My story
I did not plan on switching my beloved Droid to the new Droid 2. About a month ago, my Droid power button broke, which made it nearly impossible to turn the phone on/off. I called Verizon and got a warranty replacement. I used the replacement phone for less than a month and had to call Verizon again since that phone would get very hot and go from a full charge to a dead battery in about 5 hours even if it was just sitting on my desk not being used. For perspective, my first Droid would easily last a full day from 6:30 AM to 10:00 PM and still have 60% battery life left. So I called Verizon to get yet another warranty replacement and due to a lack of inventory of the original Droid, they gave me a brand new Droid 2.
It has been a couple of weeks and so far there is a lot to like about the Droid 2. Not much has changed or is different from the original Droid, and some things are plain stupid. Luckily nothing that cannot be managed around so the good things outweigh the bad.
I found a site which details the differences between the Droid and Droid 2 if you are interested:
http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=203022&page=1&zoomIdx=1
The good and the great
- Battery life is awesome. Then again I thought the original Droid was great as well.
- Really fast – Definitely noticeable. Some of my apps just fly now and for my Touchdown email app, there is no noticeable delay at all.
- Keyboard – still getting used to it, but it is better than the original. The keys are larger, no clunky D-pad to deal with, and all of the keys are a bit raised for easier typing. Still not perfect by any means, but good enough for me and better than the original.
- Includes the virtual keyboard program called Swipe that gives you the ability to swipe between the letters rather than “typing”.
- 7 home screen panels – not sure if I will ever use them all, but there is enough to give the kids one for their games.
The Disappointing
Verizon is up to its old tricks again. When I got the original Droid, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were no bloatware garbage apps on the device that Verizon pre-loaded. This was a first and it was great. Now with the Droid 2, that has changed back to the bad old days.
- NFS Shift Car Racing Game, City Search, Blockbuster, and many others – lots of crappy applications with many of them unable to be uninstalled. To make things worse, some apps are demo’s and you get prompted to buy them with cryptic small text and you get billed on your Verizon bill. What a big scam that is…..
- Wifi Hot Spot ability – The commercials make it seem like a great addition, but it does not work by default and it costs you $20 a month to sign up for the service.
I have to wonder if the beauty of the Android system openness will also be its downfall. If the carriers can do whatever they want, they will ultimately run the platform. Not sure if Apple has it right, but there is a sense of normalcy to keep things locked down to keep the carrier out.
