It is more fussy than the iPhone. It will sync with my car (Audi) but no access to anything other than raw phone functions (speakerphone, dial access, hang up). This was the same as my Blackberry. It’s been a year since I had a Blackberry so I don’t know if they’ve improved since then, but it was nice to have the iPhone’s level of sync, where you could see your address book, your recent calls, all that. Don’t have that with Droid. Looks like I will have to initiate calls with my cell. Demerit.
android tips for the young’uns
What is it about putting everything on youtube? I don’t have time to sit around watching videos. Wait, I guess I did watch a new “The Website is Down” episode yesterday. The Android team sent me an email chock full’o'tips on using andriod. It appears they have their own channel here where you can learn all kinds of good stuff on using android. It gives you some good insight into the OS if you are contemplating a move (from iPhone or BBerry).
notifications
The Droid has a small green light in the upper-right part of the screen when you have a new message. It is not a part of the touchscreen, it is above it. However it is a small round light on the front of the phone and it does not wrap around so you really can’t see it from the top. I hate to split hairs though since the iPhone didn’t have one at all.
Somehow I’ve set mine up to vibrate and give a notification tone when a message arrives. Can’t figure out how to stop the vibrate on message arrival. Grrrr. [UPDATE: go to the main mail screen, select the menu key, select "settings" and scroll to the bottom of the list to turn email vibrate on/off. Now why wouldn't that be with all of the other notification settings? Thanks Chad.] Other than that, the controls for notifications and calls are fairly complete. You can set a separate media volume, call notification volume, and message notification volume, as well as select different sounds for calls/messages.
Verizon: smaller iPhone, bigger cancellation fees?
This story on Apple Insider is interesting for two reasons. One, it discusses Verizon’s plan to launch a new smaller iPhone late in 2010. Yes, the same Verizon running all those Droid ads slamming the iPhone. Second, it talks about Verizon’s new higher cancellation fee of $350. I did not read that fine print in my contract! Anybody connecting the dots? They want to sell all the Droid phones they can now, and don’t want to get any early cancellations 12 months from Droid users wanting to jump ship to (in my case back to) an iPhone.
Relevant quote:
Verizon’s merciless attacks on AT&T’s 3G network coverage in ads spoofing the iPhone’s “there’s an app for that” slogan were another factor which left some observers to think that Verizon could not possibly be in talks with Apple to sell the iPhone anytime soon, but the OTR report indicates that Verizon and Apple have already hammered out an agreement to sell the new iPhone model within the year.
Verizon recently launched two smartphones aimed squarely at the iPhone: the BlackBerry Storm 2 and Motorola Droid. At the same time, the provider also announced a new cancelation policy that charges users a hefty $350 when they attempt to back out of contracts involving “advanced devices.”
Last year, the company found little lasting enthusiasm from users who assumed that the original Storm would be closer to the iPhone in terms of features; whether the new fee is an attempt to penalize unsatisfied users or to profit from switchers next year, it may result in users rethinking their purchases right now.
With reports breaking the news that Verizon will be selling the iPhone within the year, sales of the Storm 2, Droid, and next year’s Palm Pre may end up repressed if customers decide they’d rather wait for the iPhone to arrive instead of facing the prospect of a major cancelation penalty and the loss of their subsidy credit by buying an alternative device now.
[Update: This topic is now a story on Fortune.]
verizon’s other android phone
A review of Verizon’s upcoming OTHER android phone on gizmodo.com. It’s $100 – half the price of the Droid. When I bought the Droid it was $300 with a $100 rebate.
viewing ms office files
There’s an app for Android (and iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, and Symbian) called Quickoffice that allows you to view, edit, and create MS Office files. I bring it up because it seems to be the default way to view office files attached via the gmail app. The app itself is not available by browsing the phone, but when you get an attachment that is a .doc, .xls, .ppt, or .txt it will open it in Openoffice (it will also open the .xlsx, .docx, etc versions). It’s pretty slick. For instance I could view spreadsheets on my iPhone, even switch among tabs. This allows the same, but it even will show you the formula when you highlight a cell! I’ve tried out Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents, all worked like a charm.
The weird thing is, the full version of Quickoffice is not available in the Android Marketplace. There is an app called DocumentsToGo (I’ve downloaded the free “viewing only” version) which allows you to create and edit as well as view. I think it was $14.99. It got pretty good reviews, so if you’re willing to shell out a little cash you will be one step closer to leaving that laptop at home on trips.
this thing flies
it is fast. I read somewhere that it has the same processor as the iphone. Moto’s spec sheet doesn’t go into it. This thing is much faster than my iphone. Faster at switching between apps, faster browsing, it’s just crisp. This guy thinks so too. Gold star.
demerit – ‘mark unread’ in gmail app
This shouldn’t just be one big cheerleading session so I’d like to cover flaws too. So here goes. The default gmail client is pretty snappy, works well, and syncs email automatically (if you have notifications on, you’ll get alerts in real time as you receive email). The only part I don’t like is there is no way to mark an email “unread”. When you select an email, you can either archive it, delete it, or apply/remove various labels. [UPDATE - press the menu key when viewing the email and it pops up as an option. Missed that. Duh.]
Everybody uses email differently, I do use the star system in gmail to tag important emails but I also like to mark some emails unread to make sure I read them again. It is relatively simple to put a link on your desktop to use gmail via the web interface instead of the built in app if you need to mark things unread, and (important) in use it is probably 30-40% faster using the web app vs. the iPhone but still I don’t get why this often-used feature is left out of the built-in gmail app. One demerit. [UPDATE: I'm gonna leave that because Archive and Delete are available right on the screen, why not "mark unread"? Why not a dropdown list of other actions like you see on the gmail web app?]
cable/adapter
The Droid uses a micro-USB cable. I can tell you from experience it is not the same as a Blackberry USB cable, which is too bad, because I have a giant pile of those sitting around. However the USB cable that ships with the phone has a detachable charger brick. I wonder if the Droid cable would work if plugged into a iPhone brick. I have a pile of those too. I will report back on that. [Update - Yeah, you probably don't want to go ahead and use that iPhone brick...'nuff said.]
the Droid cable is on the left, Blackberry USB on the right
android community
Android has community forums. This one is pretty cool, the admin staff reviews android apps.
