Picked one up today

[circustravis]

Stopped in the Verizon store this morning and grabbed mine. Got it for $100 plus the cost of some accessories for this phone and my wife's Rezound.

I'm coming to this from a Droid 2 R2D2, and an OG Droid before that.

Pros:
Definitely faster with the dual core.
I get 4G at home and work, and it's faster than wireless at home (cable broadband).
Screen is bigger and clearer. Brightness of the screen is auto-detected by brightness in the room.
It was no problem getting my apps over.

Cons:
It took over 6 hours on the charger to get the battery to 100% the first time. Though it does seem to hold a charge ok since, I'll keep an eye on this.
There is no "gallery" short cut. I have to either load the camera and go to the pictures, or use a file explorer, which brings me to...
Astro and ES File Explorers don't seem to recognize the sd card. I'll tinker with this to see if I can get it to work, but...
It doesn't come with an SD card. I ported over my R2's memory card.
It gets VERY warm using 4G. Downloading all my apps while it was on a charger made it uncomfortable to even hold, much less to make a call with it against my face.

Things I haven't tried but will soon:
Camera quality
Skype with video calling
4G coverage in areas other than my house and office
Battery life, one of the things that makes me really wary about this is the non-removable battery

I'm sure I'll think of other things.

Another odd thing, they REALLY aren't pushing this phone. It has me worried that they don't have a lot of confidence in it. When I called to see if the store had it, the employee had to go check, and when I got there, another employee asked me if I was sure it was out already. They did already have a display model, but a very limited number of accessories. I actually bought a Rezound-specific accessory for my wife's phone to get my $100 discount.

Anyone else have it already? Thoughts?

 

[Eclipse2K]

Are you sure there's no gallery shortcut? On the RAZR, they changed the name to My Gallery when it was originally just Gallery. Also, I wouldn't worry about whether they have confidence in the Droid 4. It is a big phone, but the RAZR Maxx is their baby right now.
Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

[circustravis]

AHA! You are correct sir. Thank you. I will have more time to play with it over the weekend, so, maybe I will figure out more pros and cons. Like how the caps lock key is where the shift key used to be.

 

[moosc]

Also check mydroidworld they have the D4 already rooted.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Xparent Cyan Tapatalk

 

[cubez]

Keep us posted. I'm curious to know about the battery life. I would like a phone with a qwerty keyboard but I'm also worried about the non removable battery.

Sent from my HTC ThunderBolt using Tapatalk

 

[Eclipse2K]

AHA! You are correct sir. Thank you. I will have more time to play with it over the weekend, so, maybe I will figure out more pros and cons. Like how the caps lock key is where the shift key used to be.

Glad I could be of some assistance. I have no idea why Motorola changed it but at least its still there.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

[Kmcferrin]

Another odd thing, they REALLY aren't pushing this phone. It has me worried that they don't have a lot of confidence in it. When I called to see if the store had it, the employee had to go check, and when I got there, another employee asked me if I was sure it was out already. They did already have a display model, but a very limited number of accessories.

I wouldn't worry. Verizon seems to not want to push the qwerty sliders anymore. The bar-style phone seems to be the preferred device for most consumers these days, so the sliders are treated like red-headed step children. They don't spend a lot of money marketing them, and if you are a candidate for a slider the chances are good that you already know about the D4 and were waiting on it.

It's also being aimed more at business users (with its encryption capabilities) than regular consumers so that's part of it.

 

[raremage]

How does the size feel - is it comfortable in the hand? I'm planning to run to VZW today to play with one (and no doubt, get one) but would like to hear your opinion on it.

 

[Toddzilla#WN]

raremage-

The size on this phone is a bit bigger than I was expected. My wife picked one up yesterday while I got the Nexus. I was expecting something similar to the D3. The D4 is very close to the size of my Nexus and a bit thicker. My wife commented that is heavy in her hand and I agree, however we are both new to Android so the D4 may be a feather compared to other Droid qwerty's.

 

[silverfang77]

I don't understand why slider phones get the shaft like that. Why would anyone prefer an on-screen keyboard to a solid hardware keyboard?

 

[jimdibb]

Because swype and/or FlexT9 rule.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

 

[circustravis]

The size is quite a bit bigger compared to my D2 (and my OG). Weight-wise it's about the same. Thickness is about the same.

It doesn't feel uncomfortable in my hand, but I've only had it for about 24 hours now.

