I’m really thinking about jumping ship from Team Apple/AT&T. I have the 3G, and the latest firmware fiasco has irrationally pissed me off (yeah, I could revert back to the factory settings, but that fucks with my backup, contacts, etc.).
Anyway, I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts on the phone. I went to the Verizon store at lunch to play with it, and it seems like a decent enough phone. The physical buttons seem a little cheap, and whoever set up the display phone didn’t seem to have much of an idea of what would be interesting to have on it to show it off (meanwhile, back in the AT&T store the iPhone 4 has MLB-at-Bat, Angry Birds, and a whole host of other “look what I can do!” apps at the ready).
Some questions for everyone:
How was the transition?
How easy is it to find apps you want?
What does it do that the iPhone can’t?
What can’t it do?
How’s Verizon? (Customer support really - coverage is regional.)
Does it work with iTunes?
Why in the world do I want my phone to have an HDMI port?
I too am considering the same move so am interested in answers to some of these. I can however answer a few:
Can run Flash with Android 2.2 (Froyo)
Can take pictures in the dark
Can swap the battery out
Better multi-tasking
App market for Droid is not censored like iTunes is.
Custom ROMs (if you want to go there)
HDMI out
Swappable memory cards
Bigger screen
Best of ALL! NOT ON AT&T!!!
Cannot video conference like iPhone4 (no front facing camera although iphone4 requires the both people to have an iphone4 and both to be on WiFi).
More apps for iphone but with tens of thousands not sure how much you will notice that
iPhone4 has a higher resolution screen
Sort of. You can use a program called DoubleTwist to synch your Droid to iTunes.
BIG caveat though! You cannot use music with DRM on it this way! Current music, I believe, is mostly DRM free so that will move fine. Older music you bought however probably will have DRM on it. To find out which is which:
In iTunes go to VIEW>>VIEW OPTIONS
Check the box labeled “KIND”
A column will appear and if it says “PROTECTED AAC FILE” next to a song then it has DRM on it.
Since I cannot tell you how to do something illegal on here (that you will have to find out for yourself) there is a legal way to get the DRM off…but it’ll cost ya.
Go into the iTunes store and on the home page there find a link called “iTunes Plus”. The system will show you how many songs have DRM and will allow you to remove the DRM. HOWEVER! That will cost you $0.30/song to do. If you have a lot of music that can be quite pricey!
Personally I think the HDMI port is a bit silly but in theory you could play movies on an HDMI capable TV from your phone (making your phone essentially a portable DVD player) or you could play home video you took with your phone which might be nice in some circumstances.
Thanks for the response. So that others might be able to keep educating me, I’m going to comment, but if I’m wrong on something, please correct me.
"- Can take pictures in the dark"
The iPhone 4 has an LED flash. Is it getting bad reviews?
"- App market for Droid is not censored like iTunes is."
Is this a good or a bad thing? Didn’t they just announce that some really popular background picture app was killing everyone’s first born child or somesuch? The Apple store has a quadrillion apps and the Droid Market has 9. Why is the Apple approval process a specifically bad thing?
"- Custom ROMs (if you want to go there)"
I would LOVE to go there! (Where’s there? - I have no idea what a custom ROM is.)
"Since I cannot tell you how to do something illegal on here (that you will have to find out for yourself) there is a legal way to get the DRM off…but it’ll cost ya."
Other than just copying the songs to a CD then reripping them? Either way, I don’t have any DRM music.
Flash would be nice, but I have yet to notice its absence for the two years I’ve had an iPhone. Multitasking is the same - and I keep hearing people say, “oh, you need to get this taskkiller app! It’ll really save your battery.” In other words, “multitasking sucks down your battery like a thirsty camel unless you go out of your way to go through these 11 steps.”
I thought it had a flash then to make sure I looked up a picture of the iPhone4 back and saw no flash. Upon seeing this I did a more refined search and yes, it does have a flash. Whether it is good or not I do not know but certainly better than nothing.
