Had my first REALLY negative experience with my droid yesterday... Something that is almost unforgiveable with a PDA but not uncommon with electronic devices.
It just stopped working.
At the office I had put the phone into sleep mode while I was in my cubical but when I tried to power up the phone it just would not startup. My first though was dooooooooh I let the battery run out but that was not it as it would not start even after being plugged into the charger. One thing I should mention here is the charger indicator light did come on when I plugged the droid into the charger but that was all that happened. Soooooo on my way home it was a side trip to the Verizon store with me thinking everything I had done in the last week would need to be done again and I would need to reenter all of my contacts…
Once at the store clerk #2 referred to seeing the problem before and suggested to the clerk #1 the battery be removed and reset back into the phone. Clerk #1 gave this a try but…. Nothing. The two clerks and my Droid then disappeared into the employees only section of the store leaving me to ponder the meaning of life and how much easier it must have been in the olds days with the pony express being the fastest form of communication. A few minutes later the two clerks reappeared and gave me the news… My phone was “DOA”…. It was officially the first “DOA” Droid that store had seen, causing me to first puff out my chest and then wonder what I was going to do now. Well Verizon came thru and replaced the phone. They took the SD card out of DOA phone, placed it into a new out of the box phone, and then enabled the phone for me and I was off.
THIS IS A MAJOR PLUS FOR VERIZON!!! They will gain far more in positive advertisement from me talking about this no hassle customer service experience than the cost of that phone they gave me. Had the racked me over the coals about all the things I might have done to the phone and given me a hard time about replacing the defective item I would have ripped them apart in this blog as well as talking about this experience to all of my friend… Instead they get this nice comment and nice comments when I convey this story to all my friends. Oh and I do like to talk so many people will hear this.
So what did I lose? Mostly just phone setup stuff that was easy and not very time consuming to replace… wireless router settings (although it did still have the names of the routers just not the feature turned on), Email connection settings, home page settings, and browser favorites. It automagically knew that I was missing apps that I had previously downloaded and reminded me to download them again, all my pictures and videos were still on the SD card, and most importantly because it syncs my contacts with iGoogle it was able to resync all of my contacts back to the phone (This was nice as my wife broke a phone in the past and she had to reenter all of her contact information manually).
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Droid at the Metallica concert
Took my Droid with me to the Metallica concert on Tuesday to see how it worked inside the HSBC arena (my signal is not always good there) and to see how it did with videos and pictures in that environment.
Overall I was happy with the experience but I found out the hard way that the position of the camera on the phone is not exactly optimal to me. I have more than 1 pic and video with my finger blocking the top of the picture as I was trying to hold the camera above my head to see over everyone.
Reception: Ok but not much better that my old phone.
Videos: Came out nice (especially when the house lights were on). Overall I was very please with this feature even the sound is decent for 18,000 screaming fans and a heavy metal band. I will always use the videos to remember the first time I got to hear Metallica play *One*, *Enter Sandman*, *Seek & Destroy*, and *Nothing Else Matters* in person. On a slightly down note the videos do seem a bit shaky but I was not in the environment to judge this at all.
Note: The droid seems to have a 10 min max video length. This may be a configurable option but I have not been able to find it yet and feel 10 min is enough time for me so I have not intentions of looking any further at this time. Just note that after 9 or 9.5 min the video timer turns red and starts to count down (rather than up) and the camera appears to stop recording at 10 min.
Pictures:
The non-zoomed pictures were nice (as seen in pic #1 below) but the biggest disappointment for me was the quality of the zoomed pictures (seen in pic #2 below). I took a bunch of pictures with the camera zoomed in (not sure why as I was 5 rows of standing people from the stage) and those pictures are a bit dull and grainy.
One thing I did like was the double tap zoom. Simply double tapping the touch screen will zoom the camera.
Battery Life:
Acceptable. I took about 70-75 pics, 30-40 min of video, and was checking email, text messages & sports scores between bands and the battery lasted through the night. I even made a call outside the arena after the concert. I don't want to pretend the battery life was great but it took the phone from about 80%-90% charge down to 40% or less (that was 30-40 min of video with the display on).
