Official: Post Droid 2 questions, get answers

[Kyle Gibb]

Hey everyone,

We are sure many of you will be running out and snagging a Droid 2 today (Phil and Dieter are running theirs through the paces right now). However, many of you might have some important questions about the phone before taking the plunge. Is the keyboard better than the Droid 1? Should I get an X for the bigger screen? etc, etc.

So, here is where you should post your questions. If you already have the phone, please help out your fellow readers and give what help you can. Running those Quadrant scores and laughing in glee can wait (at least a couple minutes!). Initial impressions are welcome as well! Also, popular questions might find their way to the podcast!

So, get to the postin'! And I hope to see all of you guys in the live chat tonight, the podcast this week (9pm est) should be amazing!

(mods, please sticky this! thx!! <3 )

 

[tomiwah#AC]

Does the Droid 2 physical keyboard include spell-check? Either predictive text or spell-check upon sending?

 

[thepresident519]

Is there a way to remove the skin (blur, or whatever they're calling it) atop of android on the droid 2 without rooting?

 

[karnovaran]

Does the Droid 2 physical keyboard include spell-check? Either predictive text or spell-check upon sending?

It has a setting for "auto replace" misspelled words, but it doesn't seem to work for me.. not sure what's up.

Is there a way to remove the skin (blur, or whatever they're calling it) atop of android on the droid 2 without rooting?

Yes and no. You can't completely remove the programs, but you can trash all of the widgets and icons on the homescreen and then install another launcher like Lancher Pro or ADW Launcher to have a stock look.

 

[karnovaran]

Correction: spellcheck does work on the hard keyboard, but only for common misspellings (or so it seems)

 

[dj_elite]

I got the phone yesterday, it's my first android phone. Two big gripes.

1) Contacts- is there any way to JUST sync "my contacts" from Google rather than all of them? I'm a bit frustrated because I have hundreds of google contacts and now they're all on the phone, as well as nearly 1,500 facebook friends who are now cluttering my contact lists. It's handy to have people's statuses, pictures all synced up but the sheer amount of people on my phone now is ridiculous. I looked around and there doesn't seem to be a way around this on the Blur-like skin

2) The battery life. Maybe it's still 'breaking in' but so far it's been dismal. I plugged it in out of the box and I got the battery to about 70-80% since I had to run off somewhere. I admit, I used it heavily during that time (activation, syncing contacts and accounts, downloading apps) for about 2 hours and shortly after that it died. I came home, charged it up, and used it for a few more hours in the evening (a few phone calls, texts, more apps, etc.) and within 4-5 hours, it was shot again.

It charged fully last night and I unplugged it before going to sleep... by morning it was down to ~80%, and this morning I've taken two 30 second phone calls and read nytimes online for... about 5 minutes and it's already down to 70%. Please tell me my phone is defective or that this will get better.

 

[dj_elite]

2) The battery life. Maybe it's still 'breaking in' but so far it's been dismal. I plugged it in out of the box and I got the battery to about 70-80% since I had to run off somewhere. I admit, I used it heavily during that time (activation, syncing contacts and accounts, downloading apps) for about 2 hours and shortly after that it died. I came home, charged it up, and used it for a few more hours in the evening (a few phone calls, texts, more apps, etc.) and within 4-5 hours, it was shot again.

It charged fully last night and I unplugged it before going to sleep... by morning it was down to ~80%, and this morning I've taken two 30 second phone calls and read nytimes online for... about 5 minutes and it's already down to 70%. Please tell me my phone is defective or that this will get better.

Correction-- I just exchanged a few texts with friends and I'm now down to 50%.

 

[RConcheiro#AC]

1) Anyway to change the two docking screen at the bottom? I would like a "Phone" then the Drawer Arrow and then "Messages.

2) On the D1 if you hit the list icon, you could see where it says "smileys", and if you put in a smiley, a Android smiley would show up, can't find it now or if I put a smiley a Android does not show up. Anyway to get this added?

3) My Tapatalk... for some reason I cannot add the widget to the home screen, when I try to add it, it says "Nothing to update", it won't even let me add the icon to my home screen. Any input?

4) Trying to connect to Androids podcast, but Google Listen keeps FCing. Anyway to fix this?

Thanks to everyone in advance!

