Droid review

Last week I went out and bought the new Motorola Droid. I was a little skeptical because it was made by Motorola and for the last couple years they have made poor quality phones. But it seems they may have redeemed themselves with the Droid, although at first I didn't think so. When I first got the phone it was constantly freezing up, throwing errors, and restarting. I went back to the store on Monday and exchanged it for another Droid and this one has performed flawlessly. (Kudos to Verizon's service, it was a painless return process and I was in and out in under 15 minutes)

So before I get too in depth, I'll give you the TL;DR version:
Its a great phone, the screen is absolutely stunning, integration with Google services are amazing, and the voice search is the best I've ever seen. On the bad side, the camera, although 5 megapixels, is slow and a pain to use, the phone is pretty heavy (not bulky), and the lock button is annoying.

On to the in depth review:
The first think that struck me was the screen, it is gorgeous. The thing that impressed me the most was when it renders web pages there is no need to zoom. The text is crisp and clear and I have no trouble reading it. If you do have to zoom (usually to click on links that are too small) you can't use the iPhone's familiar pinch motion, you will have to double tap which may cause you accidentally click a link. As of right now the Droid does not support multitouch. The screen also has a sensor so it automatically adjusts its brightness depending on the ambient light. So it always appears very bright, even when outdoors. You really have to see the screen in action, the resolution on it is amazing for such a small device.

However, what it lacks in multitouch support, it more than makes up for it with the Google voice search that seems to be built into the OS. Need to get to Pittsburgh PA? No problem, just tap the microphone and say 'Navigate to Pittsburgh.' Want to browse to youtube.com? Beside the address bar on the browser is that microphone, and all you have to say is 'youtube dot com.' My brother was over last night and was trying to trick it. He tried such things as "shamalamadingdong" and it actually found a youtube video, and it seems to be a song from Animal House. Basically you won't need to type much on this phone. Its also interesting to point out that you cannot use voice search if you don't have service, so it seems that your voice is transmitted to Google and processed, and not processed directly on the phone.

Which brings me to the next item, the keyboard. This is probably a matter of personal taste, but I really can't figure out why the phone needed a physical keyboard. In landscape mode, the virtual keyboard actually has bigger keys and I can type much faster on it. It also has the auto correct ribbon which is basically a spellchecker. So this gets a thumbs down from me, I think this hardware was unnecessary and adds to the cost and weight of the phone. (This phone is pretty beefy, easily the heaviest phone I have held.) The other buttons on the phone are lacking as well. The volume buttons are on the right side of the phone, have become accustomed to them being on the left side. They also have some wiggle room and feel cheap. The camera button is two stage, but also has too much wiggle for my comfort. The only button that seems high quality is placed in an awkward position and that is the lock button. I wish it was placed right where the USB input was. The 4 'buttons' on the bottom of the phone are not physical buttons.

The next item on the list, is the camera. It is god-awful. Not because I think 5 megapixels is not enough. Its actually more than enough for a phone. But the camera is very slow, taking up to 5 seconds to take a picture, and another 5-15 seconds before you can try to take another picture. I found that many times it is out of focus. When it does focus, the pictures it takes are quite stunning when displayed on the screen, so it seems to be a software issue. Hopefully it will be resolved in an over-the-air update soon, but for now I would take a standard 3.2 megapixel camera over this.

Making phone calls on the phone is a breeze. You can either start the phone app, or go through your contact list. Calls sound good and I have no trouble hearing on this phone. The only complaint I have is that once you dial, the dialpad disappears so if you call your voicemail and need to put in your password there is an extra button you have to click.

Some other things of note: the app store is pretty good, and the voice search is integrated so you should have no trouble finding exactly the app you need. The battery life is decent. Over the past few days it seems to average 6-8 hours under heavy use and a full day under medium use. Whats nice is that you can use a computer's USB port to charge the phone. The USB cord actually plugs into the wall charger, its a pretty neat setup. The music player annoyed me, there is no stop button, only rewind, pause, and fast-forward. So once you start the music player, it will sit and take up system memory until you go into setup and kill the process. The ability to view running processes and kill them is a nice feature. You can also see how much of the battery is being used for what. About 70% of my battery use goes to the display. So I'm sure that if I changed a few settings I could extend the battery life, but honestly I just love the screen too much to dim it or have it time out any sooner. The integration with Google services is amazing, It receives mail from gmail, messages from google talk, and remembers my preferences in google maps. I also downloaded an app so I could write this blog from my phone.