(An)Droid it is!
After a long time, I wanted to blog a gadget review here.. When I started this blog, I had this idea of posting first-hand experience with a variety of things. "ireview-here.blogspot.com" was what it was called back then. But for the last one year, nothing we bought has attracted me enough to sit down and type a story...... until the droids arrive! Yes, this post is dedicated to my newest addiction - Android phones. We got this Verizon deal wherein, you buy Motorola Droid, you get HTC Eris free. Motorola has 2.0 version of Android, while Eris has a slightly older version. That apart, they're both pretty much the same.
First the goodies..
First the goodies..
- 5MP camera!
- Voice search
- Voice based navigation
- Multi-tasking
- Physical QWERTY keyboard
FYI, none of the above are available on an IPhone. Actually, I was leaning towards getting myself an iphone. The only reason I ditched the idea was because of the 5 mega-pixel camera built-into the droids. A photo-enthusiast that I am, I make sure I carry my camera wherever I visit. But lately, there isn't much room in my bag for the camera we have and hence planned to purchase a smaller, lighter camera as a Christmas present for myself. :) Cellphone and high resolution camera in one device sounded like a good deal, and so, the desire to own an iphone became history.
When we bought the droids, a month ago, I didn't know about points 2-4 above. Each of these features is brilliant in itself. Voice search is good fun. Your order is Google's command, interestingly it can even understand the names of Indian restaurants most of the time. :) Voice based navigation is really helpful. Once you're in the car, you don't have to take the trouble of typing out the destination address. Speak "Navigate to subway" and zap! The GPS gets locked and before you even realize, it starts spitting out the directions one-by-one. The other GPS we had would take like 5-10min to get contact with the satellite. The droid phone is superfast, you dont need to wait for satellite connectivity. And guess what, GPS comes free! Coming back to voice search, the other day when I got bored of flipping AM, FM and CD on the car stereo, I launched the Youtube app and said "take my breath away". That's all it took to take my breath away. :) Man! I enjoyed the ride so much listening to the song. I know, its hard to control yourself from looking at the video, particularly if you belong to Tom Cruise fan club.. :)
And finally multi-tasking.. When I learnt from a friend that IPhone can't keep more than one app running, I was shocked. Its such a basic functionality you expect from any computing device. Android lets you open upto 6 apps at once. That's pretty cool. I can listen to a song on youtube while reading a news feed, and quickly respond to a gmail notification that says I've got mail!
The UI isn't as outstanding as the IPhone's is. But its pretty decent. Zoom-in zoom-out with fingers, flipping thru pages using fingers, superfast scrolling, are all there. Motorola droid has flash camera but HTC Eris doesn't. Picture quality for both is pretty good. So is the sound quality. Also, the Android marketplace has plenty of free applications. I could even find an Indian news widget to keep myself updated with the latest news from my homeland.
With this I stop the sweet-talk. The only major concern I have with this phone is, some of the applications drain away all the battery power. Particularly the browser.. If a page becomes non-responsive, the browser hangs up, you forget about it and launch other applications, then come back to the browser, and then you see the "white screen of death" as I like to call it. The phone becomes non-responsive and you have to reboot it. The usual problems with a computing device like system crash, hang up, blank screens occur once in a while on this phone. Its then that I realize my old phone was better. Because of the operating system issues, the availability of the phone is reduced. IMO, the most important function of any phone is to be up 99% of the time, to keep you connected, and the system down time should only be attributed to discharged battery or weak cellular signal. But now, with the operating system intruding into the cellphone, making them mini-computers, there's a good chance you're missing out on phone calls while you're phone is busy rebooting. This applies to any smartphone. So, talking about the droid, I'm yet to figure out a way to "ctrl-alt-del" the phone so as to bring it out of the non-responsive state without having to reboot.
The second problem is, there's no close button for the apps. So, you'll have to download an app killing app to close the apps after you're done. Its kind of like a task manager. The one I installed can't be killed. To close an app, there's task manager, but to close that, there's nothing. Painful.
On the whole, its a pretty good investment. Verizon's network is good too.. There's coverage in the hills of Livermore, CA as well as the beaches of Monterey. With the Nexus One scheduled for release, I'm sure Google is going to give Apple a run for their money.
When we bought the droids, a month ago, I didn't know about points 2-4 above. Each of these features is brilliant in itself. Voice search is good fun. Your order is Google's command, interestingly it can even understand the names of Indian restaurants most of the time. :) Voice based navigation is really helpful. Once you're in the car, you don't have to take the trouble of typing out the destination address. Speak "Navigate to subway" and zap! The GPS gets locked and before you even realize, it starts spitting out the directions one-by-one. The other GPS we had would take like 5-10min to get contact with the satellite. The droid phone is superfast, you dont need to wait for satellite connectivity. And guess what, GPS comes free! Coming back to voice search, the other day when I got bored of flipping AM, FM and CD on the car stereo, I launched the Youtube app and said "take my breath away". That's all it took to take my breath away. :) Man! I enjoyed the ride so much listening to the song. I know, its hard to control yourself from looking at the video, particularly if you belong to Tom Cruise fan club.. :)
And finally multi-tasking.. When I learnt from a friend that IPhone can't keep more than one app running, I was shocked. Its such a basic functionality you expect from any computing device. Android lets you open upto 6 apps at once. That's pretty cool. I can listen to a song on youtube while reading a news feed, and quickly respond to a gmail notification that says I've got mail!
The UI isn't as outstanding as the IPhone's is. But its pretty decent. Zoom-in zoom-out with fingers, flipping thru pages using fingers, superfast scrolling, are all there. Motorola droid has flash camera but HTC Eris doesn't. Picture quality for both is pretty good. So is the sound quality. Also, the Android marketplace has plenty of free applications. I could even find an Indian news widget to keep myself updated with the latest news from my homeland.
With this I stop the sweet-talk. The only major concern I have with this phone is, some of the applications drain away all the battery power. Particularly the browser.. If a page becomes non-responsive, the browser hangs up, you forget about it and launch other applications, then come back to the browser, and then you see the "white screen of death" as I like to call it. The phone becomes non-responsive and you have to reboot it. The usual problems with a computing device like system crash, hang up, blank screens occur once in a while on this phone. Its then that I realize my old phone was better. Because of the operating system issues, the availability of the phone is reduced. IMO, the most important function of any phone is to be up 99% of the time, to keep you connected, and the system down time should only be attributed to discharged battery or weak cellular signal. But now, with the operating system intruding into the cellphone, making them mini-computers, there's a good chance you're missing out on phone calls while you're phone is busy rebooting. This applies to any smartphone. So, talking about the droid, I'm yet to figure out a way to "ctrl-alt-del" the phone so as to bring it out of the non-responsive state without having to reboot.
The second problem is, there's no close button for the apps. So, you'll have to download an app killing app to close the apps after you're done. Its kind of like a task manager. The one I installed can't be killed. To close an app, there's task manager, but to close that, there's nothing. Painful.
On the whole, its a pretty good investment. Verizon's network is good too.. There's coverage in the hills of Livermore, CA as well as the beaches of Monterey. With the Nexus One scheduled for release, I'm sure Google is going to give Apple a run for their money.
