My impressions of the Motorola DROID

On a whim, I stopped into the Verizon store while I was in Charlotte over the holiday. I’ve looked at the DROID before – but didn’t think it was for me given the form factor. I’ve also been holding out on an upgrade – waiting for the Palm Pre to arrive at Verizon (now confirmed for January 25th BTW).

First, I can’t stop saying DROID in a machine voice. The operating system is very fast on this phone. coming from my 4 year old TREO, the DROID is snappy and responds very well to key and touch screen input with little or no lag time. It responds predictably to my commands, doesn’t lock up, or freeze which is a HUGE delight.

I was quickly able to familiarize myself with the device and thought it was fairly intuitive – but I could see some places where a non-techie would become confused at what to do next.

My first frustration with the device is the keyboard. I just don’t understand why Smartphone designers insist on making keyboards that only and infant could love. There is little to no tactile difference between keys and you could just as easily be pressing 2,3 or even 4 keys at the same time (if you are holding it in a landscape view and operating it with your thumbs). I am just as slow typing on the physical keyboard as I am on the screen keyboard. I suspect that Motorola made the keyboard the way they did to keep the device thickness down.

Secondly, I found the “silent” operation to be just that, absolutely silent. When in silent mode, it doesn’t even vibrate. I had to ask for assistance from a Verizon rep to tell me that you have to download an application for that – what? The Verizon rep noted that it is a feature of the OS to be open for users to create applications to have the phone do things which it doesn’t already do. I suppose that is true for even the most basic of “features”.

Third, the “Back, Menu, Home, and Search” keys along the bottom of the device are just way to sensitive. Many times, while using the device, if I have my palm or part of a finger near those keys, it will activate those functions. I wish it was a little less sensitive.

Lastly, the built in accelerometer is quite sensitive and the only real hang up I have is when I am using the phone, as a phone the screen is quick to dim itself and turn off if it suspects you have the phone upright (and presumably to your face). This makes selecting other functions while on a call, a bit of a challenge.

One thing that I really love about the software on the phone is that it just loves working with my Microsoft Exchange (work) and Gmail (personal) accounts. they were both very easy to setup (along with my Facebook) and the software merges all of your contacts into a single contact list. So if you have a phone number for someone on your Facebook list, but not on your email account – it will still display that merged information when you lookup their one contact record. the only problem it had was distinguishing between my bother (Carl) and my Nephew (Carl Jr.). I suppose that if you have contacts with similar names, you may have this problem as well.

Also, I really like the Google Maps navigation. It is even better that it is free. The navigation is not as nice as our Garmin – but it does a great job directing me to where I need to go.

The application library had everything I could have needed. NBA scores, Weatherbug, LinkedIn and a few games… they are easy to pick from and more are being added every day as Google extends the number of handsets which are running the Android operating system.

The Built in 5MP camera took nice pictures and made it easy to share them instantly on Facebook.

I love the Car “dock” but didn’t care for the default “voice search” application assigned to the Car homepage. It will only search for contacts and dial the numbers of contacts which you have in your Google account. to solve this, you guessed it, I had to install another application.

Don’t waste your money on the multimedia dock. I was hoping that it was an induction charging system it isn’t. Like the Car home page, the multimedia dock displays a clock and some basic information (I suppose so that you can use your phone as your alarm clock). There are other ways to do this without spending the extra money.

In summary, i really like this phone, but I am 99% sure that I will be trading it in when the Palm Pre is released in a few weeks. I like the keyboard and form factor of the Pre – better. But if you are married to Google – I certainly think you can’t go wrong with the DROID. Several people whom I shared this phone with also commented on its rather hefty weight. For those who want something a bit more compact, and can do without a keyboard, get the Eris. It runs the same software, but has a bit more iPhone like form factor.