So, anyone looking to get one? I have to admit, hardware and OS wise, it's looking to be a pretty nice smart phone. Hopefully the battery life will be decent, that could be the one flaw I see in it.

I'm very interested. I've been using the G1 for almost a year now, and the OS is severely - I say severely - hindered by the hardware. Every time I pick up my wife's 3GS and do something as simple as swipe between screens or...well...anything, I get insanely jealous of the speed.

I've rooted my G1, have apps2sd, and am fastidious about monitoring open apps. My phone is as fast as a G1 can be, and it still drives me bonkers.

All that said, I thought I saw, in the leaked specs for the Droid**, that the processor was 5xx MHz. I'm pretty sure the G1 has a 5xx MHz CPU. That concerns me greatly.

I think I'm going to wait for one of the models built on the Snapdragon platform...


**or whatever it's going to be called - they're still not clear on whether "Droid" refers to a handset or a line

The processor in the Droid is basically the same one in the 3GS and Palm Pre. Remember, MHz != performance. Your G1 has an ARM11, while the 3Gs, Pre and Droid have a Cortex family ARM (one generation newer).

Engadget has some hands on videos posted, showing the interface is quite responsive, and the web browsing is only slightly slower then the 3GS.

If I were interested in this platform, I would probably wait for another manufacturer's handset to come out. This one is Motorola. While I loved their processors back in the day, I can't think of a single decent handset from them, ever. I know this one is running the Android OS, but knowing Motorola, they're going to fuck it up somehow. On top of any such calamity, they'll probably mis-market the hell out of it and then follow it up with something completely inconsistent. No one else seems to understand how to keep a brand flourishing and a product line consistent and tight.

LOL
Try Motorola as sold by Verizon!

...and yes, I'm interested in just such an ordeal as that.
My 'New Every Two' credit has matured and I've got to re-up my contract soon, so I'm looking closely at the Droid.

Motorola, for all their faults, actually knows a bit about building good hardware. Think about how revolutionary the original Motorola RAZR was when it came out, with a tough metal body rather than the craptastic plastic that was otherwise standard beforehand.

Without having handled a Droid, I can't speak to whether this particular one knocks it out of the park or not, but I'm intrigued.

My two-year AT&T contract doesn't end until next summer, and I'm still reasonably happy with my iPhone and with AT&T. (In Houston, 3G works much better than what I've heard about San Francisco.) I'll reevaluate the situation then and decide whether I want to stay or go. Who knows, by then there will probably be Android GSM variants worth considering.

Gah! You're right. I hadn't seen what kind of processor was in it. I think it was a reasonable assumption, given that practically every Android device on the market these days has the same processor. When I saw the same speed I assumed. Ah well.

If it's as snappy as the 3GS, and well designed, then I guess I'd consider it. In the meantime, I'm hoping that Cyanogen (developer of the most popular G1 replacement ROM) will release some 2.0 updates.


I believe "the Droid" is another name for the Motorola Sholes, which I've heard will have a GSM version...

The Sony Ericsson looks like a winner:
1GHz Snapdragon CPU
8.1 MP Camera
4.1 OLED Display

I just hope it has a hardware keyboard and isn't an AT&T phone.

Talking about new phones, I've been curious about this:

Nokia N900



No 3G on AT&T just T-Mobile in the USA.

He has said he will be working on 2.0 for the G1 just as soon as he gets the source. I'm eagerly awaiting it too.

Those sound like great specs to me. I know MHz isn't everything when it comes to speed, but I've heard great things about the Snapdragon.

I'm going back and forth on the Droid, but I'm hesitant to go with Verizon and/or Motorola. I get a bad feeling from that.

Can't wait to hear more about the SE device.

If every non-Apple vendor ships Android, and doesn't gratuitously lock it down or customized it into oblivion, then Android will be on its way to being the sort of standard platform on phones that Windows is on PCs.

