'Droid Phones...

[gizamo]

On a friends recommendation, I upgraded from my Blackberry to a new Android phone.... Wow, what an unexpected improvement that was. I'm amazed at the capability of this new format. It has allowed me to drop my internet carrier, drop the designated line for the computer at home, made the laptop for trips useless baggage on a airplane or motel room, and increased my business productivity.

Anybody else having a similiar "enlightenment"...? :D

 

[ohiobuckeye]

Can it cook dinner, too!....:D

 

[RichardWA]

My daughter has one, they are pretty cool. The only problem I am aware of is hers freezes up once in a while. Verizon reboots it then it is fine. She does lose her contact list when this happens

 

[gizamo]

Ohiobuckeye...


Nope...;)

But it hasn't asked me if " Does this Gel Skin makes me look fat?"......Either! :D

 

[cowboy117]

I learned to use the alarm on my Motorola phone after 3 years[after being shown how].Still haven't texted with it or sent a pic,tho[don't know how].Did i mention i've had a cell phone and no land line for 10 years?

 

[Krull]

I finally got into the new century and got a cell,but me being me I just needed something that could survive being dragged through the back country,rivers,hunting you name it.

So I wound up with a Motorola v860 Barrage and it works just great...hell I got a signal at White Sands monument NM! :eek:

I also lent it to my mom's husband when the signal on theirs fell off the face of the earth and the guy he called asked if he was on a land line,that was :cool: considering we were in the middle of bloody nowhere NM.

 

[Airedale]

Yup-my work phone is a HTC Hero. Had it about 6 months and it is great.

Handy as can be.
Dave

 

[Wayne02]

Not yet, but next month is upgrade month and we might end up with three of them in the family.

I guess I have to learn how to text because it seems to be the only way my son can communicate anymore when he is away from the house. And despite the frustrations on my part, I do like to keep the lines of communication flowing with him.

How well do these phones with no tactile keys work for texting? I assume they have some sort of keyboard that shows up on the screen itself? My fingers aren't the most dexterous anymore and I wonder if it is easy to hit the wrong keys?

I'm hoping that there will be a few 'old guy' applications available for the droid. Such as some way to help me find my truck in the parking lot. Turning on the truck alarm with panic button on the key fob works but it's getting kind of embarrassing. :D

My biggest concern with these is how durable they will be as I work outside on the farm quite a bit and my phone sometimes takes a pretty good beating.

 

[wuluf]

Giz, which blackberry did you have?

 

[gamedic]

I bought the original htc droid when the android os came out a little over a year ago. It was my first smart phone. I love it and wont be without one now. The things an android can do are amazing. I am rough on everything I own. It only took me about a month to break the belt clip I bought for it. I have carried it in my front pocket ever since. It has held up to fire gear, ambulances, wilderness rescues and my landscaping buisiness. I have broken several other stronger looking phones, but this thing keeps going and can give me directions, tell me the temperature outside and the correct dose for medications, play music and I can even make phone calls on it too.

 

[dmar]

I've got the Blackberry Storm II, and like it. But, I am looking to get a new device next year.

Verizon will be available through the iPhone next year, so I thought I'd go that route, but I've seen the Droids, and they seem very good, as well. So, now I'm conflicted. Has anyone had both the iPhone and Droid, for a real-life comparison...?

 

[Firehouse]

Best thing for a Droid is an Otterbox. All of the guys at the station on my crew have their iPhones and Droids in an Otterbox case. One guy threw his Blackberry against a block wall in a short fit of anger. The phone didn't have a scratch on it, but it busted it up on the inside and wouldn't power back up. But it wasn't the cases fault. As for the Droid operating system, you can keep your apples and berries, I'll keep my Droid.

 

[Onomea]

Giz, what does the 'Droid do that the BB doesn't?

Frankly, I have never come anywhere close to figuring out all the stuff these "smartphones" do...

 

[MKT]

I made the jump to a Droid a few months ago. It is great having so much ability at the fingertips, in fact I call it a finger computer. I went with the HTC Incredible, which seems to be well made and reasonably tough. This is good as I have been known to be a little hard on phones. I had a Blackberry for work last year, the Droid can do so much more in my limited experience.

One downside to the Droid - their battery uasage! You have to run the Task Killer application full time or all of the applications will rain the battery in 4 to 5 hours. I have my Task Killer set to only allow two applications to run continually and my battery generally lasts a full day of heavy use.

