Redflea
Android Expert
I was able to play with a Droid for a little while - some comments:
It definitely would not autofocus, not even once on many tries, always red bars at each corner. No clicking sounds coming from the camera. Hopefully on the majority of the units the autofocus fix will be via software. This one needed a fix.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Droid is not "too big" at all (I'm coming from a BB Pearl) - the size feels very good in my hands and pocket.
It is weighty - not annoyingly so, but the heft in your hand is noticeable - gives a feeling of quality/durability, but might be tiring in certain positions.
Some other things I noticed during my hands-on:
1. I was not having any problems with using the top row of letters in the hardware keyboard - no bumping into the body of the screen slid up above it - I have relatively large hands/wide fingers, and it was not an issue at all. Now that I've used it I'm surprised that people have listed that as an issue.
2. The hardware keyboard is much better than I thought it might be from the reviews, but needs some tactile way to let you know where your fingers are...getting "lost" is the main issue for me. I'm thinking I may apply a very small dab of super glue or similar on the F and J keys to help me w/locating my fingers so I can get to touch typing. One negative - reaching across the D-pad is a little annoying.
3. The HW keyboard is really appreciated when you're entering text into a field and the virtual keyboard just takes over too much real-estate. Wasn't a key feature for me before using the phone, now I'm really happy I'll have the option of either type of keyboard.
4. The landscape virtual keyboard is actually very good...no problems with it, enjoyed using it.
5. The portrait keyboard is barely usable for me - keys too small/close.
6. Videos (Youtube) on it are simply amazing...playing them in-line from web pages is so nice - they load quickly and look great .
7. The Home screen will not rotate to landscape unless the keyboard is open. Everything else rotates fine w/out opening the keyboard, and the home screen will rotate when the keyboard is open. This is either a bug they caught late, or a intended design that makes absolutely no sense to me. (Yes - the auto rotate setting was on.)
8. Marketplace is great - downloaded a bunch of free apps - you can get several downloads going at once in the background and get notifications on them in the notification bar (progress/complete). A better experience than w/the Blackberry App Store. The Verizon tab in the Marketplace has a number of useful free apps listed there - more than just the Visual Voicemail app that someone (Mark V.?) said was there a couple days ago.
9. Now that I've used it some more I do see value in the iPhone style two-finger zoom when browsing - really what I want is more control over the zoom amount, if I had user-adjustable increments for double-tap zoom I'd be fine. Pages render really well, and navigation/scrolling is very smooth.
10. I added a contact to see how it would work - a few minutes later I was looking at an Eris, and it had the contact on it that I had set up on the Droid - the same email account had been used to set up both phones. Pretty cool...but don't lose your email/PW, or your enemies will be able to see/modify/delete all your contacts and calendar info from their Google phone.
11. I LOVE the task switching and multitasking - enjoy it on my BB and will like it even more I think on the Droid. The Droid didn't seem to care how many programs I had open, ran fine regardless. One thing I'm wondering - when you have more than 6 apps running, how does the Droid decide which of the 6 to show you in the task switching dialog?
12. Side-by-side, the screen on the Eris is actually a little brighter overall.
13. Multiple browser windows...really nice to be able to keep the current web page open if I want to look at another web page.
14. There's no way that the Droid will fit the multimedia doc or car mount w/a case on it, unless maybe if the case is very, very thin. Don't know what the options are going to be, but that's a problem for me, as I'm a phone dropper/abuser. Going to have a screen protector, but if I can't find a really thin case that works I'm likely going to look for an invisible shield total coverage or something similar - don't like pulling a case on/off repeatedly.
Since there wasn't any PIM data (contacts, calendar) I couldn't really do much in terms of playing w/those areas.
Ran Pandora it worked perfectly, as well as a bar code app, the app "Where" and a few others. All worked very well - totally cool to look up a movie in Where and see theaters near me based on GPS and view a trailer.
I was so excited after playing with it that I put my car mount up in my car afterwards.
