Thinking about getting the droid
 

Hey guys. How's it going?

I have currently the htc tp2 on vzw. I got the omnia 2 on dec 2 and took it back last night. Some stuff I didn't like and to me it wasn't that impressive for $520 as I have to pay retail. So I have the tp2.

I was thinking about selling my tp2 for the droid but I am so picky I'm not sure if I'd like the droid much. So I am hoping you guys would be willing to help me with info and stuff. So I'll start with how I use the device and things I hope for etc.

First I have an iPod touch and my fav thing is how smooth the ui is. How awesome safari is at scrolling zooming and formatting pages. It scrolls smooth and pinch zoom is smooth and nice. Pages look good and double tapping to zoom works good too. I love the you tube app and how it integrates with safari so if you click on a you tube link from a site it loads the video player and it's awesome you can sometimes bookmark the vids and stuff. The onscreen keyboard is great for my big thumbs and auto correction works awesome too. I love the cut and paste through the system too.

So those are some concerns and questions I have. With the droid can it do the above and stuff?

Can you download anything from the web onto the storage part of the droid? Can you transfer to and from mac and pc? I'll say I know I will forget some stuff to ask.

How can you play avi, mpeg, mp3, wma, wmv etc on the droid?
Can you install custom roms? Themes/make the ui look different?
Can you browse yer store like you can in winmo and open, delete move copy etc?
Does google nav work good with it's voice turn by turn and stuff? Is there any video of it online somewhere so I could see it in action?

Can you connect the USB to car cd player USB and play music or use the headphone Jack?

Will the marketplace let you download to sd card or the storage part so not to use up the built in ram or whatevr it is. Some phones only have like a very small space for installs. I would install everything to sd card or storage space.

Will it be possible to sort marketplace apps based on size or price or popularity and stuff? Is it possible to only see English in marketplace?

I text, www and would gps with droid. Like to play videos on it streaming from pc or mac. Can you? Can you talk to yer droid and it type out text for you? Like speech to text? Can you speech to text with google maps/nav so you can tell it what to search or an address you are going to?

How is wifi on droid? My omnia 2 was crud always disconnecting the wifi. Can you enable wifi to be on when you turn on yer droid and keep it on always?

Will you be able to update to new versions of android like 3.0 etc?

Can you doubletap zoom in the web browser?

I'll stop with this for now. I'm sure I'm forgetting something.

Thanks guys

Re: Thinking about getting the droid
 

I was going to ask a question, but I think you covered all possible questions ! :O

Re: Thinking about getting the droid
 

I'm very new to Android, But I'll give you what I think in respects to my Old Alltel Touch Pro.

Basically in customization there's boundless possibility, not only in format and layout, but there's ton's of themas and icon bundles available on the marketplace.

It's not held to a frame like WM was, with SPshell/TF3D/Titanium so you can really do wonders with the layout and how you "use" your phone.

There's so many widgets available you can bury all 3 screens with 1x1 widgets and have a ton of useful and good apts at your disposal in seconds, or make it look nice and neat with a solid clock/weather widget, some ez access buttons like WIFI, GPS on off switches.

As far as the music hooking up with the 3.5mm jack it streams flawlessly, my little brother uses his for Pandora day and night and it just keeps going.

Movies/Video wise It could use a little help, but if you convert everything over via Itunes It will play your Mpg4's just fine. Still waiting for flash, but Firefox and Opera are working on HTML5, so I see a big change in the mobile browsing world soon.

No multi touch atm for the stock browser, but it does work just like the Opera browser for WM. Also there's a browser called dolphin browser, which is really useful tabbed style browser that incorporates multi touch that's really fluid and fast. Also with a few filemananger tweaks you can DL anything, and your SD card is used like a flash drive when you plug it in to any comp. Also you can sync songs VIA any player but Itunes. (WMP winamp ect)

If you don't get the droid I would keep an eye out for the Verizon Passion that's coming out early Jan, You can find a spec sheet under the code name HTC Bravo if you want to look at that.

I've found that it does every thing my touch pro did, just quicker and more conveniently.

