I’ve had my new Droid phone now for a little over a week, so being a somewhat tech guy I decided to post a short review.

The bottom line: 8 (maybe even 8.5) out of 10.  I really like it.

The positives first.  The Google Android 2.0 operating system on the phone is very, very good.  It’s simple, straightforward, and fast.  It integrates smoothly with GMail, my business email, and social sites.  The screen is bright, colorful, and clear; video looks great.  The browser is faster than I expected, and works perfectly with mobile web sites (and does a passable job with regular ones).  While much has been made of the fact that currently there are fewer apps available for the Android OS than for the iPhone, I’ve been able to acquire most everything I’ve wanted from the Android Market (the notable exception being my inability to find a keyboard that will let me type French characters such as é, à, ç, û, è, and so on).  And no doubt as more and more carriers sell Android phones, the number of apps will increase.

One problem with the phone so far probably has more to do with my large clumsy fingers than anything else — both the onscreen and the pull out, physical keyboards are just too small for me.  While the onscreen keyboard has very good word-suggestions (thus making typing a little faster), that feature doesn’t work for the physical keyboard.  Several times I’ve sent out posts accidentally, which I then have to manually delete, a real pain.  I did find a voice-recognition app that works passably well, but you can’t always use that.  I’m hoping that with time I’ll get better at the keyboard(s), but for now it’s painful.

My biggest complaint, though, is with the camera.  It focuses slowly (sometimes not at all), and the pictures look washed-out and dull for the most part.  While I didn’t expect the camera to come anywhere close to my Canon DSLR, I did expect it to be comparable to the iPhone, which at this point it is not.  Ironically, video taken with the phone looks great — it’s 720 x 480 resolution, very colorful and clear.  The web says that a software update in early December will correct the camera problem; we’ll see.

I resisted buying an iPhone on principle (I liked neither the fact that it was non-open source nor the attitude that goes along with it), and I’m glad that I did.  The Android OS is great, and will only get better over time.

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Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Android, Droid, Google, iPhone, phone, Smartphone