Jason Poole

I woke up this morning and got a little surprise when I grabbed my Droid to check messages. I found I did have a message, but it was no ordinary message, it was a message asking me to allow my phone to be updated.  Finally after delays due to the OTA update, 2.1 is now installed on my Droid and I have to say, first impressions, the phone seems a little faster.

The first thing that I needed to test out was, does multi-touch work…   and yes it does.  I was very happy to find that it works in Google maps and the web browser. Also works beautifully in the image gallery.

Speaking of the image gallery, there are some major improvements there as well. I love the new display of the image gallery and it also finds images I had saved to Picasa (which I forgot I even upload photos there). The image gallery even found some images and video that were attached to applications.

One thing I am still a little disappointed about the update (or the phone in general), is that there is still only three screens for shortcuts. This is a minor issues since it does not hinder my use of the phone, but I would still like to see more screens. Also, if I add widgets to the screens, they usually take up quite a few slots and limit my shortcuts to applications even more.

All-in-all, I love this phone and the new update makes it even better.

I purchased the Droid on December 1st, 2009 and I had very high expectations of this phone (handheld computer with built in phone). I was replacing my Blackberry Storm which was only 9 months old, but I was very disappointed in the performance of the Storm, even with the OS upgrade to 5.0. After having the Droid for about 3 weeks, I can honestly say that this is the best phone I have ever owned.

The first thing that you notice about this phone is the screen. You need to see the screen for yourself in real life, because words cannot do it justice. It is beautiful and I was very impressed. Google maps looks incredible and Google’s navigation system is better than my standalone GPS.

Another thing that really impressed me was the Google search feature, more to the point, the voice recognition search. It is rare for the system to get words wrong and usually if does, the search is close enough to find what I am looking for. It does a phone and Google search, so if you are looking for a number in your phone book, you can just say call (say name).

Ok, so what’s not to like about this phone. My biggest complain is that it only has three screens for quick launch icons or widgets. The screens are split up into a grid of 4 x 4 boxes, each icon taking a box.  Most widget take up more than one box, like the Google search, for instance, takes up 4 boxes. Three custom screens is just not enough. Also, scrolling from one screen to the next is choppy and a little slow. This slowness does no take away from the phone experience, but takes a little getting use to.

I was a little concerned when I heard that the phone only had 256MB for applications. All I could remember form the advertisements was that the phone cam with a 16GB memory card, that that 16GB is use mainly for videos and music. I think that the concern for space was all for not.  I have loaded up my phone with quite a few apps and I still have over 160MB free.

All-in-all, I love this phone and being on the Verizon network makes it even better. Sure, the iPhone is a better phone (not by much), but AT&T is a horrible provider. I traveled to Cupertino, California for business and I had great service from Verizon, but I had a few iPhone owners that dropped calls or just could not get service. If the iPhone would have been on Verizon, I would probably have one, but if I were to come out now for Verizon, I would stick with my Droid.