My big question is what Microsoft's going to do to fight it. Even if they gave away Windows Mobile for free, open source, the works, would it make a dent?

And then there's Apple. I wouldn't expect them to change anything, so long as they're going gangbusters like they are presently.

Microsoft doesn't appear to understand how poorly they're doing in mobile phones. I watched the Engadget show with Balmer, and he totally played down his earlier statements about how Windows Mobile isn't at all where it should be.

The time it's taking to move from 6.1 to 6.5 to 7 is unacceptably long, and there's rarely an upgrade path for existing phones (at least not an easy one). Compare that to Apple, who puts in major new features in each of their iPhone updates. Or Google, who will have updated Android 3 times in one year. Or Palm, who releases updates like crazy. And none of these companies charge for the updates, and so far they've applied to all the phones released.

And none of this even starts touching on the fact that Windows Mobile is just a terrible OS. Sure, it was one of the first to support apps, but just like the Blackberry it was so hard to find and install those apps.

The one thing I like about Windows Mobile is the home screen. There's a heck of alot you can do with it, and with third party software you can make it super productive with appointments and emails. That's it. That's the extent of it.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I mostly liked my Windows Mobile phone, but that was almost 3 years ago, it felt outdated then, and they haven't done anything since then but change the home screen to a honeycomb pattern.

Windows Mobile is on its way out. Symbian will be not far behind it. At least, this is how I think things are in the US. I know there are definitely other countries who love the whole stylus thing...

Symbian is inside most of the higher end Nokia phones.

But has Symbian succeeded or failed at attracting an ecosystem of third-party apps? Are Symbian apps portable across widely different phones?

Nokia bought Trolltech not that long ago, and while there's now an official Qt port for Symbian, how long before Nokia simply decides to use Qt on Maemo on all its high end phones like it's currently doing with the N900?

Last time I looked, the basic phones are still running their proprietory "Nokia OS". The mid range phones would still be a viable platform for their Symbian based OS but if they can slim Maemo down enough then its possible they'd switch...

Based on the N900 I'd say it looks like Nokia is moving toward Maemo as the OS for their high end phones. They say they are sticking with Symbian but I don't know...

Like others here are saying: except for their current flagship phone, the N900.

Besides, I was putting an emphasis on the American market. I don't know the numbers, but I'd be willing to bet that Symbian has almost no market share in the US.

More people buy the basic and mid range phones than the top end ones. Not everybody needs or wants a smartphone.

Does nobody in the US have a Nokia?

Not really.

I do! I have a fine Nokia 2115i

Huh. Thats odd. They're so ubiquitous here.

Yeah, Nokia is just plain irrelevant in this country. I don't know a single person who owns one, and I know plenty of people with non-smartphones. I see far more Samsung or Sanyo handsets than Nokia these days.

Nokia used to be the most popular handset brand in Canada AFAIK. This was before he Japanese and Korean companies had any penetration at all in the 90's. Sony hadn't yet partnered with Ericsson either. Motorola was making super-fugly phones but was also a big name.

LG, Samsung, Sanyo, etc. started coming out with handsets every week, largely what I'd consider disposable crap, which the carriers just loved to rebrand. These became those $0 phones or the $10 phones which firmly cemented them as volume leaders. They made a huge rush with their generic and at one point ubiquitous, flip phones.

From a consumer perspective over here, it would have seemed like Nokia wasn't making handsets with as many features of flash. But in reality it was the carriers that simply stopped offering any type of variety in Nokia's line. A quick trip to Europe showed a lot more mobile variety. One, can say that Nokia didn't cater to North American taste, however, it was the carriers that shaped that taste toward the bland and poorly designed Asian products.

With few exceptions, Samsung, LG and the other Asian (non-smart) phones for North America are complete crap and always have been. The North American market isn't exactly discerning when it comes to this type of product. Well, when it comes to many types, but that's besides the point right now. And that's how the carriers l like it. Being able to release whatever garbage they want, rebranded to the 9's on a weekly basis to hide their shit rates with a low or no cost entry price.

