Why I returned my Motorola Droid phone after a week
I’m sure you’re wondering why I just didn’t get an iPhone, which I researched, thought about, and sweated over for the better portion of a year. Short answer: I’m with Verizon on multiple phone lines. So, there’s that.
I was an early adopter of PDAs, and mine traveled the world with me. Though fairly primitive at the time, I had an mp3 player module, a phone module, and a screen the size of an iPhone–the entire phone, not just the iPhone’s screen. I used it to keep notes, read books, and play the occasional game. It even accepted SD cards.
Fast forward to not long ago. Having determined it was not practical to get an iPhone, I got the Verizon-friendly Motorola Droid phone. I have to say, it was nice. Real nice. Felt good in the hand, good screen, excellent size, the UI was generally attractive and easy to use.
However, there was one thing about it I could not get past, and that was that the applications available for it felt like I stepped back more than a decade and was using my old PDA. User interfaces were inconsistent, applications had no base-line consistency in operation, and for the most part, crashed. Ultimately, this is the major difference between the iPhone and any phone with the Droid OS. Everything on the iPhone has to be blessed by the high priests of Apple and personally vetted by Steve Jobs in a ritual similar to finding a new pope, white smoke and everything…okay, maybe not, but Apple still has some oversight on the apps for the iPhone. Everything on the Droid feels like it’s in beta.
In its defense, the Motorola phone allowed you to store data on it, though saving the data and getting to the data was a bit cumbersome. The Droid phone also has a flash for the camera, which is a nice feature. And it did have a nice weight.
I traveled with the phone for a week, and simply found it to be not worth hanging onto. Thankfully, switching back to my previous Verizon plan was easier than setting up the new phone in the first place.
Oh, wait, there was one more thing. The keyboard was completely worthless. A great feature to include, the keys were too small, too flat and unresponsive to have practical worth. Same with the little thumb-pad.
January 11th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
I got my wife an android phone for christmas and she loves it. she doesn’t use it for traveling or business or major projects she uses it for a phone and internet on the go. I have tested and played with it and have not found any problems with it in every day use. I can understand it would be a problem when you need it for something more. I like this phone a lot more than the iphone for many reasons, Iphone I feel has become a status symbol if you have one your cool but people are finding that you can get a lot more out of other droid phones than just the iphone and Driod is one of them.
January 12th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Kevin, aside from the crashing part, the same things are true on the iPhone with those apps…inconsistent user interfaces & operation. It’s a free-for-all. There are some great apps, but most are mediocre or worse.
Maybe you should try a Nexus One?