No Zoom:
Zoom:
Overall I was happy with the experience but I found out the hard way that the position of the camera on the phone is not exactly optimal to me. I have more than 1 pic and video with my finger blocking the top of the picture as I was trying to hold the camera above my head to see over everyone.
Reception: Ok but not much better that my old phone.
Videos: Came out nice (especially when the house lights were on). Overall I was very please with this feature even the sound is decent for 18,000 screaming fans and a heavy metal band. I will always use the videos to remember the first time I got to hear Metallica play *One*, *Enter Sandman*, *Seek & Destroy*, and *Nothing Else Matters* in person. On a slightly down note the videos do seem a bit shaky but I was not in the environment to judge this at all.
Note: The droid seems to have a 10 min max video length. This may be a configurable option but I have not been able to find it yet and feel 10 min is enough time for me so I have not intentions of looking any further at this time. Just note that after 9 or 9.5 min the video timer turns red and starts to count down (rather than up) and the camera appears to stop recording at 10 min.
Pictures:
The non-zoomed pictures were nice (as seen in pic #1 below) but the biggest disappointment for me was the quality of the zoomed pictures (seen in pic #2 below). I took a bunch of pictures with the camera zoomed in (not sure why as I was 5 rows of standing people from the stage) and those pictures are a bit dull and grainy.
One thing I did like was the double tap zoom. Simply double tapping the touch screen will zoom the camera.
Battery Life:
Acceptable. I took about 70-75 pics, 30-40 min of video, and was checking email, text messages & sports scores between bands and the battery lasted through the night. I even made a call outside the arena after the concert. I don't want to pretend the battery life was great but it took the phone from about 80%-90% charge down to 40% or less (that was 30-40 min of video with the display on).
No Zoom:
Zoom:
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Motorola Droid Day -2
Still not used to the keyboard but getting better..
Today I connected the the Droid to 2 E-mail accounts and can now get E-mail from both as well as have a single combined inbox. It took about 5 min to get a Pop 3 and an Exchange Server E-mail account setup so I give this a thumbs up. I want to use the E-mail for a week or so before I comment further but so far it looks usable and rather functional.
I have grown a bit skeptical of the Droid's battery life. I have used the phone regularly for browsing, text messaging, and phone calls and appear to be getting just over a full day out of a battery charge (not a problem for me but may be a problem for someone who uses the phone a bit heavier than I do)... I still think the jury is out on this as I am probably using my new toy a bit more than usual. I will give it a week or two before I judge this.
My Browsing experiences are getting better but I still have not found a way to access an open browser window from my "Home" screen without first opening a new session and then changing to an already open browser window (maybe I need to RTFM).
I was struggling a bit to get the phone connected to my PC but finally broke down and RTFM. In the manual I found the URL for the the droid online support site http://www.motorola.com/support/droid and on that site I found that I had to "Mount" the phone before it would appear as a drive on my PC. The steps to mount the phone are simple but not intuitive. I doubt I would have discovered these on my own :)
Today I connected the the Droid to 2 E-mail accounts and can now get E-mail from both as well as have a single combined inbox. It took about 5 min to get a Pop 3 and an Exchange Server E-mail account setup so I give this a thumbs up. I want to use the E-mail for a week or so before I comment further but so far it looks usable and rather functional.
I have grown a bit skeptical of the Droid's battery life. I have used the phone regularly for browsing, text messaging, and phone calls and appear to be getting just over a full day out of a battery charge (not a problem for me but may be a problem for someone who uses the phone a bit heavier than I do)... I still think the jury is out on this as I am probably using my new toy a bit more than usual. I will give it a week or two before I judge this.
My Browsing experiences are getting better but I still have not found a way to access an open browser window from my "Home" screen without first opening a new session and then changing to an already open browser window (maybe I need to RTFM).
