‘Stopped by the Verizon store in the Bend River Mall yesterday to check out a Droid phone. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they have one available to play with. (I’d failed to find Android phones at T-Mobile and Sprint stores previously). After a half hour of poking around with it I walked away less than impressed. I’m not going to do a detailed review because there are plenty of those around. Suffice it to say it didn’t live up to all the hype.
Don’t get me wrong, the phone itself is nice enough. The hi-res touchscreen offers a big productivity boost over other Android phones. And the physical keyboard is better than average, but for a guy with big hands it’s still not exactly easy to use. I wish they’d ditched the D-pad (the little gold keypad to the right of the keyboard) and just made the keys bigger. I also have to wonder how well this [rather pricey] device will handle being dropped. I know a lot of iPhone users who are on their second or third phone after having broken the displays. And the Droid will be similarly prone to damage.
The most compelling part of the phone is the Android OS. Again, ‘not going to do a detailed review. The Droid has the newest version of the OS, which means it should have all the latest features and improvements. But compared to the iPhone experience it just isn’t there yet. There are a number of niggly little issues that make the experience less than ideal. For example, editing a contact isn’t as easy as it could be – it involves more manual scrolling and clicking around to reveal “more” fields than is really necessary. And in a complete fail, if you add a URL to a contact, you can’t click the URL to open it in a brower, which is just silly. It’s that attention to detail that makes the iPhone what it is, and that Android is still lacking.
Android holds a lot of promise that I’m sure will be fulfilled some day. But that promise is hobbled not so much by the rough edges in the OS itself, but by how cell providers are handling their Android offerings. The Droid is a good example of this. It’s not a bad phone, but it’s only available through Verizon(*), a company whose pricing and policies are a bit off-putting to say the least. Their unlimited data plan costs a $1000 more than other carriers. And it’s not actually unlimited (5GB cap). Nor does it get you things like tethering (an additional $30/month) or Microsoft Exchange server access (another $45/month). And then there’s this NYT article about some of Verizon’s shadier practices.
In short, the Droid consists of a promising mobile OS wrapped in an decent enough phone, which you can currently only get by paying an arm and a leg to a company with a reputation for nickle and diming its customers.
[* There's an unsubstantiated rumor the Droid will be available on T-Mobile. No date given though.]
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Hey Robert,
Thanks for this – it’s interesting to hear another point of view on the Droid, and the Android experience as a whole.
My two cents: I was a loyal blackberry user with Verizon for a number of years. As you mentioned, their costs were out of control. I also suffered from iPhone envy.
After playing with the iPhone quite a bit, I made the decision to jump ship.
But then I saw the new android phone (1.5) on Sprint – the Hero. The experience on the Hero is 100 times better than that of the Blackberry. And while I would agree with you that it’s not quite the iPhone (though I do believe the user experience will mostly catch up) it’s close. And the best part – my monthly cost is significantly (less than half) lower than what it was on Verizon, or what it would’ve been on AT&T.
i’ll agree that some things are “niggly little issues”.
i bought a droid earlier this week at the bend river mall. so far, i’m very happy with it. i had an LG Dare and traded up.
the droid’s virtual keyboard is fantastic… get close to the word you’ve mispelled and the droid will magically insert the correct spelling of the word almost every time. i’m told the latest version of the iPhone doesn’t do this.
no url on a contact’s web page… well, sure, not optimal, but that’s a software thing i would expect would be handled at some future date.
5 megapixel camera with a flash… i’m at a family reunion as i write this. these 5mp pics i’m taking with the droid are really great and can be posted to facebook very quickly. no more apologizing for picture quality.
swap out the battery when the current battery charge is depleted. i’ve already got two batteries on backorder. no more running out of juice when it’s really needed.
for a relatively small monthly fee, verizon offers insurance for a new phone if dropped or damaged. i imagine at&t does also for the iPhone. the insurance plan is legit. i busted my LG dare not long ago and had a replacement the next day.
for what i’m doing, the droid makes great sense.
i’ve had a couple more days now to play with the Droid virtual keyboard. it’s the best cell keyboard i’ve ever used. even in portrait mode with small keys showing, i can hit the letters one after another at a rapid pace and they seem to show up correctly most of the time. i cannot be hitting the correct letters that fast and that well on my own.
i haven’t seen the virtual keyboard key press correction capabilities talked about much, but it’s a winning feature all by itself.
You’ve obviously spent some time on this. Well done!