I'm sure if Nokia had decided to start making ultra-crap handsets in 2002, the market would look at lot different in North America right now.

I'd totally agree with Bruno. I'm feeling a need to sort out my own history of attempting to stay with "cutting edge" phones.

Back in the older days, before the grand unification of U.S. cellular companies, there were four different radio standards in the U.S.: AMPS analog, TDMA, GSM, and CDMA. During those days, there was no such thing as a quad-band GSM phone, so all the really cool GSM phones didn't work here. In 1998, when I first moved to Houston, I had a Nokia 6110 (TDMA + AMPS), which I later replaced with a much more compact Nokia 8210 (also TDMA + AMPS). That was around the time that TDMA was going away and GSM was taking over the show. I switched from Houston Cellular (later to be absorbed by AT&T) to Ariel Communications (later to be absorbed by T-Mobile) and got an Ericsson T28, which stayed in my desk drawer because I imported the then-hot Ericsson T39m as my phone. It even had Bluetooth (which I never really got working with the Bluetooth USB adapter that I bought). What really sold me, though, was the fact that I could synchronize my contacts and calendar with my computer. The official Ericsson software was total crap, but I found third-party software that worked great.

I seem to recall, at the time, that all the coolest phones were GSM, leveraging the larger market volumes in Europe. CDMA phones, at the time, were a whole generation behind. Bigger, uglier, chunkier.

I was missing the simplicity and speed of the Nokia UI, so I imported another European-only phone, the Nokia 5100, which was a bit bigger, but was quite rugged, had a built-in flashlight, and could connect to USB. Amazing. Again, I had to use third-party software for the synchronization. This was the era of totally boring phones from the major American carriers, so importing was the only way to get truly interesting kit.

Next up was the Motorola RAZR. Finally, a domestic-offered phone that was truly interesting. The UI sucked, and again it required third-party software to synchronize properly, but it felt good, had great battery life, and so forth. The RAZR got fried when it got wet (*sigh*) so I imported a KRZR, which my wife is still using. Awesome physical package. Still lame software. This was around the time that Nokia had completely disappeared from the U.S. market. There just wasn't anything compelling from Nokia versus the subsidized cost of a RAZR/KRZR.

Then came the iPhone. Finally, an integrated product, no third-party software, and all the other benefits we all know. I still occasionally miss the simplicity of the Nokia UI and the compact feel of the Motorola handsets. Maybe we'll get that back at some point in a decent smartphone.

At the moment the Nokia smartphone UIs are the complete opposite of that original simple design. They are a confused mess of conflicting and seemingly ramdom UI elements.

I really don't understand how they manage to get from there to here.

My phone story is similar, though I saw back then how important GSM was, and tried to go that route. In 1999, I had the Nokia 5110 with T-Mobile for GSM. The cool thing back then is that I could have this small (for the time) phone, that also had an extra piece that could be added on for analog compatibility. I never needed it, but my mother had the same phone and did use it due to where she worked at the time.

Later that year, Nokia released the really tiny 8210, and I ended up buying one in 2000. Since I had a GSM phone prior, I simply swapped the SIM and had all my contacts. Being able to do this help cement me into GSM, as my account and contacts lived on a smart chip movable between phones. The 8210 lasted me for a while, and I resisted switching to something else, instead just changing out the battery once to extend the life of it.

After the 8210, Apple started influencing my phone choice, due to my recent adoption of the OS X platform. iSync was released along with full bluetooth support in 10.2, and that had me eyeing the Sony Ericsson T68i because it was the phone used in the demos. It was very similar in size to my 8210, so I didn't have to go to a bulkier phone to get the new features. I finally picked mine up in early 2003, and was able to do some pretty cool things with it like auto locking my computer at work based on bluetooth proximity. There were even apps that allowed me to control iTunes and such from the phone.