While you do have more opportunity for crap to get through I personally want to choose what apps I want rather than Steve Jobs decide for me what is ok. I think if you pay attention to user reviews and web reviews you should be ok most times.
For instance Apple banned a Puliltzer Prize winning cartoonist. Apple also bans Apps they think horns in on stuff they want to charge for (Google had some app banned for this).
Custom ROMS allow you to change the whole look of the phone. Rather than dealing with what Motorola foists on you. As such you can make a leaner, meaner, faster phone. That said the DroidX is still up in the air but it does seem someone rooted it recently so custom ROMs may be in the future. Will take awhile for people to develop them.
I had Verizon for 6 years (AT&T since Sept '09) and never really had a problem with them. The few times I dealt with Support, it was neither good nor bad and left no real impression.
My biggest beef with Verizon is that they lock out certain features on phones in order to require you to purchase said feature through them (or so I’ve been told that was the reasoning). I imagine this wouldn’t be an issue with a Droid, but I may be wrong.
Additionally, I’ve heard people get excited about “widgets”. I think I know what a widget is - but does anyone have a YouTube of an especially useful/wow! widget?
It’s more good than bad, I think. Apple’s “censorship” goes beyond quality control. They deny apps based on how it was created, or what it does (e.g. if it competes with Apple’s own apps).
On Android, you can download a software that allows you to tether your computer off the phone. Apple/AT&T doesn’t allow such apps, I believe.
Widgets are always-on applications that run on your screen (as opposed to deliberately starting them on demand). Right now, on my Droid X, I have a widget with the current weather, one that lets me control the different transmitters/receivers (GPS, WiFi, etc), a Google search box, & a clock & calendar and one that calls my wife with a single touch.
The Android marketplace, as of April, had more than 50,000 apps (cite so what you want is probably out there. I very much like that some Apple employee isn’t making moral decisions for me (even though I’m not really interested in using the phone that way, yet.)
The “information stealing background app” was found to be harmless and was just returned to the marketplace - false alarm. Each app comes with a description of what it can access in terms of hardware & information so you can make a decision if the app you’re about to download had access to information that makes no sense. (“Why would a solitaire app need GPS access after all?”)
I just got the Droid X about a week ago. So far, I’m very impressed. I didn’t switch from a iPhone, though.
The HDMI threw me too but with this phone and a cable (not included) I could watch movies in my hotel room every time I’m shipped out of town on business. I think that’s the most useful scenario I’ve come up with so far.
Negatives? Battery life seems smaller than I’d like, have to put in on the charger every night. Other negative, Verizon loaded it with apps I can’t get rid of (Blockbuster, Amazon, etc) unless I “root” it, aka: “jailbreak”. There’s online gizmos for that but I’m not willing to mess at that level yet.
Oh - and you don’t have to get apps through the Android marketplace, you can get them on the web just as easily. There’s a lockout for this, a “trust level” basically, but it’s easy to switch off. If Google “bans” an app, and you want it, fetch it from the internet instead.
There are a lot of things I’d love to have on a homescreen, like the weather and a calendar. I’m not really worried about malware via the Android Market - but one thing I think is really cool is using the camera to get apps through those UPCish barcodes you see these days.
Someone in the Droid X thread linked to a fairly spendy taskmaster app that was pretty amazing, setting all sorts of rules and such for checking things, turning things on, etc. I really like the sound of that.
What non-phone/browsing/texting things does everyone use theirs for? I love my Remote app on the iPhone - it controls iTunes on my computer. I’d imagine there’s something similar, right?
Yeah - the apps via camera is cool. Even cooler is the one that snaps UPC codes, searches online sources, and compares prices near you for products.
I think the app you’re describing for turning things on and off is “locale”. I just downloaded it, it’s pricey at $10 but it’s very cool. It has all sorts of plug ins for conditions and actions but the most useful so far to me is doing actions by location. When I arrive at home, it turns on my WiFi and turns off my GPS. At 10% or less battery, it turns off all the WiFi, Sync, GPS to try to save battery power. When I arrive at work my WiFi & GPS are both off. It silences my email alerts at 10pm so they don’t wake me but leaves my ringer on in case I get a late night phone call.