I was struggling a bit to get the phone connected to my PC but finally broke down and RTFM. In the manual I found the URL for the the droid online support site http://www.motorola.com/support/droid and on that site I found that I had to "Mount" the phone before it would appear as a drive on my PC. The steps to mount the phone are simple but not intuitive. I doubt I would have discovered these on my own :)
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Motorola Droid
I did something a bit unusual for me and purchased an electronic product the day it hit the store (marriage does change people). I bought a Motorola Droid. Seems like everyone I know has been using an iPhone but AT&T was not getting my money as their network around my house and the cabin BWE and I go to leaves a LOT to be desired. So I waited and waited and waited and finally Verizon came out with something that is comparable to the iPhone (Yes I am very stubborn and I would have waited till 3Q of 2010 for Verizon's iPhone if I had to).
This blog might be a bit pre-mature as I have had the phone less than 24 but I wanted to write something I could point friends and family too as they ask me questions about the phone.
so What do I think?
Overall I like the phone it took me just a few minutes of discovering to get to the point where once again I was texting and making phone calls. A few minutes after that I was browsing the internet and had my first twitter app installed on the phone. So now I can tweet and see other tweets right on my phone (with my old LG ENV I tweeted using SMS and never was able to get it to see other tweets). Ten 10 minutes after that I had the blue tooth head set working, the phone was connecting to my home wireless router and automatically switching between that (when available) and Verizon
Then.... the Honey-Do list took over so I had to put my new toy away for a little while... so at this point I have not hooked it up to any of my E-mail accounts, installed other apps, or really gotten a chance to do much geek stuff with it but I will follow with a blog about that as soon as I get to it.
Like
1. This might sound simple but I *love* the screen locking this phone provides. All the phones I have had in the past seem to screw this feature up one way or another. My basic Philosophy is that if I leave the phone for a set period of time it should lock (automatically without any help or keyword from me). The phone should stay locked through any activity (including a restart) *EXCEPT* for answering an incoming call or making an emergency call. This phone does exactly that. My butt will no longer be dialing my friends on its own.
1a. The phone has pattern locking for a security feature so I can draw a pattern on the touch screen to unlock the phone instead of trying to enter a password (that I would mistype 20 times). The pattern locking is a simple connect the dots app on the touch screen so it is rather simple to use.
2. When the phone locks the touch screen turns off. Again a simple feature (one that other might not like) but I need to press the on\off switch to re-enable the touch screen thus turning the touch pad on\off will happen when I want it to not when my arm brushes up against the screen while I am walking.
3. Network switching between Verizon and pre-setup routers is automatic.
4. Threaded text messaging. If you are a heavy user of text messaging then I think you will love this feature as I do... This feature will make it *A LOT* easier to keep multiple texting conversations going at the same time... For me the real test for this will be tomorrow (Sunday) as I will get 100s of text emails regarding NFL and NHL stats while watching the games and texting 4 or 5 of my friends about how how our fantasy teams are doing and what we think of various plays or referee calls.
5. Speed.... So far the phones is fast... real fast to me... of course as I add more apps that might change
6 Memory... The phone comes standard with 16GB
7. Voice recognition searching... This is a cool feature... Simply talking to the phone to do a search of the phone for a contact or a Google search is cool so far.
Dislike
1. So far I am not real fond of the physical Keyboard (KB). The KB is flat with little distinction where one key stops and the next starts. I like to be able to feel the keys and that is making it difficult for me to get used to the phone. The touch screen keyboard is like any other touch screen keyboard and I make too many mistakes with that as well. Also adding to these bad vibes about the keyboard is how far it slides out from the phone. When the KB slides out the top of the keys for the top row of the KB is right up against the top section of the phone and I keep hitting the top section of the phone with the fingers as I type.
2. It requires a GMail account before you can do anything. In the store I could not even get my contacts transferred until I had a GMail account.. Of course I have one but never type or remember the password so I had to make a new one in the store to get my contacts transferred from my old phone and now I can't figure out how to switch it back to my old account... Editing the user name does not appear to be an option so I added the old one as a 2nd account, however, based on the message provided by the phone I am afraid if I just delete the new account it will delete all of my contacts transferred from the old phone... that would be a major *FAIL* so I am not even going to *test* that feature. I guess the moral of this story is be ready with your GMail account name & password when you go to the store to get this phone.
