I recently switched from my Blackberry Curve to the new Motorola Droid. There was a lot I loved about the Blackberry and little I disliked (well aside from the nub). The switch was not so much about which was the better phone that it was about the Android platform. I have always been a Linux enthusiast and and now that there are decent Linux smartphones, I couldn’t help myself.
First impressions… Gold trim!? It’s like a frickin brick… ohhh shiny screen!
As with anything new, it takes a while to get use to. My Curve had a very intuitive keyboard, the Droid has a touchscreen and a slide out hard keyboard. I find myself using the virtual keyboard more and more as I get use to it. The hard keyboard is not as good as the Blackberry’s keyboard but still much easier to use than the virtual keyboard for typing anything over a sentence.
Also, my Blackberry didn’t have incredible battery life, but I could routinely go a day or so without charging before it would die and talk time only slightly shortened the battery life. My Droid OTOH is completely unpredictable. Unpredictable isn’t really the right word, because I know what I do that causes the battery to drain, I guess now I just have to think about it whereas before I didn’t. The Droid has 802.11b/g, the Blackberry didn’t. The Droid has EVDO rev A and 3G, the Blackberry did EDGE. The Droid has a 853×480 screen at 240dpi… the Blackberry… not so much. These are all battery drainers. The most I had to worry about with my Blackberry was if I left bluetooth on and whether Google Maps was still running in the background keeping the GPS on.
That said, the Droid makes it easier to conserve battery life by including proximity sensor that turns the screen off when not in use. It also turns off Wifi when idle and includes a power usage app that shows you where all of your battery went, so that you can do something about it!
Also, Android is still young as Phone Platforms go. Though it’s based on the proven Linux Kernel and Java programming language. However, the frontend is very new and in some places unpolished. This is sure to only get better in time and infact the upgrade to Android 2.1 is due out in as soon as 4 days.
Something else that is exciting about Android based phones are the development potential. I was able to download, install, write and deploy my first Android based application in 20 minutes! Granted it was only a “Hello World” application, but Google has made it VERY SIMPLE for developers to get up and running.
I was sad to see that there is no built in Filesystem Explorer. In fact, the UI seams overall engineered to prevent you from interacting with the Filesystem. For instance, when you receive an email with a PDF file there is no “Save” option, only Open. This seams counterintuitive to me and somewhat frustrating as I want to save the document, in a folder, in a set path and be able to easily find it. I do not want to have to save the email, and then later try to remember who sent it and what it was about.
Luckily Estrongs makes some very useful tools for working with the phone. A file manager and a task manger.
Apps List
Wishlist
Kindle-like app for eBooks
Per contact SMS notification messages
Flash (10.1 coming with the 2.1 update)
