Saturday, November 14, 2009

One Week with the Droid

I've had the Droid for just about a week now and I think I've learned most of it's kinks and such. Here are my current thoughts:

This is a beautiful device. It is great at what it does. As a smartphone it is pretty much everything I could ask for. As a business device it is lacking however. My main complaints are with the keyboard, which as everyone has noted is completely atrocious. The touch screen is nice, I've learned to operate it with one hand somewhat.

My other complaint is with the native non-Gmail e-mail program. While the web browsing and Facebook apps and Twitter apps and navigation are beyond compare, the simple e-mail is severely lacking. This was my main use for my old phone - I used it to check email. It wasn't fancy, it didn't render the emails as nicely as the Droid does, but it was simple and effective.

In the morning I downloaded all my email from over the previous night, scrolled through it quickly, replied to anything important, deleted spam or unwanted email and that was it. Bing, bang, boom. Done. With the Droid and the native email program it is far more complex than that. I have to check each account individually, sometimes deleting an email doesn't delete it from the server like it should. Sometimes emails I mark as read come back later as unread. As a business tool the Droid's native email program is severely lacking.

The keyboard makes it very difficult to easily and quickly reply to emails and I find myself putting things off until I am in front of a real computer. The touch screen is kind of wonky - sometimes it's not sensitive enough and sometimes its too sensitive. About half of my emails end up getting sent before I am done with them because I accidentally brushed the screen the wrong way.

The Droid's integration with Google, and the way it integrates contacts, calendar, Twitter, Facebook, email, maps, navigation is incredible. I have no complaints with that whatsoever. I never had that on my old phone, it's nice, but I'd trade it all for a simple, working, basic email app.

I will start to look through the app store and see if I find anything. If I had a good email program this phone would be just about perfect.

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