3. Outside of browsing I am having a bit of trouble figuring out how to have multiple apps running all at same time but i think this is more me than the phone and I need to do a little bit of RTFM on this one.
Well that is all for now... I will write more as I progress with the phone.
This blog might be a bit pre-mature as I have had the phone less than 24 but I wanted to write something I could point friends and family too as they ask me questions about the phone.
so What do I think?
Overall I like the phone it took me just a few minutes of discovering to get to the point where once again I was texting and making phone calls. A few minutes after that I was browsing the internet and had my first twitter app installed on the phone. So now I can tweet and see other tweets right on my phone (with my old LG ENV I tweeted using SMS and never was able to get it to see other tweets). Ten 10 minutes after that I had the blue tooth head set working, the phone was connecting to my home wireless router and automatically switching between that (when available) and Verizon
Then.... the Honey-Do list took over so I had to put my new toy away for a little while... so at this point I have not hooked it up to any of my E-mail accounts, installed other apps, or really gotten a chance to do much geek stuff with it but I will follow with a blog about that as soon as I get to it.
Like
1. This might sound simple but I *love* the screen locking this phone provides. All the phones I have had in the past seem to screw this feature up one way or another. My basic Philosophy is that if I leave the phone for a set period of time it should lock (automatically without any help or keyword from me). The phone should stay locked through any activity (including a restart) *EXCEPT* for answering an incoming call or making an emergency call. This phone does exactly that. My butt will no longer be dialing my friends on its own.
1a. The phone has pattern locking for a security feature so I can draw a pattern on the touch screen to unlock the phone instead of trying to enter a password (that I would mistype 20 times). The pattern locking is a simple connect the dots app on the touch screen so it is rather simple to use.
2. When the phone locks the touch screen turns off. Again a simple feature (one that other might not like) but I need to press the on\off switch to re-enable the touch screen thus turning the touch pad on\off will happen when I want it to not when my arm brushes up against the screen while I am walking.
3. Network switching between Verizon and pre-setup routers is automatic.
4. Threaded text messaging. If you are a heavy user of text messaging then I think you will love this feature as I do... This feature will make it *A LOT* easier to keep multiple texting conversations going at the same time... For me the real test for this will be tomorrow (Sunday) as I will get 100s of text emails regarding NFL and NHL stats while watching the games and texting 4 or 5 of my friends about how how our fantasy teams are doing and what we think of various plays or referee calls.
5. Speed.... So far the phones is fast... real fast to me... of course as I add more apps that might change
6 Memory... The phone comes standard with 16GB
7. Voice recognition searching... This is a cool feature... Simply talking to the phone to do a search of the phone for a contact or a Google search is cool so far.
Dislike
1. So far I am not real fond of the physical Keyboard (KB). The KB is flat with little distinction where one key stops and the next starts. I like to be able to feel the keys and that is making it difficult for me to get used to the phone. The touch screen keyboard is like any other touch screen keyboard and I make too many mistakes with that as well. Also adding to these bad vibes about the keyboard is how far it slides out from the phone. When the KB slides out the top of the keys for the top row of the KB is right up against the top section of the phone and I keep hitting the top section of the phone with the fingers as I type.
2. It requires a GMail account before you can do anything. In the store I could not even get my contacts transferred until I had a GMail account.. Of course I have one but never type or remember the password so I had to make a new one in the store to get my contacts transferred from my old phone and now I can't figure out how to switch it back to my old account... Editing the user name does not appear to be an option so I added the old one as a 2nd account, however, based on the message provided by the phone I am afraid if I just delete the new account it will delete all of my contacts transferred from the old phone... that would be a major *FAIL* so I am not even going to *test* that feature. I guess the moral of this story is be ready with your GMail account name & password when you go to the store to get this phone.
3. Outside of browsing I am having a bit of trouble figuring out how to have multiple apps running all at same time but i think this is more me than the phone and I need to do a little bit of RTFM on this one.
Well that is all for now... I will write more as I progress with the phone.
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