I went for a year with a touch-screen only phone back when they all still had resistive screens, and I hated it. I yelled at Verizon until they gave me an early upgrade. My wife made the transition from the D2 to the Rezound with no problems. But she had broken her finger last year, and couldn't use the physical kb. I think she got used to swype.

I'm on the road a lot, and do a lot of business through e-mail, so the physical kb has always been extremely useful. I sat on my upgrade this time around for 3 months until this phone came out, passing up the Razr, Rezound, and Nexus. One of the tests will be the first time I have to be on the road for a week or so without access to power outlets besides my car charger.

 

[circustravis]

Tested the camera out. One thing is that it takes pictures MUCH faster than the D2. With that, I had to hold the phone still for 2-3 seconds while the picture was being snapped. With this, it's instant. Though I do miss the hardware button for the camera a little.

Pics are very clear and crisp. Probably at least as good as my 3 year old digital camera.

 

[Toddzilla#WN]

I don't understand why slider phones get the shaft like that. Why would anyone prefer an on-screen keyboard to a solid hardware keyboard?

I won't say that qwerty users should get the shaft, but coming from a BB to a G-nex and I'm loving the touchscreen keyboard so far. I type fasterbut with aobu thte same amount of mistakes and coming from someone who never used a touchscreen before, I'm only expecting that to get better.

The thing that i noticed with the slide out qwerty's is that it takes a lot of movement side-to-side with those wide keyboards. The portrait qwerty's of the BB's were nice and the portrait keyboard on the g-nex is working great for me. I'd encourage you to try it out. It's much nicer (to me) than the touch keyboards on the gingerbread devices...a world of difference to me.

 

[YourMobileGuru]

I have come from having physical keybosrds as well and it did take me a while to get used to a virtual one but now I don't use the physical keyboard on my DROID 3 nearly as much as I used to. That being said, if I am typing something long or I can't seem to get the cursor exactly where I want it the physical keyboard is a Godsend

 

[circustravis]

VZW, that's pretty much how I am. I also like it for typing in passwords since it's way easier to fat-finger that on the virtual kb.

 

[Eclipse2K]

I don't understand why slider phones get the shaft like that. Why would anyone prefer an on-screen keyboard to a solid hardware keyboard?

I used to demand a physical keyboard but I stopped when I switched to the Thunderbolt. The thickness is the main reason i went away from them.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

[LadyHottShott]

Ordered mine yesterday, will get it on Tuesday!

I'm so excited! This will be my first smartphone - an upgrade from my Samsung Alias 2 basic phone with a 2 inch screen.

 

[YourMobileGuru]

Picked one up today, the keyboard is indeed better than the Droid, D2G and D3, not only the shape of the keys but also the way they are back-lit. The phone also feels better in the hand than the D3 and is only maybe a mm or two wider, not even noticeable unless you have the two side by side and the thickness appears to be almost exactly the same as the D3. Definitely larger than the D2G though.

 

[raremage]

Picked one up today as well. It feels bulkier than I expected for some reason. I spent the afternoon getting everything loaded and configured the way that works for me. I figure to bang away on it hard for the next week or so and decide if I'm really hooked or not. The form factor will be a large part of that decision - a keyboard is important to me but not absolutely essential (meaning: I very much prefer to have one, but can deal with an onscreen if the other options just don't work for me).

Love the keyboard so far, spacing and tactile feel is excellent, but there are definitely things about it I would have liked to see changed - for example, do I really need the dedicated "=" key? Wouldn't an "@" key be much more practical on a mobile device?

Display quality is very good, no issues there for me but I'm one of those folks that never had a real issue with the older Pentile displays, so your mileage may vary there.

Performance is outstanding, no lag at all in anything I have done so far, touch screen is quite responsive, and it's been very zippy in everything I have run.

The call quality, based on limited experience so far, seems to be excellent. Haven't seen any issues with LTE connectivity so far. I'm getting a much better signal with the D4 than I do with a GNex in the same places, so that seems to be a good sign.

Bluetooth support works fine as expected; paired with my car no problem, synced my address book seamlessly. Also paired with my LG headset with no issue.

One disappointment is no SD card in the box or the phone, so you get 8GB of internal storage and that's it. Of course you can pop in an SD card but still, feels like they should have included at least an 8 or 16 GB SD with it.

No input on battery life yet. When I got it I had around 40% or so, configured the phone and downloaded a bunch of apps, synced two accounts, plus a few social media accounts as well. I let it run all the way down and it turned off around 8:30 PM. Took about two hours to charge from there to 100% battery. I'll try to report on the battery endurance over the next few days.