Archive for 20th November 2009

Two weeks with Droid

So 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 just to the right of the L key and just above the period key, where the semicolon key would be on a normal QWERTY or TVQUIZ keyboard.)

On the plus side of the ledger, I traveled with the phone for the first time today, and it worked flawlessly on my drive to visit the folks. The navigation application is so much superior to my trusty old Alpine Blackbird GPS that it isn’t even funny.

I am not at all impressed with the battery life, however. During the week, I don’t think that I am using it excessively, but by the time I get home from work, the freshly charged battery is down to about 30% or 40%. This would seem to indicate to me that I better not try to squeeze two days worth of usage out of it before recharging. The problem here I think is that I would like the wi-fi to be on so that I am not burning through my 5GB unlimited data plan, but it is probably draining the battery quite a bit. More experimentation with the device is called for here.

On the application front, I have only downloaded free apps so far, and there are quite a few good ones. I do like the game Jewels, a Bejeweled clone. I wish I could figure out how to use Google Sky Map, it seems to be so jittery that I can’t get it to behave long enough to try and find anything.

If anyone has any suggestions about how to maximize battery life, please let me know.