I also learned yesterday that the Droids will run Itunes music. I haven't tried that yet but one of the troops at my station has. I'll need to take another look at the manual.

 

[ajvossman]

I have the Motorola Droid and love it! it wont cook dinner for you but it well tell you where to find it and how to get there.

 

[gizamo]

Giz, what does the 'Droid do that the BB doesn't?

Frankly, I have never come anywhere close to figuring out all the stuff these "smartphones" do...

My Blackberry was hard to use, tiny keyboard versus the full slide out keyboard on my acclaim. With the Blackberry, I had to squint to see the keys and many of them weren't Qwerty style or placement. The Droid is like having a keypad.

We were leveling a washing machine today, My friend downloaded an app that made his Droid into a level. How cool is that....:cool:

 

[MKT]

I have the level app as well and also recently used it to level a new dryer. The GPS/compass app is pretty cool too, has all the functionality of a dedicated GPS unit - speed, alt, heading and location in ddmmss or decimal degrees, even gives you your exact location by street address when not in the boonies.

edit to add: I did plug my Droid into the lap top and moved some Itunes music to the Droid. It's working just like my Ipod :)

 

[bulletproof-791]

i had a HTC HERO...after 4 phones finally got 1 that would work ....well after 2 months.it to took a ****....turned it on and it powered up and then kept re-booting.....took it back to sprint and got a full refund and got me my blackberry back.....not to say yours will be junk , just my 2 cents

 

[Dan M]

Night before last my Smart Phone died pretty much and had to go to Verizon yesterday morning. My son has wanted a Droid X for a while now so I took the offer of Buy 1 get one free and I am amazed with this thing. Wish I wouldnt have bought my new Laptop last month. My son will get his for christmas. so I killed 2 birds with one stone.

thanks to you guys for your advice and I upgraded the battery to the extended life and got the Otter Box case with it.

The Voice activated search command to Google is awsome and with the Navigate command You cand find and go to any place with a few clicks.

now my total costs out the door was more than I wanted at just shy of $500 but I can see dropping my home Cable internet once I get up to speed with this one. so the costs should equal out after a year or so. also I get $200 back in rebates. the Camera is 8 MP and works great.

I just wish I didnt have fat fingers :D

Dan

 

[gizamo]

A tip for anyone readin' this thread.... Some Cell companies forego the rebate thing if your a business user. Even a DBA works....instead of the file and rebate, they convert it to instant rebate....

I already upgraded to the HTC Droid phone....the processor is like that in a laptop, very fast. I did just drop my home internet and landline connections, like Dan M is talkin' about. Savings to me equals about $720 yearly....

Did I mention I love my Droid....?

 

[madmikeb]

I just retired my Blackberry Curve for an LG Optimus android yesterday, and I agree, this thing is cool! I thought I would miss my Blackberry but now I know I won't. The Android will to a heckuva lot more! The best thing is, US Cellular has a free phone deal going through Christmas Eve, so with the rebate it won't cost me a nickel.

 

[Angry Bill]

I hated the vwz d2g at first. Now I can't stand to be away from it. It still has its very annoying quirks and I sometimes do miss the rock steady bb. Battery life is dismal even with the options tuned way back but the processor is a mule and it has a kick.

With only 2gb per month of wireless hot spot (vzw) I don't know how you guys are getting rid of your home service. I use the internet way too much.

 

[MKT]

With only 2gb per month of wireless hot spot (vzw) I don't know how you guys are getting rid of your home service. I use the internet way too much.

My plan through Verizon includes unlimited data transfer as part of the requisite data pack for the phone. This is great when I'm away from the house, but I have to admit the screen is a little small for full time internet use, I'm no ready to give up my big computer.

 

[DCWilson]

My daughters ganged up on me in late November and forced a new smartphone on me. They gave me three choices and I picked the one that I thought had the Android operating system. Turns out I had confused two of the options (or they had), and I ended up with an HTC HD7, which uses Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 (WP7) operating system.

Simply because previous Windows small-device operating systems had been such dogs, I was prepared to hate it. But this proves to be a pretty major redraft of the previous phone OS, and I like it a lot. It seems to do most of what the Apple and Android systems do, and a little more that they don't. Microsoft rushed the release of WP7 to get some sales in before Christmas; they promise a major update to the software in January. (Where have we heard that before?) But I'm optimistic.

