Finally on the Android wagon

OK, I finally bit the bullet and bought a Motorola Droid (not to be confused with the HTC Eris Droid Verizon also sells).

As I noted almost two months ago, I’ve been eyeing Android phones this quarter, hearing lots of new handsets were to hit the market. By my count four six are for sale in the U.S., but that’s only about half of what I had heard would hit our stores by year-end. I waited and waited for that bounty to arrive, but got tired of waiting and jumped in earlier this week.

For my readers with short attention spans, here’s the key takeaway: Droid is awesome, and I’m overjoyed I bought it. It takes mobile phones to new levels. BUT unless you’re a power user who lives in the world of apps, I recommend waiting until the end of Q1 for Verizon and Sprint to introduce the Android 2.0 operating system on its Eris Droid and Hero handsets, which are lighter and more elegant. Both of those models are using older versions of Android that don't offer cool stuff like the free turn-by-turn GPS navigation. The Eris and Hero have much smaller memories, but for most users, style and weight are more important than storage.

The Droid isn't as elegant as the iPhone but it's a worthy competitor (Photo: 1.bp.blogspot.com)OK, for geeks and others with more time, here are some pros and cons after using the phone for a few days.

Top-level pros:

• Android 2.0 flat-out rocks. It’s blazingly fast, robust and ever evolving (I’ve already been presented with one sizable software update/upgrade).
• The screen resolution is breathtaking (larger and better than the iPhone). Video streams cleanly and clearly, and resolution of web pages and other documents is excellent, even with brightness dimmed to save battery life.
• It easily handles multiple email accounts in one spot, including Exchange for free. This was a strength of my Helio Ocean, so I’m overjoyed there’s no falloff in featureset.
• It has three keyboards. The physical keyboard is average and sadly seems to be a reason for a lot of the weight, but the two virtual keyboards are excellent, with superb predictive text.
• 32 megs of memory, half internal, half on a flash card.
• Excellent interface, particularly the pulldown “window screen” that allows you to deal with a variety of alerts (fresh email, appointments, news alerts, etc.) on your home screen.
• Solid 5-megapixel photo and video camera. I recorded my oldest daughter’s winter band concert and the video, sound and anti-shake features were surprisingly clean for a handheld.
• Superb power-bar feature for home screen that gives you one-click control over brightness, wi-fi, Bluetooth, syncing and GPS.
• Free GPS turn-by-turn voice navigation from Google.
• More than enough good apps in the Android “Market” (12,000 and counting).
• Integration with Google tools. Regardless of whether you believe Google is evil or not, the integration with maps, GPS, augmented reality, voice recognition, and tons of other Google programs is clean and useful.
• This is silly but I really like the audio alerts that signify new data has arrived. The default is a enthusiastic but robotlike reading of the word “droid,” although you can customize your alerts in other fun ways.

Top-level cons:

• It’s a brick. This will never be confused with an iPhone. It’s heavy and square and a far cry from the design brilliance of my Helio Ocean.
• It’s so powerful that you can drain power in 24 hours if you go overboard on automated data streams as I did.
• Limited “click and pinch” magnification, unlike in all uses with the iPhone/iTouch. This hasn’t been a big drawback for the most part, but I like the flexibility iTouch provides when viewing webpages. When click and pinch is unavailable on certain pages, you’re stuck with small and large options.
• Only three home screens (vs. five on the HTC Eris and nine, I think, on the iPhone and iTouch). The Droid does feature a reverse window screen that allows you to see all of your applications with one click, unlike other smartphones. That’s OK, but it’s nice to be able to have multiple screens to segment apps on a single page, like News, utilities, social networking, games, etc.
• I haven’t really tinkered with the MP3 features yet (there’s integration with Amazon’s MP3 store), but there’s no way it can come close to Apple.
• I haven’t had time to figure out syncing with my desktop but I can already tell it’s not as good as with an iPhone/iTouch.

I’ve always been a believer that mobile technology will drive media moving forward, and devices like the Android not only reinforce that point but magnify it. I’ll post more later on  how these devices and features will continue to change life as we know it, for better and worse. 

Update on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 9:25 PM by Logan Molen

I got a private email from a California newspaper editor asking whether I had recommendations over iPhone vs. Android when it came to apps that would benefit journalists.

It's a great question but I'm not expert enough to pass along anything more than general advice at this point. However, I have downloaded a few cool "news-gathering" type apps that I had planned to test over the coming weeks. I'll share what I learn as I stumble through the process.

But if you have ideas to share in that area, by all means toss them my way. I'm as intrigued as you are by the possibilities.

Comments

[Rico]

Love the review. Keep us abreast. Can you comment on the relative ease of use of multiple emails, the Blackberry's core compentency?

[Logan Molen]

Rico,

As you note, email is Blackberry's core, so it does it better than any other handset that I know of. I don't see that changing anytime soon, given its sizable market share among business users.

As for Android, there are a variety of email apps in the Android "Market." I've been testing three: one that pulls in multiple accounts, one that pulls in only Gmail and a paid app that works with Microsoft's Exchange. The Exchange app called Touchdown is powerful: fast manual or automated syncing, and flexible settings. The Gmail tool is straightforward; it works but not a lot of flash. The preloaded email app that handles multiple accounts worked flawlessly -- until I installed Touchdown. Since then I've experienced a few crashes, so I'm guessing there's a conflict with Touchdown (there's talk of a bug here). I need to figure that out.

One thing I'm still getting a handle on is power usage. As I noted in my original post, you can go nuts with the auto-syncing of email, news, weather apps, etc., and drain the battery within a day if you're not careful. I like to push devices to the limit, so I'm still dialing in what particular apps are power hogs. And one of the things in that software update I mentioned in my original post was a push to stretch battery life. As a result, I can't speak about how Android email specifically can compare with others in terms of battery drain. I'll try to update as time goes on.