At this point, I remember Nokia started fading in the US. Most of the tech people I knew were either moving to Sony Ericsson phones as well, or some sort of early Windows/Palm powered smart phone. When it came time to replace the T68i, I went with a T610. And even on the cheep side, other providers were rising up and taking market share away from Nokia. They had left their mark though, because most people knew about the Snake game built into their phones. Also the Nokia default ringtone was embedded in most peoples minds and is even sung in the closing song for This Week in Tech.

After T-Mobile stopped expanding their network aggressively in 2005 and refused to fix common areas for dropped calls, I looked at switching providers to Cingular. With the switch I picked up the Motorola RAZR as well, and kept that up until my first iPhone.

Ironically, the T68i I had in 2003 had certain features the iPhone doesn't have when interfacing with OS X. It used to be possible to see incoming call alerts on the computer via Address Book linking over Bluetooth. You could then either answer, reject, or respond via SMS. And any incoming SMS messages would show up on screen, allowing an IM style chat window.

I really liked the Sony Ericsson T-series phones. I always preferred candybar phones to flips, and those were some of the best designed out there.

From the old Nokia phones, I miss that you could navigate the menus by pressing the digits. Frequent destinations, deep in the menus, you'd just know the digits for and could get there quickly. From my Ericsson and Motorola phones, I miss the single-key dialing shortcuts (although, on the Motorola, they were a pain to set up). Hold down one key for a second, and it's dialing a preset.

If only the iPhone had some way of making frequent operations go that fast.

I think Apple and Google have both dropped the ball on the actual phone apps. It seems like they just don't think the phone part is sexy, so they focus on other things. Android's phone app is especially bad.

The Blackberry is great at what you're talking about. I loved that I could map any key on the keyboard to a speed dial, and I had at least 12 of them used for that.

Unless the rest of that sentence is "being a boat anchor," you're wrong.

Must be a teeny tiny boat...

I'm not really certain how you can say that pressing and holding down a button to speed dial a contact can be done poorly... That's a strange thing to say.

And I've yet to come across a keyboard, either physical or virtual, that's better than the Blackberry.

Other than that I hate the UI, the menu systems, the apps, the operating system as a whole, and most of all, the Blackberry has a browser on par with those crappy free phones we've been talking about.

But I liked the speed dial feature

I actually think most of Apple's built-in apps have significant design flaws. It's just that as a whole, they're still much better than anyone else's set.

Maps sucks, Photos suck, Videos suck, iPod super-sucks, calculator is shite (who ever heard of a simple calculator working in bloody order of operations?) and even the App Store app sucks.

Early ARM11-based phones don't have L2 cache (iPhone/3G, G1, etc). The newer ones (Palm Pixi) do have some L2 - this can help significantly. The much better microarchitecture of the Cortex paired with L2 means phones like the 3GS/Pre/Droid/etc are significantly faster than ARM11 systems.

There's still a lot of detail in implementation which means that comparing MHz between Cortex A8's to determine system performance is also kinda meaningless. Cache sizes? Memory bus speeds? OS implementation? How much time is the CPU spending doing housekeeping, talking to the baseband, etc? GPU performance and efficiency of APIs?

Even with the same chip and OS - the Linux-running OMAP 3430 that is reportedly in both the Pre and Droid - comparisons aren't easy. The Pre runs at 500MHz supposedly, and the Droid at 550MHz. A win for Droid then on browser speed? Not necessarily - its screen has 2.6x as many pixels as the Pre - 73MB/sec of RAM bandwidth just to refresh it vs 27MB/sec on the Pre. Not only is this more rendering, it's sucking bandwidth away from, well, everything in the system. Maybe they beefed up DDR bandwidth? Who knows....

btw, the 3GS appeared to be 20%+ faster than the Droid at loading and rendering a webpage in the video review I saw. Same ballpark as the 3GS admittedly - as it should be with a Cortex - and a mile away from currently available android phone performance, but not quite there yet

I'm using PCalc Lite. It's an RPN calculator, it's free, and it seems to do the job nicely. The pay version ($10, I think) includes a bunch of addition stuff, like hexadecimal and other binary-friendly buttons that I don't really need.

