

IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like - cschanck
http://designbygravity.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/iphone-to-droid-x-lots-more-good-than-bad/

======
kyleslattery
> The Back button, it is wonderful. I said this before, and after nearly a
> month I am even more convinced, the lowly back button is the most
> significant architectural advantage for Android.

To me (a Droid user since day 1), the back button and the whole workflow of
launching other apps from within an original app started off as something I
liked, but it's kind of a strange concept. When it works well (open a browser
from an app, press back, and you're back in the original app), it's really
nice, but sometimes these nested apps get a bit confusing. For instance: open
a link from a Twitter client, and it brings you to the browser. Hit home, and
then open the browser. Personally, I would expect to go to the link the
Twitter client sent you to. However, this is nowhere to be found, instead
you're at the last page you used the browser directly for.

I've become used to this, but it really isn't that intuitive for new users.
I've handed my phone to my mom, and she's definitely had issues with where the
back button is taking her.

Also, I've noticed a few games that don't implement the back button, and
pressing it, rather than doing what you'd expect (bringing you a pause screen,
the game's menu, etc.), it dumps you on the home screen. Granted, this is the
app developer's fault, but it's just another area where the back button does
something strange.

~~~
yoden
Home resets your state completely. Much more sane to do that than leave state
hidden around. You want what you were just doing? Back. You want to do
something different? Home. Simple.

------
keltex
"I pine for a Mini-USB conenction, but Micro-USB is much better than some
properietary connector. (I like Mini better than Micro because the slightly
larger form factor seems far more durable. Time will tell.) "

Actually the Micro USB was designed to be more durable than the Mini USB... up
to 10,000 connect / disconnect cycles. Plus the wear parts in the Micro USB
are in the cable rather than the device. Much cheaper to replace the cable.

~~~
mirkules
I heard this from other people too, but somehow it just /feels/ less durable
for me, especially when I am plugging it in. I feel some grinding of metal
parts and often wonder if this thing will last. Actually, I feel the same
thing with the iPod/iPhone connectors, but it's definitely more pronounced on
the micro-USB connectors.

------
Terretta
> _"Wifi Tethering. I don’t need to tether often, but when I do, I do. I
> rooted my phone quickly, just so I could use one of the many apps in the
> Marketplace to tether my laptop via Wifi. Worked flawlessly, no extra
> charge."_

That's tantamount to saying "I jail-broke my iPhone quickly, so I could use
one of the many apps on Cydia to tether my laptop via WiFi" ... except you
don't need an app for that because tethering is built into iOS. You need a
different network provisioning file in the States, and elsewhere in the world
tethering is enabled by default.

I liked the form factor of the HTC Aria but found his following points to be
deal breakers, so am back to iPhone for now:

\- every couple of days, you do need to reboot the phone

\- no cellular data while you are in a call

\- no cloud push in Android 2.1

\- separate email apps for Gmail and everything else

\- IMAP email is very weak; really weak

\- the OS (and therefore the apps) are really clunky at switching between
voice/data/wifi

I was also put off by the extremely popular apps carrying name brand logos
that disclaimed association with the brand while asking permission to make
charge calls from my number.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
The no cell data while in a call is a CDMA issue, not a phone issue. An ATT or
Tmobile Android phone can use voice and 3G data at the same time the same as
an iPhone.

Also, I'm not sure how the no cloud push in 2.1 can be a reason for switching
from Android to iPhone. Does the iPhone have a cloud push feature equivalent
to the one Android 2.2 cloud push feature? I'm assuming that's the "no cloud
push" feature he's talking about, since _many_ Android apps have push
messaging for email, IM's, etc. (I've had push Exchange mail since at least
Android 2.1, IM's have always been push-instant, etc.)

~~~
matwood
I'm not sure if it's equivalent, but setting up the iPhone to treat your Gmail
account as an Exchange Active Sync account gives the iPhone most of the cloud
push features (Mail/Calendar/Contacts). I can add a contact on my iPhone that
syncs OTA to Google that then syncs to my mac address book.

Google voice texting and messages don't integrate perfectly yet, for example
if I get a GV text on my iPhone and read it it doesn't show read in GV on the
web (unless of course I use the GV app/html5 site to read it). Also contact
groups do not sync from Google Contacts.

