It's definitely not like us to make a major technology purchase on the first day that it's released, but sometimes taking chances can be a good thing. So far, we are extremely happy with the phones.
Here's my initial review....
1. Screen - Large and bright. Love it. And the touchscreen operates much like the iPhone. You can "flick" through your contacts or webpage and the touchscreen doesn't require you to depress the screen like on the Storm.
2. Apps - Although I haven't fully investigated all of the available apps, the ones that I have worked with seem to work fine. Although the Droid has at least 50,000 fewer apps than the iPhone, I hardly think I'll notice.
3. Google - Dave and I are huge Google fans. If Google took over the world, I'm pretty sure we'd be ok with that. G-mail, google calendar, g-chat, etc, all work great with the Droid.
4. Keyboard - The Droid has three keyboards - one physical keyboard and two on-screen keyboards (one for vertical and one for horizontal orientation.) Some reviewers have complained about the physical keyboard, but if you ask me, more options are always better. I like having the choice, and I definitely the hard keyboard when typing in web addresses or addresses for the GPS. Neither the iPhone nor the Storm have a physical keybaord.
5. GPS - Love, love, love, that it comes with free GPS. The voice of the woman who gives you the turn-by-turn directions is awful, but it's still in beta, so hopefully later versions will improve this.
6. Bluetooth compatibility - By far, the biggest disappointment. The specs of the phone claim that it's Bluetooth compatible. In fact, the Verizon sales people tell you that it is as well. But what they don't tell you is that the Droid does not allow for hands free dialing with a Bluetooth. You have to make about 6 keystrokes to get your call in your headset - hardly hands free if you ask me. On some boards that I've read they're saying that voice dialing will work with a wired headset, but really? Talk about going back to 2006. I haven't used a wired headset in YEARS. And with Motorola owning half of the Bluetooth devices on the market I can hardly believe that they wouldn't allow for voice dialing compatibility. We went back to the Verizon store and the people there couldn't believe it either. They spent about 30 minutes trying to get it to work. This was almost a dealbreaker for me - I am soooooo opposed to people driving while holding a phone. But I'm going to try to make it work - even if it means going back to a wired headset until Motorola and google can fix this.
7. Battery Life - Not so great, but in a way, that's to be expected with a phone that has such a large, bright display. I don't use my phone too much, and yesterday I went from 100% to 70% of my battery life. Not bad.. But Dave drained his phone in one day, although arguably he did use it a lot more than I did. We both purchased car chargers and having the home and car charger always available is going to be important.
This is the first smart phone that I've owned, and I've only tested other phones for a few minutes at a time, so it's hard to really compare it to other phones. But in general, I think that it's a good phone, with a great web browser and it's really easy to use. Dave - who's second wife is named "e-mail" - has already felt that it's changed his life. He loves being connected to the world every waking minute. I like it, but I'm not interested in knowing that Macy's e-mailed me a new coupon at 2 in the morning. So for now, I'm leaving my alerts off, and just check my phone a few times a day.
If I have any new revelations or updates, I'll let you all know! And if you have any questions about the phone, feel free to ask!
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