So the Xperia X10 has been announced. Unfortunately it appears that it's still not quite out of the oven, so it's hard to assess exactly what it's going to be like. I'm sure the performance issues they experienced will be gone come release day. But I can offer my opinion on the ideas they present:

I love the enhanced media portion of the phone, as the stock Android music player is garbage and there is no stock video player. But I still don't get this whole idea that several of these companies have to combine all of my notifications into one stream. Sure, in concept it sounds great, and I know most of them allow you to filter out elements you don't want, but what bothers me is giving equal weight to things. I don't want my Twitter updates (I follow people I don't know personally) to be lumped in with my Facebook updates. I don't get a lot of text messages, so I don't want them to get lost in a sea of status updates. And nothing is more valuable to me than email. I don't want someone saying "Good morning everyone!" and pushing down that urgent email my client was trying to get to me.

Again, they offer ways to filter all this out, and everything looks all pretty, but you know what? Sometimes pretty is inefficient. I can't imagine sifting through my emails in those stacks. I much prefer just having my boring old list in the GMail app.

So what I have now isn't pretty, but it gets the job done. So far I think the Droid fits me better. Now I only have to decide whether I want to lock myself in with Verizon...

Gizmodo published a two-part review of the Droid today-

http://gizmodo.com/5396168/motorola-droid-review
http://gizmodo.com/5395801/android-20-review-almost-human

It seems that the Droid is lining up to be the best you can get on Verizon.
I'm not done with the research, though, and I don't think the reviews were really *deeply* informative. They're a good intro, I guess.
I usually do loads of reading on HowardForums for all things mobile phone. That's where I'm headed next...

Yeah, Engadget's review was good, but certainly not as nitty-gritty as you could get on a CE device. It's not dpreview or anything

I don't think there's much of a question that the Droid is the best Verizon phone, but that's for lack of competition. What's going to challenge it? The Storm 2? Ugh! The Tour is probably the only other phone competing with it, and while more businesses will probably go with the Tour, I wouldn't consider any Blackberry phone to be better than the Droid.

I can't see the Droid drawing people away from other carriers. I think for that to happen you have to be substantially better than the phones on the carriers you're trying to draw people away from, like the iPhone was when it first came out and stole all those Sprint subscribers. I think the Droid can nearly go toe to toe with the iPhone, but it's not quite a match. It's definitely a great phone, though, and if Android suits you (as it does me), there's simply nothing better out there right now.

Hmm... I just read that on a 2y contract you can upgrade 4 months early, no penalty.
I'm well within that limit and my New Every Two discount is already mature...

I could be getting into a Droid sooner than I thought!
Not that there's anything wrong with my good old Motorola Z6.

The whole Droid thing will bump my monthy plan from about $65 to $95, I'm sure.

I can wait a few more weeks.
I like new technology, but I don't like being in the first wave of guinea pigs to thresh out all the bugs. Second wave is ok. lol

DROID emulator in Flash.

From the VW site I can get both my NE2 and the web discount, which drops the price to $150 when I re-up for two years.

Andy Ihnatko has his review up, and seems pretty pleased with the device. Read his full review this morning after listening to him talk about it on a podcast.

That was a great read. Thanks!

I wonder if the browser would be able to work with weblite.

Could the empeg be controlled via Droid? Might be a nifty solution for those without the standard DIN1 empeg mounting options.
I guess it would depend on what networks you can see with the Droid.
I'm not so smart with this stuff- just having some ideas.

Interesting.

I think, though, that it might start being possible to have a conversation about a phone like this and not say "iPhone" ever other sentence. I really feel like this thing can hold its own, which I think is great. I don't think it "beats" the iPhone in the least, but is anyone on Verizon going to be suffering because they have a Droid? I don't think they will.

