediately uninstalled it. The Android browser is a superior browser to all others except for possibly Mobile Safari.
CAMERA
The Droid has a nice 5MP auto-focus digital camera with flash as well as a 720x480 @ 24fps camcorder. Both of them perform well. The still camera's autofocus is buggy however. When I activate the camera, the area near the lens makes a peculiar noise and the autofocus doesn't always work. Verizon is preparing an OTA update on 12/10/09 to address this and other bugs/enhancements. The camcorder is good enough that I'd have no problem leaving my Flip camcorder at home most of the time. Of course, both the still and video camera falter in low light so keep your real camera and camcorder for those really special events.
MUSIC
I plugged in my Sennheiser HD280Pro headphones and enjoyed listening to my MP3's. The built-in speaker also sounds pretty good for a phone. The Droid comes with a 16GB microSD card for storage and supports up to 32GB but is a slow Class 2. It would have been nice to get at least a Class 4 for faster read/write performance. To get music onto the Droid, you just drag and drop or you can use a Motorola application called Media Link. You can also use your MP3's as ringtones. I would recommend using Audacity to clip a song you like down to 30 seconds or less at 128kbps to save space.
802.11b/g Wi-Fi
The Droid's Wi-Fi connection is pretty good and I can take it all over my 2-story home and stay connected. It's also picked up many of my neighbor's wireless networks. When the phone goes to sleep, it will shut off the Wi-Fi service to save battery power. Interestingly, the Wi-Fi connection is only nominally faster than using the high speed 3G Verizon network. Next to the screen, I've found Wi-Fi to be the biggest battery drain.
GOOGLE MAPS NAVIGATION
Here's something I did not expect. The Droid comes with a beta version of Google's turn-by-turn voice navigation application that ties in directly with Google Maps. Search for a location then have the navi direct you there by voice. I tried it twice so far and it has been spot on! What am I going to do with my Garmin now?? For me, this app was the clincher. Just be sure to connect it to a power source for long trips because the navi will drain the battery mighty quick.
MISC
You can quickly browse thousands of Android apps and search for them by name. Must have apps include Advanced Task Killer, Movies (by Flixster), Pandora, WeatherBug, and Google Voice. On the down-side, the Droid is quite heavy. Having come from the Curve, it was very noticeable. Also, with heavy usage, the battery may not last an entire work day, so carry a charger with you.
ACCESSORIES
Accessories are still pretty thin for the Droid. A screen protector and case were a must for me. I got both from Verizon directly. I eventually tossed the silicone case from Verizon and picked up the perfect case by Seidio. Next, I needed a car mount but the Droid windshield mount would not work for me because I use a case and in California, I cannot mount it anywhere but the lower left corner. I prefer to mount it in the middle so I purchased a generic vent/adhesive mount from Verizon. I used the adhesive to stick it directly to my dash. It works fairly well except that when going over anything but smooth terrain, it wobbles a bit. I may decide to use the Bracketron Dash Pad in combination with Kensington Dash Car Mount for iPhone and iPod. This will allow me to mount the Droid in the center of my dash and swivel it from portrait to landscape as well as leave space to plug in a car charger. To complete the auto installation, I bought the Kensington Mini Car Charger for Mobile Devices with USB Port and plugged in the short USB cable that came with Droid. Voila! A Droid car kit for about $45.
SUMMARY
I could go on and on about the Droid but Amazon limits my reviews to 1000 or so words. Even with the minor drawbacks, the Droid is easily the best hand held device I have ever owned. It replaces so many of my other devices that I can overlook those minor drawbacks and enjoy using it every second of the day. It is probably the single best technology purchase I have ever made.
**UPDATE 12/04/09**
I had to exchange my Droid for another one because the case I was using snagged on one of the keys and ripped it right off. The new replacement Droid has been ROCK SOLID and uptime has been over 2 weeks! No reboots, no forced app closures. Maybe it's my imagination, but the battery life seems to be better as I have gone at least 24 hours between chargings, except when I have used the GPS navigation. I'm still hoping Google provides an update in Android 2.0.1 for Bluetooth voice commands, though I didn't see anything in the changelogs about it. I believe the...
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