Early thoughts on the Droid

I made the plunge on Saturday and picked up the Droid from Verizon. I had been going back and forth between getting the iPhone or the Droid. After 2 days, so far I’m happy in my decision.

This review isn’t meant to be a technical or in-depth review. You can find those here and here. Instead, this is meant to be a review from one regular folk to other regular folks.

First, before now I’d been a loyal Sprint customer. I have nothing bad to say about Sprint – love their coverage and never had a negative experience. I started with the Treo 600, moved into the Treo 650 and for the past two years had been using a regular, non-smart phone. The Pre didn’t do anything for me, so I went searching for a new and improved gadget.

My early thoughts on the Droid.

- Call quality (important to me) is top-notch. Talking with friends here in Minneapolis that have AT&T, it’s been a 90/10 mix of bad experiences vs. positive experiences. Some don’t experience dropped calls, but most I’ve talked to hate the coverage of AT&T. The voice quality and coverage are great, just as it was with Sprint.

- Apps. There are plenty of apps, at least for me. Yes, I’m sure there are worthless apps, just like Apple has worthless apps. But the number of apps available right now are more than enough for me.

A few I’ve downloaded:

• Twidroid – Great app for Twitter. Clean and easy to switch between your general feed, @ replies, DMs and the search function.
• Foursquare – Standard Foursquare app. Nothing special.
• Google Voice – Love it. Use it. Again, love it. This alone was a big reason I went with the Droid.
• Have2Drink – A nice app that allows you to search for places to drink. You can differentiate between “daytime” and “nighttime”. I’m not sure if it’s because I live in the suburbs of Minneapolis, but it seems a lot of gas stations come up as places to have drinks. Nonetheless, I think it’ll be a pretty useful app.
• Wikitude – An augmented reality tool that lets you search for various landmarks. Haven’t used it much, but definitely looking forward to seeing how this app works.

Unfortunately, Layar doesn’t support the Droid yet, but it’s only a matter of time. I’m definitely looking forward to the development of AR apps.

- Touchscreen – I have mixed feelings about the touchscreen. The touch keyboard is alright. When the phone is upright, there are times where I struggle with hitting the right key. If I switch it to the vertical keyboard, it’s a lot easier. However, at times I have to shake the phone a bit to make the keyboard switch to the right mode. Additionally, the “home” and “back” buttons on the touchscreen aren’t the most responsive. At times, I’ve had to touch it multiple times for it to function. Other times, I’ll be in an app and it’ll switch out of that app as if I’d touched the “home” button.

Other than that, pulling up various apps works fine. Other functions of the touchscreen work properly. Again, I’ll be anxious to see how this plays out and see if it’s just a rookie mistake.

- Camera & Video. I don’t put much emphasis into these two features. I have a digital camera and I’ll use a Flip if I need to shoot a video. I understand that it’s nice to be able to shoot a quick photo with your phone, but for me, it’s not a big issue. That being said, the camera quality is average. I’ve used the iPhone before and its camera seems to be of higher quality. The one nice thing I like about the Droid’s camera and video is the integration with social platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. You can also attach to an email quite easily. So in that sense, Droid surpasses my expectations.

-Sound quality - The sound quality on this phone is excellent. I downloaded the Pandora app and would actually use this as a music player if I were on a bus or subway. It seemed that the quality improved if the phone was placed on a table or solid object. I don’t know if I should look at this as simple vibrations, but I almost like the sound better when placed on an object, as opposed to holding it in my hand.

- Final Thoughts – The phone isn’t bulky. It fits well in my pockets and feels natural when holding. I think the phone is visually appealing – both as a phone and the graphics on the touchscreen. I haven’t used the slide out keyboard much, but it seems the slide out feature is solid and firm. The phone seems well put together and has the feel of a heavy phone, without being that heavy. I love, love, love the multitasking ability. It’s nice for me to have Pandora playing and being able to switch from Twidroid to messaging. Bring up the camera to take a quick photo, draft up a document via Google Docs and then go back into the browser. All without having to end and re-start each application. I haven’t used Google Maps yet, so I can’t comment on the navigation. Though, I am planning on using it tonight, so I’ll be able to update later this week.

Additionally, I love the simplicity of having all my Google contacts and Google Calendar synched over. When the phone was first turned on, it asked for my Google account and everything was synched up. Pretty easy and flawless.

Is it better than the iPhone? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Is it a useful and powerful device? Absolutely. Thus far, I have no regrets and am absolutely loving the device. I think it’ll get even better as more apps are developed and I have more time to monkey around with it.

Again, this isn’t meant to be a technical analysis. It’s simply an average guy’s impression of the device.

For those of you who have the Droid, what are your thoughts?