I think that personally, I'm waiting to see if the rumored GSM version comes out. I get good T-Mobile service in my area, and the plan rates are FAR better than Verizon's.

Yeah, that's the one I've been seeing. I just hope it'll get to T-Mobile soon. I'd jump at the opportunity to get that.

Oh, and I hate lazy reporting: "While the Droid allows you to zoom in and out on the home screen by double tapping..." Um, that's in the browser. There is no zooming in the home screen.

There's no zooming on the home screen and there's no zooming in many other places, including default apps. Some people speculate that Google don't want to step on Apple's toes in the light of multi touch patents, so that could be it. Frankly, I don't think basic pinch and pinch-expand to zoom out/in would have much traction in a patent suit from Apple. This was clearly demonstrated prior to the iPhone in things like Microsoft's surface.

I still think Google has long-term promise, much more-so than Palm, but the Droid frankly sucks. What's with that ugly supposed cursor pad on the right of the keyboard? Bigger keys would have been infinitely more useful.

Anyone considering using such a phone to store third-party applications really needs to consider if that's a wise move given their requirements...

http://androidandme.com/2009/10/news/goo...nd-android-2-0/

Where else would there be zooming? I'm not sure what you mean.

There IS zooming in Maps and the gallery, it's just not multi-touch, you have those little virtual zoom buttons on the bottom of the screen. I would like a better system, though, and the Droid has hardware AND software capable of it, it just needs to get implemented.


I won't argue with the app storage issue, though. That's just awful and Google and the hardware manufacturers need to get their heads out of their rears. This is one of the benefits of rooting my G1. I was able to move the apps to the SD card, so now my phone's memory just gets used for caching.

And yeah, I can't make any excuses for that keyboard. The keys look awful, and despite the fact that the screen on the Droid is so much bigger, the Droid keyboard is only four rows to the the G1's five. I really like having instant access to those number keys.

While I didn't have much time with it, overall the hardware and OS seemed decent. Not iPhone decent, but nice none the less. Keyboard wise though, I'd have to try it a bit longer. First impression was that it was better then the keyboard on the Pre, but I still found my way around the virtual keyboard faster.

I'll have to go back to the store when there isn't a mob trying to see 2 display units to get a better feel for it.

There's no multi-touch zoom in any Google app. Only on some apps installed by either Motorola (in other markets) or the carrier. Same goes for the other Android phone models. All in all the experience from phone to phone is quite different. They're going to need to work that out if they want to have any hope of becoming a meaningful platform rather than simply a high-volume OS no-one actually knows about. This would kill any hopes of a popular app store for Android.

SD card storage? Ok, that would be a plus, but should hardly be a requirement. Is it too much to ask for built-in storage that's not cutting edge for 8 or 9 years ago? (256MB - my toothbrush runs on a single AA and has that much memory). With all the hoopla and those flashy Droid commercials you'd think the phone actually had some guts. Don't tell me it's also using USB 1.1? Oh wait, maybe it needs a serial port, or better still, IrDA.

My predictions for Android's longevity are mainly because of Google's deep pockets, persistence and the gratis nature of the open Android platform, making it attractive to handset makers and carriers. Not because I think they can design a decent OS or apps. Frankly, IMO, Google's current app and UI designs leave a lot to be desired, especially on the desktop/web. One could make at least the financial and persistence argument about Microsoft, but they've already had their chance at throwing money at this problem, but keep getting in their own way for extreme lack of direction and consistency. Persistence in the market doesn't mean anything when you're continually changing what you're hawking for arbitrary reasons.

*drool*

Here's more evidence of typical Motorola design at work... Droid battery cover falls off

Plenty of talk about issues at HoFo.

I thought the camera-focus bug was pretty cool.

*sigh*

The Droid is now down to $50 at Amazon (w/2-yr contract).

If only they'd fix bluetooth hands-free dialing...