For years I have been a Nokia guy happily using the Symbian operating system. I would still be using it, but I just couldn't read anything on the small screen on my last Nokia any more. The HTC screen has four times the area and a truly effective zoom capability. Nokia is bringing out a bigger screen phone, but missed my daughters' timetable by about three weeks.

I think I lucked out.

 

[Sprefix]

Android Desire!!!!!!!

I had the android hero and it was a real dog. They did a system upgrade and I wanted to shoot the call droppin' thing on a daily basis. I howled up a storm and threatened to go get an apple Iphone. I was assured that I would love the Android Desire. They offered me a few free goodies and a New Otterbox so I went for it. The Android Desire is absolutely fantastic. had it for 3 months or so and am tickled to death. Had two blackberries and they cost more for their "package" and were to small for my crappy can't C anything up close eyes. JMO............Sprefix

 

[586L-Frame]

My daughter has one, they are pretty cool. The only problem I am aware of is hers freezes up once in a while. Verizon reboots it then it is fine. She does lose her contact list when this happens

I had the same thing happen a number of times with my droid-x.
After my contact list disappears, to recover I powered the phone off
then when I reboot the contact list re-appears. Phew! I panicked
the 1st time it happened.

Great smartphone.
586L-Frame

 

[Dan M]

I am so happy with this phone I cant believe everything it can do. I found an app today called pdanet that allows the phone to be used as a internet connection for my laptap via usb connection. I am hooked up online with the phone right now. and the cool part is that I can still make and recieve calls and texts while online, and its just as fast as my cable connection ISP. :D:D:D

Anybody else use it? if not you should look into it. I can now get rid of my usb Verizon modem too, saving another $59 a month.

Dan

 

[Speedo2]

I've had one for about 18 months. It's capabilities are beyond me, but that's OK, cuz I'm old. My only complaint is that it didn't work over in Europe; had to buy a cheap pre-paid phone over there. A few of my younger cohorts at work also have them. The other day I caught a couple of 'em playing guitar cords on the darned things. They were talking about going out on tour with 'em. I think that they've got a ways to go before Chet Atkins' ghost or Mark Knopffler has anything to worry about. -S2

 

[Wayne02]

I am so happy with this phone I cant believe everything it can do. I found an app today called pdanet that allows the phone to be used as a internet connection for my laptap via usb connection. I am hooked up online with the phone right now. and the cool part is that I can still make and recieve calls and texts while online, and its just as fast as my cable connection ISP. :D:D:D

Anybody else use it? if not you should look into it. I can now get rid of my usb Verizon modem too, saving another $59 a month.
Dan

Yes, we use the tether feature with our new smartphones occasionally, although the speed is nowhere near what the home fios is, but still useable for most internet surfing.

We also used tethering with our old dumb phones. I would tether it to a router which would broadcast the wireless signal throughout our RV and our campsite so any of the laptops could use the signal.

I also used it when out on the back forty working on various projects and running the equipment from a generator. The little orange thing is the dumbphone sitting in a wilson cell signal booster, and the antenna is on a large metal pizza pan which I set on top of the fiberglass topper. When we are using it in the RV the pizza pan/antenna goes up on the rubber roof.

We just got the android smartphones about three weeks ago, an HTC Incredible for my wife and I, and my son got the droid X. While these phones can do a lot of things, I can see that the learning curve is going to be long and frustrating for this old guy. Smartest thing I did was get a phone with the same operating system as my son so he can help me through the learning curve.

 

[bitstream]

I just retired my Blackberry Curve for an LG Optimus android yesterday, and I agree, this thing is cool! I thought I would miss my Blackberry but now I know I won't. The Android will to a heckuva lot more! The best thing is, US Cellular has a free phone deal going through Christmas Eve, so with the rebate it won't cost me a nickel.

My Wife got me an LG Optimus (t-mobile) for Christmas. It's been amazing and awesome. I can't get over how much it does. What I like about hte Optimus is that it's so small and light. Many of the other smart phones are fairly large and heavy (comparatively). This fits in my shirt pocket with ease.

I've got a bunch of apps downloaded and installed. I'm on it so much my wife gets testy about it now :D She complains that I don't pay that much attention to her. Well, maybe if she could level a board, play music, and check news all at the same time..? Or, she could dab some Hoppes #9 behind her ears? :eek: