One week test run

[pierce514#AC]

It is about one week in now since the release of the droid, so i would like to know how it is? I have a blackberry tour right now and am a crackberry-e and i like the things that the droid has to offer. My plan was to wait a week or two but I'm itching to see how people like them now. So any comments are appreciated and if any previous bb owners could chip in that would be great.

My biggest fear is email, is it as good, or at least close, and is it different at all?

Thanks

 

[raremage]

The Droid rocks, but it has some issues with certain Exchange implementations - so if Exchange mail is your most important consideration, you might want to wait until the first patch, reportedly scheduled for 11 December.

Also of note: the keyboard takes some getting used to.

Don't meant o sound down on the Droid, I love the phone. It fills so many needs so well, and is highly customizable in ways my old phone was not. For example, I'm traveling on business today. Email on the plane during a one-hour delay on the runway. Plus various twitter updates and surfing. Great call quality for a concall during a layover in Atlanta. Listened to tunes during both flights.
When I finally arrived at my destination, pulled up my reservations for car and hotel, then Nav led me right to the hotel in a suburb of Dayton.

It's a great tool for a business traveler. Just think you should know what limitations you are likely to face going into it.

 

[hatch.duffy]

I came from 3 years with blackberry, most recently the storm 9530. As stated above some exchange implementations are having trouble. There are no sound profiles as of yet so you have to go into each app that notifies you and change each one seperately. From what I have found the gmail app is not truly push but seems to come in fairly quickly. The physical keyboard is definitely going to take some getting used to but the virtual keyboards both portrait and landscape are very easy to type on. Of course no bbm so get used to usiing google talk. Overall tho, I like this phone better than bb, and I was a total fanboy. Its going to be strange to you at first that you can just USE the phone. I have been installing and uninstalling apps left and right, no reboots required. I'm running about 20 different apps phone hasn't slowed down at all. Haven't had to do a battery pull since I got it last Friday except for once, and that was just to see how fast it rebooted (which I clocked at about 40 secs and concensus has been def under a minute). Its an awesome phone and android is only going to get better.

 

[largeselection]

I, too, used to use a blackberry tour. The email is not perfect on the droid...yet. A few email related issues.

1) You cannot set up a yahoo account.
2) A fair number of people (myself included) are having issues with one or several gmail accounts. Basically for one of my accounts when I get an email I don't get a notification and I can't see it in the "inbox". When I look in the "all mail" label I see all my emails labeled "inbox". So this seems like a glitch that will hopefully be fixed with the 12/11 update.
3) If you opt to have 1 unified email inbox gmail is not "pushed"
4) If you have multiple gmail accounts I find it to be a bit annoying to check your messages in them because you have to hit a button for "accounts" then select the account you want to see. (IE- there is no unified gmail section)
5) Gmails seem to load... For example, when I switch to a gmail account it loads in my list of emails each time. I'm not sure if everyone is having this issue (i'm going to post a thread soon). But it's not like on my BB where as soon as you open all your emails are there...again this is just my experience.

With all that said....Emails look great! and they do load and pop up quickly. The gmail app is synched with real gmail...in that you can flag stuff, star things, label, etc and all of that will happen within your actual account.


Most importantly...This phone is ridiculous. It is so quick! It is beautiful! It does a boat load of awesome things. There are a lot of apps that do cool stuff and you can customize this phone a lot. I'm going to at least wait for an update and hope that google fixes some of these issues (most importantly the one about not getting emails correctly)

Hope that helped. Feel free to PM me or gtalk me if you have any specific questions.

 

[dtboos]

I, too, used to use a blackberry tour. The email is not perfect on the droid...yet. A few email related issues.

1) You cannot set up a yahoo account.

Just an FYI for those who may not know.

Yahoo mail works on the Droid. Yahoo Mail Plus works no problem, if you don't have Mail Plus, you just need to set it up MANUALLY. It also usually needs to have wifi off when setting up for some reason, but it does work.

Here's how (pasted from Android forums at Crackberry)

go to mail icon
add account
enter email address in email address filed (name@yahoo.com)
enter password at password field
select MANUAL SETUP not next
select imap
username= name@yahoo.com
password = yourpassword
imap server= imap.mail.yahoo.com
port=143
security=none
optional = blank
select next

you will then be prompted to sign in do so.

will then be taken to the smptp settings which only prompts (going form memory) you for address which is smtp.mobile.mail.yahoo.com. leave the port as is. then select next. sign in. name your account and that's it.

Hope that helps people

 

[largeselection]

I was unaware that you could do that. I read you had to pay for the plus service or forward your yahoo account to a gmail account. Anyhoo, sorry for the mistype, it is definitely possible to get yahoo, but it's not as simple to set up email accounts as I found on the tour.

 

[04redgto]

What I did to make my e-mail very easy, was I have 2 yahoo addresses, and a work address. Since I knew I was getting a Droid on release, I set up a Gmail acct. for syncing purposesd. I set all my existing e-mail addys to forward to the new Gmail acct. I get all my mail pushed to my phone within about 30seconds or so of it being sent.

 

[ByeBye2BB]

I came from a Storm 1, and I can say with no hesitation the Droid beats the S1 into submission for my purposes.

- I have two gmail accounts that I access as two separate inboxes, and so far email sent to either account has been instantly received on the Droid. I appreciate the tight integration with gmail (labels, stars, etc.). Furthermore, I appreciate that I can directly access my entire inbox on either account, rather than having incoming mail copied to my device as with the BB.

- I no longer have to pay attention to my available memory when installing apps, or just using the device. Gone are the days of weighing the benefits of installing a "massive" 800k app.

- The Android Market runs considerable faster than the BB App World, is better laid out, and has a vastly better selection of apps I actually want to use. Additionally, apps tend to be free or at least cheaper compared to BB.

- The Droid browser is faster, renders pages more accurately, and supports multiple windows. The higher resolution screen means you can view most web pages in landscape without zooming in (the text is small, but I haven't found myself straining to read it). If you can view it on your computer, odds are you can view it on your Droid.

- The Droid doesn't have any BIS limitations. No more truncated emails, download size limitations, and slow data rates due to having your internet connection funneled through BIS. I can download a 50MB podcast directly to the Droid and read an entire HTML email now!

- I have not tried any non-gmail accounts (because I don't have any), so I can't comment on their functionality.

- Camera functionality is not a high priority to me. I've yet to actually try to take a real picture with the camera, but it does work acceptably well with the barcode scanning app I tried (shopsavvy). It looks like the focusing problems will be fixed with the Dec 11 update.

- The physical keyboard seems to be a like it or hate it preference. I like having it as an option.

 

[pierce514#AC]

So can anyone tell me if my school email would work on this. On my bb it recognizes it immediately and i didn't have to go through and plug in imap and smtp and things along those lines. would this be the same on the droid or would i manually have to set it up. The email runs in outlook if that helps distinguish it.

 

[yasuro]

coming from a tour, you'll probably be somewhat disappointed by battery life in comparison.

 

[TootNBerry]

Coming from a storm and the droid is where it's at loving it so far even thou i've switched out once cause the camera didn't work.. Email seems fine for me thru gmail only one ive used so far..

 

[pierce514#AC]

Well maybe you guys can answer my following questions:
1. Will the battery last through a day if I text a lot with only other use being internet?
2. Will an email address that runs on outlook work on the droid?
3. Can you open Powerpoints, word docs, and excel documents?
4. On the sound settings, is there a vibrate, complete silent, and normal ring or how is that set up?
5. How does back up work on this device?
6. Is there a character limit on texts?
7. Switch from tour to droid or no?

 

[schnyd]

moving from blackberry to Droid has been a mixed bag. I love android but the droid specifically was a challenge to get used to typing on. 1 week in now and I really don't use the physical keyboard but I'm starting to adjust my storm fingers to work on the android virtual keyboard. If you struggle at first don't give up it worth it.

 

[csiguy1]

I have to say my Droid is a work Horse. 4 days of very busy work and it has been a communications machine. Can't wait for Droid2.

 

[Cory Streater]

Well maybe you guys can answer my following questions:
1. Will the battery last through a day if I text a lot with only other use being internet?
2. Will an email address that runs on outlook work on the droid?
3. Can you open Powerpoints, word docs, and excel documents?
4. On the sound settings, is there a vibrate, complete silent, and normal ring or how is that set up?

Yes.

5. How does back up work on this device?

I haven't tried it yet, but Sprite Mobile has a nice looking backup application. Also, if you search for "Backup" in the Market application you'll see a lot of other backup options.

6. Is there a character limit on texts?

Yes & no. In my experience, if I text someone on Verizon, I can send messages greater than 160 characters and they will come through just fine. If I send the same message to a Sprint customer, I instantly get the following message:

"FREE_VZW_MSG: Messages sent to non-VZW customers with graphics/tones/formatting and/or 160+ characters are sent as plain text with only the first 160 characters."

This is very frustrating, as it never happened on my Touch Pro 2. Also it's hard to keep track of how many characters you've typed because there is no indication (e.g., 10/160) until you get to the 150/160 characters, and this feature didn't work for me in landscape mode at all.