 

[SecretAsianMan#AC]

1) When I enable USB mass storage mode, the computer sees the 8GB SD card and some CD-ROM image. Is there any way (non-root) to have the computer see the 8GB phone storage too?

2) Do I need to install Moto Connect for any reason? (Looks like bloatware to me.)

@RConcheiro: Your #4: FYI, if you can't get Listen to work, DoggCatcher is working great for me on the D2.

 

[mzazthang]

mine did the same thing! ughhhhh~ hate hate hate the battery life! ive even deleted the news and fb threads to hopefully help! i shouldnt always have to be charging my phone! thats really the only thing im disappointed with...

 

[RConcheiro#AC]

@RConcheiro: Your #4: FYI, if you can't get Listen to work, DoggCatcher is working great for me on the D2.

Thanks so much

 

[kroman1107]

hey just an fyi for everyone here in case you didnt know. just got my d2 and loaded my apps back on it but i unknowingly loaded and older versions of atk. the d2 has been going haywire had 2 freezes alot of lag etc. after a necessary battery pull i uninstalled and reinstalled the updated version from the market and its running 100 % better.



Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[dj_elite]

another stupid question, probably more general android vs. droid2 (although maybe it has to do with the motoblur skin)... i have two email accounts in gmail, is there a way to get either 1) separate icons for the different email accounts or 2) some sort of badge or mark on the icon itself (a la mac mail or iphone or blackberry) when a new message comes in? also goes for texts... or do i have to look at the top for the notifications?

 

[kroman1107]

has anyone had any freezing issues. out of the box ove had to do three battery pulls since yesterday. i know your not supposed.to but leaving the phone frozen wasnt going to fix itself. on boot up today it stood on tbe red eye for 10 minutes and again i had to fo a battery pull. i cant wait till the phones ready to work i need to make phone calls when i turn my phone on? anyone else know what the problem might be i have atk but with the froyo fix i already reinstalled.



Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[karnovaran]

Guys, don't use task killers. The phone will just restart those processes as soon as you kill them, wasting your resources again. If you leave them be (i.e. no task killing), they'll just fall way into the background and never slow you down.

There are countless articles explaining why Android does not need a task killer.

 

[karnovaran]

another stupid question, probably more general android vs. droid2 (although maybe it has to do with the motoblur skin)... i have two email accounts in gmail, is there a way to get either 1) separate icons for the different email accounts or 2) some sort of badge or mark on the icon itself (a la mac mail or iphone or blackberry) when a new message comes in? also goes for texts... or do i have to look at the top for the notifications?

1) Long tap home screen, shortcuts, gmail label.. then select what you want.

2) There are widgets in the market that will do this. You could also install Launcher Pro and set it up there.

 

[dj_elite]

1) Long tap home screen, shortcuts, gmail label.. then select what you want.

2) There are widgets in the market that will do this. You could also install Launcher Pro and set it up there.

thanks!

 

[kroman1107]

Guys, don't use task killers. The phone will just restart those processes as soon as you kill them, wasting your resources again. If you leave them be (i.e. no task killing), they'll just fall way into the background and never slow you down.



There are countless articles explaining why Android does not need a task killer.

hey i uninstalled atk on the d2 and runs much smoother still some lag thought but i think its this version of froyo .needa and will get some patches i think .its the software lagging no other reason it should. today it was lagging bad when i was scrolling through text messages. which always ran smooth on my dx



Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[shoman24v]

I don't understand why the unlock screen, the part you swipe has lag. Along with swiping across screens has some lag.

Those are the two big things that bother me.

There's also no smilies for text messages wtf.

 

[MrSmith317]

I got the phone yesterday, it's my first android phone. Two big gripes.

1) Contacts- is there any way to JUST sync "my contacts" from Google rather than all of them? I'm a bit frustrated because I have hundreds of google contacts and now they're all on the phone, as well as nearly 1,500 facebook friends who are now cluttering my contact lists. It's handy to have people's statuses, pictures all synced up but the sheer amount of people on my phone now is ridiculous. I looked around and there doesn't seem to be a way around this on the Blur-like skin

To the contacts part, I know that on the Original Droid you could filter contact by whether or not there was a phone number. That was in display options in contacts. You still can still get contacts' email etc but they won't show when you're trying to dial a phone number.

For the Facebook part, I had facebook sync turned off(also on the OD) and none of my facebook friends are in my contacts, only google contacts with phone numbers show.