Motorola Droid Review

The Newest, thinnest, sliding phone for $199, and with a two year contract you get a $100 rebate! Whoo, hoo.

Great Features:

The Screen is beautiful! It has a very clear display, more clear than the IPhone. A simple tap zooms in or out of an app. And, you can scroll through your contacts on the screen.

The keys on the keyboard are close together and this takes a little practice if you have heavy thumbs.... The virtual keyboard is easier to use and has a nice little vibration when you strike a key.

The Google Maps application is fabulous. You can easily scroll across the map directly on the screen With this phone, you won't need another nav system. It gives perfect directions, quite loudly, and quickly recalculates if you take a different turn.

It allows on screen widgets for easy access. This will please busy Twitter or Facebook users. When the Droid is "on" you are notified immediately of any new Twitter updates. If the Droid is "off" with a dark screen, there's an LED light in the upper right hand corner that flashes different colors for different applications, such as email, or Twitter.

Not So Great...

The Facebook sync is a little tedious as it has no way of separating the "bob"s or the "Trish"s, but you can do this ahead of time by renaming your contacts to match their facebook id's which will be unique.

If you like downloading music, you can copy from your computer by mounting the SD card into your USB and copy the files manually. Or, you can get Sailing Media (WIndows/Mac) to copy ITunes playlists.

As with any Bluetooth phone with a WIFI radio, or any phone that keeps apps up and running, this uses power. Some owners have complained about a short runtime battery. This can be fixed by turning off apps that you aren't using. One user who bought it on Friday, has found that without special treatment, his charge lasts from 8am to 7pm, which is before he generally gets home. One other site set the screen lightness to max, set the media app to "repeat all songs" and the screen to "never sleep". They used 1 hour of Google navigation. They got 7 hours of battery life.

The camera is not the strength of the Droid as many users have complained, but at this time there are only 2 camera apps in the Android marketplace so this will likely get better when there has been more innovation in this area.


General Review by Mobile Tech