Motorola Droid first impressions

It was well past the time to replace my aging, not-quite-functioning-correctly LG enV phone that I have been using for the past 3 years or so. I have been keeping an eye out for an interesting phone to upgrade to, as I wanted to stay with Verizon Wireless.

My wife and I were just about to jump ship to a rival carrier due to a significant lack of good phones offered by Verizon, when the iDon’t commercials with the happy iPod-type music debuted. Instantly entranced by the prospect of a shiny new alternative to the iPhone and Crackberry drones, we decided to take the plunge and switch to the Droid phone when it came out.

I went to my local Verizon store on the morning of November 6th, and after a wait of about an hour, my friendly sales rep Mike had set me up with 2 shiny new Android phones.

Two thumbs up, 4-and-a-half star rating

I must say that I am thoroughly impressed with the fit and finish of the phone, and especially with all of the work that has gone into the Android 2.0 operating system. They have really done a nice job of making the operating system easy to use and very functional.

Once I put in my Gmail account information, it synchronized all of the information that I have put into my Gmail contacts and calendar. I now have all of my contacts instantly on my new phone, which has all of the options that you would expect it to have (along with quite a few features that you wish you had thought of).

Among the built-in apps, I especially like the Maps application, which provides both mapping and navigation information. I have not played with the navigation much, but it appeared that you can use the navigation along with a street view layer if you want. This is very cool. (I do need to get some kind of car dock/charger for this purpose, as I can see the screen turning off as a big problem, and I’m sure the battery runs down quite quickly when using the GPS receiver along with the 3G radio.)

I do have a few negatives about the phone, these largely mirror the thoughts of some of the other reviews that I have read. This is a heavy device compared to other devices. The camera takes utterly craptastic photos indoors, even with the flash turned on. And the volume of the ringer and notifications seems a bit weak to me. (Oh, and by the way, when you use the slide out keyboard, where is the question mark character???)

But all-in-all, I give this phone 2 huge thumbs up, or a 4.5 out of 5 star rating. Good job Verizon, Motorola, and Google, you have retained me as a customer for at least another 2 years.

One Comment

  1. […] far, I haven’t seen really anything yet from the Droid that is going to cause me to change my 4-and-a-half star rating. Especially after I actually found the question mark key on the slide out keyboard. (It’s […]

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