There is a new king in town! Motorola Droidx

[amirm]

amirm, Are you a pretty heavy power used? Are you using the phone an awful, awesome amount?

Yes, I heavily use mine. I am constantly browsing on it, reading news using NPR or USA Today, checking out traffic using mapping, etc. So my situation is probably close to worst case scenario.

She is already synched with Google on the web.

That's really good. I was not and had to move over my contacts to gmail to get them to sync to the phone.

So, your comments--particularly on battery--are pretty important to my advising her since we may make the switch in the next couple of days. Are you saying that the original Droid is more usable than the X for mortals? What would be your advice? The Incredible? Which Android phone should she get?

I would definitely NOT go back to old Droid. This device is thinner, larger and has excellent sound quality (speaker phone is just wonderful). The keyboard is useless on the old Droid yet it adds to the thickness of the phone. Overall, I still very much enjoy the new phone.

There are also many usability enhancements compared to software on the Droid. For example, you can now answer the phone by just touching the screen. On Droid, you had to slide the button and half the time I would hang up on someone doing that!

My comments above were merely to be fair and not cover up issues the phone has.

 

[amirm]

I've read the new Droid update was a big fix, including BT issues. Have you tried the BT since the upgrade? Did the BT in your car work with other devices well? You might consider calling VZ on that.

I had the updated firmware on the Droid with the same car. That is why I am surprised that there seems to be a step backward with all conditions the same.

As to calling Verizon, I am pretty sure they won't be able to do a thing but pestering them might get the message to Motorola so I will do that when I go in to get a new battery.

 

[The Smokester]

Yes, I heavily use mine. I am constantly browsing on it, reading news using NPR or USA Today, checking out traffic using mapping, etc. So my situation is probably close to worst case scenario...

Many thanks for the reply. Actually, you make it sound like the X's battery is as good as my BlackBerry S2 which itself is excellent unless you use BT and particularly GPS.

I am going to try to steer her towards the X.

 

[amirm]

An update here. After a reset of the Bluetooth connection connectivity has been as good as the old Droid. Battery life also improved to be the same. Can't explain either situation but both problems are resolved.

So the only drawback is the large horizontal size of the phone which may make it uncomfortable if you have to hold the phone for a long time. I have learned to hold it loosely to reduce the strain and many times, I used the superb speakerphone. And in the car I use Bluetooth so it is not a concern there either.

As I noted in the Droid 2 thread, I am shocked how small that display is compared to my Droidx. It is really hard going back!

 

[amirm]

BTW, not sure if this is available on iPhone but I have the weather channel widget on my desktop which updates the current temp based on location and time of day. Quite cool as we were driving to eastern Washington and back.

The other cool thing is animated desktop background. I have a graphics of grasses smoothly moving as if the wind is blowing on them. They change color as it gets dark outside. Thought it was a gimmick but it is kind of soothing to turn on the phone and be greeted by that....

 

[The Smokester]

...The other cool thing is animated desktop background. I have a graphics of grasses smoothly moving as if the wind is blowing on them. They change color as it gets dark outside. Thought it was a gimmick but it is kind of soothing to turn on the phone and be greeted by that....

That IS cool. My wife's has the animated pool with beautiful autumn leaves floating around. When you touch the screen it disturbs the water and a ring of waves propogate out. If you touch in two places you get two rings. Also very cool.

 

[RBFC]

My wife and I both got Droid X's last night.

1. I was fearful of my inability to use a touchscreen for typing, being a hard keyboard dinosaur. In landscape mode, I have no trouble typing as accurately as with the hard keyboard from my old phone. Also, I would have to rate the voice recognition function as ASTONISHING. To text, you merely speak into the phone and it types for you (drivers, take note...) without any errors in many tries by both of us. The auto-correction feature also figures out what you were "trying" to type and suggests corrections, which you choose with the push of a single button on the screen.

2. Bluetooth ran just fine so far.

3. I will try to edit this post in a moment with the Droid X, as I'm currently typing from my computer.

I'm adding this line by using the "edit" function. Works pretty well.

The last line was from my Droid X running Android 2.2, with a new update pushed just this morning.

Lee