|
From a report I read yesterday on the Droid, I also posted on another thread:
"The Droid -- $299.99 before a $100 mail-in rebate for new and renewing customers who sign up for voice and data bundles of $69.98 or more, text messaging not included --also shares certain issues with other Android devices. You have to upload your existing calendars and contacts lists to Google's Web-based services, which then synchronize with the phone over the air. (Other companies are working on software to allow direct syncing of those records, as well as iTunes music libraries, but they're not all there yet.) And its multitasking abilities can outstrip its hardware, leading to hiccups in music playback as other things happen in the background.
...
The Droid's flash-equipped camera, however, doesn't yield the quality that its 5-megapixel resolution might suggest. Photos appeared grainy, videos looked blurry and it exhibited the same shutter lag as most other cameraphones.
...
Less impressive: Verizon's visual-voicemail software, which allows you to play or delete messages in any order but this costs an extra $2.99 a month.
The Droid's lack of multi-touch gesture input -- a standard feature on the iPhone, Palm's Pre and some other Android phones --and its inability to open a few standard e-mail attachments constitute other disappointments. "
Seems some of the OOB services available on the iPhone and other "lesser" models need a little work on the Droid. And from Android Central, whom we expect to be Droid lovers, even they admit to a few shortcomings:
"Starting with the front face of the phone, the DROID is all screen. In fact, you can easily mistaken this as a 'one-slab' device a la iPhone 3GS if you didn't know better. The touch sensitive buttons line the bottom of the screen (Back, Menu, Home, Search) and though they're styled nicely, we can't help but think a pressure-sensitive option would be a better option. There's been occasions where we accidentally hit a button that we didn't intend to. It's not the biggest issue, but it's definitely worth noting.
The biggest sticking point for users, design-wise, might be the fact that the screen top half of the phone doesn't line up with the keyboard bottom half. Think of it as an anti-chin, actually. It's an interesting design choice that doesn't really affect usage in portrait mode but slightly affects using the phone in landscape (more on that later)...nfortunately, the DROID won't launch with multitouch (on Verizon at least) because, well, we don't really know exactly why. Multitouch makes touchscreen experiences so much more intuitive that it's almost inane to not include it. The iPhone has it. The Pre has it. The Hero has it (in the browser). The DROID should have it. What's the deal?...We'll be honest. You won't find many people who'll love the hardware keyboard on first impression. Even though the buttons click fine with a great springiness to it that results in a satisfying click and the layout and look seem decent enough, it still takes time to get used to. The problem with the keyboard is that it's not easy to tell when one button starts and where the other one ends, so typing fast is somewhat muted because you end up 'typinh fasdt'.
But we'll also be honest. We're definitely improving on the hardware keyboard. It's strange to think of a hardware keyboard having a learning curve, but the Droid's keyboard definitely has one. Keep hammering away and we're sure you'll be up and ready someday...Typing is made more awkward because of the extension the bottom half of the phone has. Remember typing on the G1, trying to position your hand over the chin? It's not as bad as that, but it's a similar feeling. You feel like you're overcompensating with your right hand and there's a slight awkwardness to the motion. So the odd design choice of the 'anti-chin' comes back to bite us where the 'chin' already has. Weird.
The 5-way d-pad is borderline useless. We think Motorola only put it in there to add more gold accents to the DROID because we never found a real need for it. Sure, it's nice to hit the down button every once in a while to get through text input screens but we feel the touchscreen trumps it nearly every time. We're not sure if eliminating the d-pad and spacing the keys would've helped the keyboard (it might've be too wide) but it's worth thinking about...The four touchscreen buttons on the front face of the phone are fun to use but not practical in the day-in, day-out routine. When holding the phone in landscape mode whether to use the landscape soft keyboard (which is amazing) or take a picture, we've accidentally hit a button we weren't supposed to hit. If those buttons were pressure-sensitive instead of touch-sensitive it wouldn't be an issue. Also, the backlight on touchscreen buttons backlight sometimes disappear when you're using the phone, which makes it really tough to see if you hit menu or back...The four touchscreen buttons on the front face of the phone are fun to use but not practical in the day-in, day-out routine. When holding the phone in landscape mode whether to use the landscape soft keyboard (which is amazing) or take a picture, we've accidentally hit a button we weren't supposed to hit. If those buttons were pressure-sensitive instead of touch-sensitive it wouldn't be an issue. Also, the backlight on touchscreen buttons backlight sometimes disappear when you're using the phone, which makes it really tough to see if you hit menu or back."
And on and on. Many good things, some less than desireable.
|
10-24-2009, 10:30 AM
Linear Mode
