

Hands on with Droid. $199 on Nov 6th  - agotterer
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/28/motorola-droid-first-hands-on/

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wmeredith
Ugh. I had a lot of hope for this one, but the aesthetics do nothing for me,
meaning that the GUI had better be a LOT better than my iPhone. W(hy)TF does
there have to be a Motorola, Verizon and Google logo on this thing? It looks
like it was designed by NASCAR.

~~~
cma
All three of the logos combined are smaller and less conspicuous than the
giant Apple on the iphone.

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tedunangst
conspicuousness of logos = (size of logo) * (number of logos ^ 2) * (1 + logo
is text)

~~~
fh
There's also the fact that these logos are on the front where they would annoy
me, whereas the Apple logo is on the back of the iPhone where I couldn't care
less about it.

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mey
<https://developer.motorola.com/products/handsets/droid/>

Dev Specs

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marcell
I've noticed a pattern, that I'm calling the iPhone Asymptote Theorem.
Basically, phone manufacturers are copying the iPhone experience best they
can, and they're getting closer and closer to the iPhone, but they're never
quite duplicating it or beating it. The second video showed the Droid loading
a endgadget.com slightly slower than the iPhone. The interface, aesthetics,
all seem slightly or somewhat worse than the iPhone (representative example:
compare the back of the Droid to the back of the iPhone). The scrolling on the
Droid seemed a bit less polished than the iPhone, and you could tell the first
woman was fumbling a bit with the interface.

To put it mathematically, lim t -> inf (non_iphone_quality) = iphone

~~~
jrockway
iPhone advocates seem to forget all the features that the iPhone is missing.
What if I want to be on IM and at the same time browse the web? Unless there
is an external IM server sending me Apple-approved push messages, it can't be
done.

On Android, this is trivial.

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jsz0
I'm skeptical of how well Verizon's network is going to hold up. Out of the 4
major US carriers they are probably the least tested due to their historically
awful handset selection. There is such a huge difference between a modern
SmartPhone and the last-generation of e-mail centric devices. AT&T has got a
bad reputation in the lat 2 years but they are moving ahead with their 7.2Mbit
HSDPA upgrades at a pretty good pace. Assuming they can fully utilize those
channels and beef up their marginal coverage areas they will have have a
pretty big advantage over EV-DO Rev A.

~~~
dolinsky
I'd be much more skeptical if this wasn't already the nations largest and best
network. They bounce between #1 and #2 in subscriptions regardless of the
phone selection. And by the time HSDPA is rolled out Verizon will be rolling
out LTE.

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dustingetz
any newer rumors about how badly verizon nerfed it?

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steveklabnik
It includes Wifi, which I was pretty suprised about.

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jrockway
I think I must be the only person in the world that likes the default Android
UI. This and HTC's interpretation are ugly and unusable in my opinion.

Looks like Verizon also killed off the unlock pattern?

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albertsun
Unlock pattern? What's locked down about the phone? I thought one of Android's
main selling points was that it's a completely open platform.

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randallsquared
When you "lock your phone" to prevent others from using it, the G1 has a
system for unlocking where you could draw a pattern on the screen rather than
typing a password. It's pretty nice. Not sure why the grandparent thinks it's
not available on the Droid.

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jrockway
The lock screen shown in that video is a "slide-to-unlock" thing.

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randallsquared
But the G1 had more than one unlock method, too.

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jrockway
"Press menu twice" and "draw your pattern" are the only ones I know of. But
yes, you can write your own lock application, and there are a few on the
market. ("Slide to unlock" is one, although it was very broken when I tried
it.)

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benofsky
Looks like a very nice phone indeed. Interface wise though, they're miles off,
does not look easy to use in the slightest.

Edit: clarification of point.

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natrius
What in the photos gives you that impression? People say that sort of thing
often, but it seems more like a mantra than something backed by actual
evidence.

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benofsky
It was more the video and the fact that the email for the woman's corporate
email account and gmail account was called "Motorola", it made little sense.

I dunno, it just really did not look like someone who _does not read hacker
news_ could pick it up and understand it.

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rms
What's the screen resolution? It looks like 320x480... I guess Droid will be
just another phone rumored to have 800 wide screen resolution. :(

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SwellJoe
This article claims "400,000 pixels, gives twice the resolution of any other
(smartphone)". So, it's gotta be a lot better than 320x480, or the Motorola
spokesperson is simply lying. The only specific number I could find has it at
480x854, which is _more_ than 400k pixels.

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CitizenKane
From what I saw of the videos the spokesperson simply seemed to be not too
bright. She made somewhat stupid errors throughout the video.

The resolution of the screen is 480x854 and you can see the full specs here:
[http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-
and...](http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-
Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola-DROID-US-EN.alt)

~~~
rms
Thank you. I guess I am getting a Droid then. I'm surprised more people aren't
commenting on the screen resolution; that's enormous from a usability
standpoint.

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randallsquared
Yeah, I don't know of any similar phones on the market this year that have
this resolution or better (except the N900; very similar specs, but not
Android). I had a few specific gripes with my G1, and it may well be that the
Droid fixes all of them.