~~~
ben1040
_I'm not sure if it's equivalent, but setting up the iPhone to treat your
Gmail account as an Exchange Active Sync account gives the iPhone most of the
cloud push features (Mail/Calendar/Contacts). I can add a contact on my iPhone
that syncs OTA to Google that then syncs to my mac address book._

The contact/calendar syncing is great and in my mind really makes MobileMe a
hard thing to justify buying. The push mail is nice as well, but I found the
limitations to be a little annoying (but not enough to keep me from using it
on my iPad):

[http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=161771)

Specifically, deleting a message from your inbox is the equivalent of pressing
the "Archive" button in the Gmail webapp.

If you drink Google's kool-aid about never deleting mails, that's great, but I
don't. As a workaround I created a tag called "0-To Delete" (so it showed up
at the top of the folder list when alphabetized) and rather than delete mails,
I apply that tag. Gmail tags the message and removes it from the inbox, and
then at some point later on I can actually delete all the mails with that tag.

~~~
Sidnicious
This is easy to fix.

Check the account's Advanced settings, and make sure that the account's
Deleted Mailbox points at the "On the Server" trash. You may also want to
confirm that the Sent and Drafts mailboxes point to their Gmail equivalents.

You can archive a message by moving it to the All Mail folder.

In iOS 4, there's an option at the top level settings of accounts created as
"Gmail" accounts to archive or trash messages deleted on the device, I'm not
sure how this relates to the above settings.

~~~
ben1040
_Check the account's Advanced settings, and make sure that the account's
Deleted Mailbox points at the "On the Server" trash. You may also want to
confirm that the Sent and Drafts mailboxes point to their Gmail equivalents._

If you're using the Google Sync feature (to get your mail, contacts, and
calendars pushed live to your device), Google presents your Gmail account as
though it were an Exchange account. Consequently, iOS doesn't let you change
the folder mappings like you can with an IMAP server.

~~~
Sidnicious
Good point.

I work around it by setting up the Google Sync account on the device without
mail and adding it as an IMAP account as well.

------
nubela
Having just moved from the iPhone experience of 3 years to an android
experience. YES, YES, and YES! The android is the true fully featured phone.
With the iPhone, I felt the need to tether because surfing the web is so
clunky. Now, even though I have the power to tether, I don't. Because its so
much easier and fun on my Milestone!

The annoyances that plague this guy, well, doesn't really affect me, apart
from the distinct radio groups that doesn't integrate together well, yeah,
with SipDroid, that does become an annoyance when I'm moving and using VoIP.
Other than that... Wow. Android. I am now a 100% fuck-you Apple anti-fanboy.
Just saying.

~~~
loire280
I'm glad you like your phone, but of course your brand new Android phone surfs
the web better than your old iPhone. It's got a faster CPU, more RAM, and a
higher-resolution screen.

Web surfing is very similar among similarly-specced phones across all of the
major OSes (it's mostly the same browser, after all).

~~~
bconway
_Web surfing is very similar among similarly-specced phones across all of the
major OSes_

Actually, not at all.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/07/android-22-demol...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/07/android-22-demolishes-
ios4-in-javascript-benchmarks.ars)

~~~
loire280
Good point, I forgot about the gap in Javascript performance.

We're currently in an arms race of Javascript interpreters, though, and
there's nothing stopping Apple or Palm from using Android's interpreter in the
next release.