Very cool app but pricey at $10. Worth it, though.
Don’t know about remote control of music - Gmote maybe? Sounds right. Free, too.
Been there, done that. And the double hard reset. Doesn’t work (well enough). Apple knows there’s a problem, they say they’re looking into it, but they should have known.
I have a 4 but a couple of friends with 3G/3GS phones report that that fix doesn’t do much. Apple has acknowledged the problem and claims there will be a fix in iOS4.1 which may be released as soon as a couple of weeks.
If you go to Verizon your phone will be useless outside of the United States. Only AT&T and TMobile phones work in the rest of the world, including Mexico and, I believe, Canada. If you never plan to use your phone internationally, this is not an issue and you may well be better off on Verizon. Ask people who live and work near you how they like Verizon’s service.
Some Verizon phones can use both CDMA and GSM networks. I’ve used my Verizon phone overseas without any problems. Just look for “Global Ready” phones on their website.
I used to have a iPhone 3G, which was jailbroken. I’ve had a Samsung Captivage (Samsung Galaxy S with AT&T brand) for 48 hours now. The Galaxy S will be available on all four major networks in the near future with different branding. They’re essentially the same, except the Sprint version, which will have 4G and a physical keyboard (I think).
Piece of cake. I’ll miss Carcassonne and Words With Friends, but I’m not losing anything I can’t do without. I don’t think Android handles Microsoft Exchange as well as the iPhone, but it’s my private phone and work can take a back seat unless they want to pay for the phone. Looking deeper into Exchange and Android is one of my projects for this weekend.
I’ll miss the two games I mentioned above, but everything else was replaceable and I’m looking forward to better Google account integration.
AT&T disables what’s called “sideloading” of apps that don’t come from the main store. There’s a program for sideloading that makes it trivially easy if you connect to your computer via USB. Or you can root the phone. Rooting is more complicated but also allows over the air installation of sideloaded apps. Rooting may also be a project this weekend.
Very easy Google account integration. More open app development. More customizable.
Perhaps Microsoft Exchange. Some apps.
I stuck with AT&T, so I can’t help you here.
I haven’t experiment with this yet, but I’ve already set up my podcast feeds and typically don’t load music. I generally prefer to stream Pandora or another music service. There is an app for streaming from a computer, similar to what Simplify Media used to, but I haven’t played around with it much yet.
Because you’re really really into downloading and playing video. I don’t need one myself.
On a side note, you may want to wait for the Driod 2 or the Verizon version of the Galaxy S, especially if you’re not into huge screens and videos. I believe the Droid 2 hardware will be equivalent to the Driod X except the screen and HDMI, but with a keyboard and Froyo, the most up-to-date version of Android, out of the box. I believe Froyo is scheduled for the Droid and Galaxy S, but it’s not a 100% guarantee. I was sick enough of my laggy iPhone that I took that risk.
I don’t know about earlier versions of Android, but Android 2.1-equipped phones can access Exchange accounts with no problems. My wife and I purchased Android 2.1 phones a couple of weeks ago (she purchased an HTC Droid Incredible, I bought a Motorola Droid X) and we’ve hooked both of them up to her office’s Exchange Server with no problems. (I do some contract work for those folks, so I have an account there.)
Connecting Android phones (or iPhones, or pretty much any cellphones other than Blackberrys for that matter) to Microsoft Exchange server accounts does require that the folks running the Exchange server set up something called ActiveSync.
Missed this comment the first time through. Daily charging is more or less the standard for a smart phone.
There’s a reason I was using weasel worrds like “perhaps.” I only tried briefly and could have mucked up the setup with something like a mistyped password or something similarly idiotic. I used to have it set up on my iPhone, so it sounds like it should work. Thanks for the assurances.