

Tell HN:  Review of the free Motorola Droid sent by Google for Google IO - grandalf

The Good:<p>- It's free<p>- As soon as I turned it on and activated it, it offered a software update which made pinch gestures work.<p>- Google Goggles are awesome.<p>- Actually all the google apps on this phone are very well done.<p>- The touch screen is very hard for me to use accurately, but this could be my fault.  It seems like clicks don't quite register, etc.  I do not have an iPhone though so I may just have to get used to it.<p>- The soft texture of the touch screen is disconcerting, but I may end up getting used to this too.<p>- Verizon 3G should be much faster and more reliable than my TMobile 2.5G.<p>The Bad:<p>- It's not a Nexus One.  I'm sort of over this but not quite.<p>- Even though I signed in with google, there are two email apps, two calendar apps, etc... One is the google app and one is the "standard" one.  How can I delete the non google ones?<p>- The droid form factor is a bit clunky, about 2x as clunky as my blackberry 8900 and in spite of this the phone feels fragile.<p>- UI is slightly sluggish compared to an iPhone 3G or Nexus One.<p>The Test:<p>1) Will I give up my $60 per month unlimited voice/data service with T-Mobile and switch to Verizon and continue using this phone after the 30 day free trial?<p>2) Will I find the phone so compelling that I build an app for it?  So far my experience with the android SDK has been shock at how long it takes the simulator to boot (which I think needs to be done every time you want to test a fresh build of your app).  Fortunately the phone itself boots much faster.
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cpr
Re: Verizon 3G data. Agreed; my Mifi is a godsend.

Re: touch screen accuracy, it's been pretty well documented that none of the
non-Apple hardware vendors have paid enough attention to this issue.

E.g, [http://lifehacker.com/5501814/iphone-touchscreen-accuracy-
be...](http://lifehacker.com/5501814/iphone-touchscreen-accuracy-bests-the-
competition-according-to-robot+driven-analysis) .

Re 2): Could this possibly be true? I'd go nuts rebooting either the simulator
or the iPad/iPhone just to test a new version. It only takes about 3-5 seconds
to recompile, download and start my current app on the iPad hardware.

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grandalf
additional notes:

\- the phone's screen smudges horrendously compared to my blackberry 8900.

\- The app store is awesome, with great apps that are easy to install. The app
store seems to have been given tremendous thought.

\- I have not really wanted/needed the physical keyboard. Without individual
keys it's not really much better than the virtual one, and nowhere near as
easy to feel with one's thumbs as the blackberry's.

\- I really don't know why Google shipped these instead of Nexus One's... My
guess is that these were somehow cheaper to give away... I can't imagine
anyone would choose this phone over a Nexus One.

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elcron
On 2. You don't have to boot the phone after a fresh build, just load the
updated build onto the running simulator.

~~~
grandalf
ahh ok, then I will make an app :)