Also free googlenav is great for trips or just tracking down places.

Also on smoothness, The only time I ever notice my droid falter is doing a lot of things (like msg video and music ect) at once when it just woak up from the screen being blacked/sleeping. Also when you nuke all your processes Via any of the task killer apts it makes changing the home screen a little slow for 2-3 secs.

I hope this helps, my points are a little scattered because exams are killing me, but there's the 411 on the "Droid"

Re: Thinking about getting the droid
 

The Droids UI is extremely fast and smooth, scrolling is smooth and flawless and the processor can keep up with even very fast scrolling so you dont get the "checkerboard". Pinch and zoom is not in the default browser, but there is a full featured browser called Dolphin that incorporates pinch to zoom and is available for free in the Android market. I personally dont use pinch zooming much since I tend to use the phone with one hand a lot and navigate with just my thumb, but if pinching is important to you, you'll want the Dolphin browser. The double tap zoom works extremely well on droid and is my preferred method of zooming. The youtube viewer is integrated into the browser and is pretty seamless. We'll have Flash in the browser in the 1st quarter of 2010 so the youtube viewer wont be necessary after that. The soft keyboard is very similar to the iPhones, so you'll feel right at home on the Droids soft KB. Auto correct does take care of all the little details like capitalization and puntuation saving you some time, and the auto complete suggestions are spot on, even memorizing the words that you make up and use often :D. I've only used copy/paste once, but it was easy to select the test and easy to place.

After installing an app called Download Crutch, the browser will download ANY file type to the SD card with no extra steps necessary, just download the file normally as you would any other. The droid interfaces with Mac and PC the same way, it's drag and drop.

The Droid does not currently have a player that plays avi, mpeg, mp3, wma, or wmv. It plays the same file types as your iPod Touch, so video files do have to be converted first to play on the Droid. I use a converter called "Free iPod Video Converter" that is available at cnet.com it's free obviously :D. The Droid was just successfully rooted yesterday, so the custom ROMs are now on the way :D. If you dont want to wait for ROMs though. Custom home replacement and themes are available in the Android Market which change icons, colors, and the interface itself. Using a file manager app ( I like Astro File Manager) you can indeed browse your file system and edit, copy, move, rename, delete, and open files and folders just like in WM. Google navigation is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING and impresses everyone I show it off to. The voice recognition is extremely accurate and it finds everything I've tried to look for. Turn by turn voice direction which are accurate and easy to follow with plenty of warning before turns, you can feel comfortable driving without looking at the screen because the voice prompts are so reliable and accurate, I repeat, it is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! Just do a youtube search for it and I'm sure you'll find some results to see it in action.

I havvent tried connecting through USB, but I have used the 3.5 jack and it works great. Bloutooth connection also works great if you have a bluetooth head unit in your car.

Everything you download goes to the storage card automatically. Apps install to the main memory, but ONLY the .exe goes to the main memory. All the apps data and files are still on the SD card, so the part that goes to the main memory is usually less than a MB. I have over 100 apps installed to mine and still have half of the phones internal memory available. When searching the app store from the phone you can search by different categories such as "lifestyle" "tools" "media" "just in" etc etc and then within each category you can view by "paid" or "free".

Yes on all of the above. The speech recognition is surprisingly accurate as long as you dont have a ton of background noise. If 2 people are talking at the same time it tends to get confused.

Yes, you can keep it on all the time, and it will automatically use 3g when no wifi is present. Wifi is also super fast.

We are receiving our first udate now actually to Android 2.0.1 and it is automatic and over the air :D so yes. Double tap works very well in the browser and is my preferred method for zooming.

You'll get a lot more responses BTW if you keep your questions down to 1 or 2 per post lol :) It took me about 45 minutes to put this all together for you, and most will just pass on it before trying to answer all the questions together. If you just ask a few questions at a time you'll get more responses from more people :). Just trying to help you get better info.

Re: Thinking about getting the droid
 

Can I just add that this is a Google Experience device, which brings things you haven't seen before. I don't think it's fair to either side to compare this to the apple devices because they have completely different approaches.