------
bconway
We recently moved from a family of iPhones to a Droid and Droid Incredible. I
can't believe we didn't make the move sooner, although I suppose the
Incredible isn't old enough to have made it _much_ sooner. Regardless, for
those not wanting as large of a phone, check out the Droid 2, due out
imminently:

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/see-what-droid-
does-...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/see-what-droid-does-next-
droid-2-by-motorola-pre-sale-starts-august-11-at-
verizonwirelesscom-100338254.html)

~~~
Qz
How is the Incredible? I'm about to get one on Friday when my $50 credit comes
in.

~~~
tocomment
I think it's great. My only complaints are that the camera is horrendous.
Every picture is blurry no matter how still I hold the camera.

Also the speaker sounds muffled and too quiet on regular phone calls. (Yes,
the volume is all the way up.)

Oh and the battery life is kind of bad. I had to read a couple of articles and
turn off all kinds of things off to make it last through the day. I think the
battery has some kind of breaking in period too as it's been doing much better
lately.

~~~
cma
Sounds like your camera is seriously screwed; mine doesn't have this issue at
all.

------
metamemetics
It took me until this month to get a smart phone because I'm surrounded by
computers all day at home and work so I never wanted my phone to be one. Was
going to switch to Sprint Evo or Droid-X but ended up stuck with ATT for a
while longer so iPhone4ed it. Despite all the web-tabloid tech-drama, my
general disdain for iLifestyle marketing, and having never owned an Apple
device... I actually couldn't be happier so far. I just use the digitally
imported (<http://www.di.fm>) app for music so I've never had to mess with
iTunes, maybe that's why?

edit: going to get OSX to triple-boot with win7\ubuntu, maybe my mind will
change once I give the SDK a whirl

------
sspencer
" Every couple of days, you do need to reboot the phone. "

Love how this was tossed out there as an afterthought. Huge, obnoxious deal-
breaker. I love losing state every 2 days! /sarcasm

~~~
jokermatt999
It's odd, because that hasn't been my experience with Android at all. I've got
a Droid (not X, not 2, just the original), and the only times I've _never_
needed to shut it down. In fact, the only times it's been off have been from
me forgetting to charge it. Last I checked, my uptime was 550+ hours with no
sluggishness at all.

~~~
kyleslattery
With my Droid, I regularly have to reboot to get GPS to work, and I've had the
issue on all 3 of the Droids I've had (replaced due to other issues).

~~~
jokermatt999
Have you tried just toggling the GPS settings? I occasionally have issues with
it, but toggling the setting has always worked for me.

~~~
kyleslattery
Yes, that sometimes works, but there are a lot of times where I need to do a
restart of the phone too.

------
jrockway
_IMAP email is very weak. Really weak. Even the third party clients are weak._

How so? I am an IMAP power-user and K9 meets all of my needs. Flagging works,
push works, folders work, SSL + auth works in both directions, and it supports
my self-signed certificate. K9 is infinitely better than my work Blackberry,
which is supposedly the "premier push email experience".

I am really not sure what more an email client could do for you.

~~~
jsz0
K-9's UI is kind of terrible though it is fully functional.

~~~
gleb
Ugly it definitely is.

~~~
jrockway
The notification bar says how many new messages you have. You follow the
notification and get a list of messages. You read them, then they go away. You
can press the star to flag. You can click reply to reply.

It's weird that you have to press menu and choose an option to send a message
after you've composed it, but it's not really that bad of a UI choice.

------
batiudrami
I always find the statement 'I am yet to drop a call' from Americans very
strange. What the hell is wrong with your mobile networks?

------
tocomment
Droid X Questions:

Is it better than the incredible?

Does Droid X have a hardware keyboard? I can't tell from the page.

How does the HMDI thing work? Does it connect to a television somehow? Do I
have to pay to do that?

~~~
noodle
> Is it better than the incredible?

it has better tech specs. the rest is subjective, imo.

> Does Droid X have a hardware keyboard?

no.

> How does the HMDI thing work? Does it connect to a television somehow? Do I
> have to pay to do that?

you plug it in with a type d connector (iirc). its free but only works for the
gallery where you can play videos and view pictures.