A little under a day and a half left now...
It definitely would not autofocus, not even once on many tries, always red bars at each corner. No clicking sounds coming from the camera. Hopefully on the majority of the units the autofocus fix will be via software. This one needed a fix.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Droid is not "too big" at all (I'm coming from a BB Pearl) - the size feels very good in my hands and pocket.
It is weighty - not annoyingly so, but the heft in your hand is noticeable - gives a feeling of quality/durability, but might be tiring in certain positions.
Some other things I noticed during my hands-on:
1. I was not having any problems with using the top row of letters in the hardware keyboard - no bumping into the body of the screen slid up above it - I have relatively large hands/wide fingers, and it was not an issue at all. Now that I've used it I'm surprised that people have listed that as an issue.
2. The hardware keyboard is much better than I thought it might be from the reviews, but needs some tactile way to let you know where your fingers are...getting "lost" is the main issue for me. I'm thinking I may apply a very small dab of super glue or similar on the F and J keys to help me w/locating my fingers so I can get to touch typing. One negative - reaching across the D-pad is a little annoying.
3. The HW keyboard is really appreciated when you're entering text into a field and the virtual keyboard just takes over too much real-estate. Wasn't a key feature for me before using the phone, now I'm really happy I'll have the option of either type of keyboard.
4. The landscape virtual keyboard is actually very good...no problems with it, enjoyed using it.
5. The portrait keyboard is barely usable for me - keys too small/close.
6. Videos (Youtube) on it are simply amazing...playing them in-line from web pages is so nice - they load quickly and look great .
7. The Home screen will not rotate to landscape unless the keyboard is open. Everything else rotates fine w/out opening the keyboard, and the home screen will rotate when the keyboard is open. This is either a bug they caught late, or a intended design that makes absolutely no sense to me. (Yes - the auto rotate setting was on.)
8. Marketplace is great - downloaded a bunch of free apps - you can get several downloads going at once in the background and get notifications on them in the notification bar (progress/complete). A better experience than w/the Blackberry App Store. The Verizon tab in the Marketplace has a number of useful free apps listed there - more than just the Visual Voicemail app that someone (Mark V.?) said was there a couple days ago.
9. Now that I've used it some more I do see value in the iPhone style two-finger zoom when browsing - really what I want is more control over the zoom amount, if I had user-adjustable increments for double-tap zoom I'd be fine. Pages render really well, and navigation/scrolling is very smooth.
10. I added a contact to see how it would work - a few minutes later I was looking at an Eris, and it had the contact on it that I had set up on the Droid - the same email account had been used to set up both phones. Pretty cool...but don't lose your email/PW, or your enemies will be able to see/modify/delete all your contacts and calendar info from their Google phone.
11. I LOVE the task switching and multitasking - enjoy it on my BB and will like it even more I think on the Droid. The Droid didn't seem to care how many programs I had open, ran fine regardless. One thing I'm wondering - when you have more than 6 apps running, how does the Droid decide which of the 6 to show you in the task switching dialog?
12. Side-by-side, the screen on the Eris is actually a little brighter overall.
13. Multiple browser windows...really nice to be able to keep the current web page open if I want to look at another web page.
14. There's no way that the Droid will fit the multimedia doc or car mount w/a case on it, unless maybe if the case is very, very thin. Don't know what the options are going to be, but that's a problem for me, as I'm a phone dropper/abuser. Going to have a screen protector, but if I can't find a really thin case that works I'm likely going to look for an invisible shield total coverage or something similar - don't like pulling a case on/off repeatedly.
Since there wasn't any PIM data (contacts, calendar) I couldn't really do much in terms of playing w/those areas.
Ran Pandora it worked perfectly, as well as a bar code app, the app "Where" and a few others. All worked very well - totally cool to look up a movie in Where and see theaters near me based on GPS and view a trailer.
I was so excited after playing with it that I put my car mount up in my car afterwards.
A little under a day and a half left now...