The integration of this phone with Google Voice is amazing. And for a user like me it saves enough money to offset my data charges a month. Free Calling to Canada/Free SMS/Free Visual Voicemail. Never mind the functionality of a central phone number.

GPS Navigation - This is a voice activated GPS that's free. Long press on the search button, say, "Navigate to McDonalds in Myrtle Beach South Carolina" and the droid does the rest.

Google Talk is practically a core function of the phone.

Google Goggles is kinda fun.

Google Sky Map is kinda fun too.

The search on this phone also searches the phone itself so you can search your contacts and apps... with voice or text.

Iphone is an Ipod with Wireless Voice and Data... it's core is built around being a multimedia player. It's UI is decidedly polished and predictable (at the expense of customization.)

Re: Thinking about getting the droid
 

Ya sorry guys for a huge post. Thanks so so so much!!!!
Lallen3, that made me LOL for real out loud lol. So funny.

So it sounds like a cool phone. Couple more questions please I have. I talk funny sometimes sorry. I just type ahead of my brain sometimes.

Do you think flash will play smooth? In skyfire it sure as hoot don't on my tp2. I went to a place with flash in the new skyfire 1.5 and frame rate was terrible.

How's remote desktop type software to connect to pc if anyone knows?

Do you guys think there might be a movie player soon to play all the video formats or most? This is important cus I would be downloading from the www not on pc. So I wouldn't be looking to convert unless I could on the droid.

Can you upload in the www browser like at a seedbox? I would want to log on a seedbox I have and it's able to uplad if you click the upload button to select a file to upload.

I saw at you tube a guy reviewed dolphin. Seemed cool
but jerky browser. Pinch zoom wasn't smooth nor was moving around the page. I don't know the version though.

Can you zoom in on web pages and it format the text to read better without so much scrollng? Opera mobile 9.5 does this really good.

If you hArd reset droid will it keep yer storage stuff ?

Is there shoutcast?

Ok I'll stop now. Thanks sooooooo much! :)

Re: Thinking about getting the droid
 

As far as flash, I think that when it comes out for the droid it will work well. The browser is already very smooth and easy to use (nicer than the opera 9.5 i had on my TP anyway) and flash can only make it even better.

I haven't had any experience with remote desktop for android yet.

There are already a couple of video/movie player in the Android Market that can open many different file extensions of videos.

As far as uploading, I've tried uploading files to different sites and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I've tested out Dolphin browser and while it does allow for multitouch zooming in, it is in an early beta-like stage and stutters a bit when scrolling down a web page. The default browser for the Droid is excellent and the text reformats when you double-tap to zoom in or press the zoom button.

If you hard reset the Droid, i hear that it will erase just everything on the phone's memory and only leave what's on the SD card. I haven't confirmed this myself as I have yet to hard reser my Droid.

There are a couple of programs in the Android Market that use shoutcast like one called Stream Live Radio.

Re: Thinking about getting the droid
 

Phone my PC is awesome! It basically like using your phone as a screen and mouse for your computer from anywhere that you have internet access. Imagine using your desktop or laptop computer, then imagine all that functionality through your phone. Open folders, files, browse the internet with fllash on your phone!, open and use programs, send files to yourself, literaly anything! Its like being at your PC. It shows your desktop and cursor on the phones screen, your droid keyboard inputs text on your computer and the mouse buttons are represented by to squares on the screen and it also uses pinch to zoom. There are only 2 negatives that Ive found so far. The BIG one is that it does not yet stream the audio to your phone :( but they have announced that they are working hard at getting the audio to stream as well :D. The only other negative....it costs 10.00, but that not really bad for all that it does.

Re: Thinking about getting the droid
 

Thanks so much guys.

With marketplace they give you a refund within 24 hrs and I read on a forum soon to be 48 hrs.

Is there a limit to how often you can try something and if you don't like it or it doesn't work for you and you request a refund? How does this work?

Re: Thinking about getting the droid
 

You can buy it and return it 1 time, if you buy it a second time it's yours forever.