This week I started looking in earnest at the currently available Verizon Android phones. I find my BlackBerry to be an awesome device for PIM activities (email, SMS, calendar) and the official Twitter client is pretty decent, however I really miss having a good browser, feed reader, podcast client, etc. and will generally grab my iPod touch instead of the BlackBerry when around a WiFi network. I’d like to be able to use one device, and have that device on Verizon’s network.
As discussed in a recent Talk Show episode, the Android landscape is much more difficult for a consumer to navigate than the iOS landscape. If you want an iPhone, you go buy it. Your only choice is how much storage you want. If you want an Android device, you need to figure out what form factor you like, how battery life is on the different models, how the manufacturer UI customizations affect the user experience, etc.
After doing several hours of research, I basically came to the conclusion that Motorola is making the best Verizon Android handsets with the Droid 2 and Droid X being the best currently available options. They are very different devices.
While they have the same screen resolution, the 2’s screen is much smaller than the X’s. The 2 has a slide out landscape keyboard while the X only has a touch screen. The cameras are different. The overall device size and thickness is different.
I went to the Verizon store to get more hands-on experience. I played with the Droid 2 and the Droid X for a little while and noted that I liked the Droid X’s hardware buttons for Menu, Home, Back, Search and the larger screen when using the virtual keyboard. I also liked the Droid 2’s overall size since I typically keep my phone in a belt case.
On Wednesday evening, swayed by childhood memories of Star Wars, I decided to go ahead and order the Droid R2D2 (a re-badged Droid 2).1 It will arrive today.
Naturally, yesterday, the Droid Pro was announced. The Droid Pro is the droid I’m looking for. An Android device that has a BlackBerry style keyboard is what I’ve been waiting for now for some time. 2
So I invested a good deal of time this week trying to figure out which Android device to buy and in the one day between the time I got excited and ordered my Droid R2D2 and the day it will arrive, my enthusiasm for the new device I will receive today was completely sapped. This is the current Android landscape.
The Droid Pro is due out in a little less than a month, so I’m not going to return the Droid R2D2 right away. Instead, I’m going to pay the $35 rental restocking fee to give it a good test run over the next 30 days. Then I’ll probably return it and get the Droid Pro as soon as it’s available.
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So after all your ‘research’ you bought the phone because it had the name of a Star Wars character. And I’m supposed to be surprised that you’ll be sending it back because…?
Return R2D2 and buy an iPhone
You’ll buy an iPhone eventually anyhow, so why delay the inevitable?
There will always be the next, better, slicker, more perfect device.. Should I wait for it or should I just make sure that what I need today will be fulfilled by the purchase I make today? There is an old joke that goes along the lines…. “It will be great when you get it!” Sometimes you cannot wait for the perfect.
Once you decide to get married a sexier and more beautiful girl will try to hook up with you. Life and mobiles are quite semilar in this matter
“I’m a hardware keyboard guy from way back in the Treo 300 days. I type faster and more accurately on real buttons”
I hear this often and yet when you ask them how often they’ve used a virtual keyboard – the answer is often once. For one week – I forced myself to use only a virtual keyboard (the iPhone actually) and found after a bit of time I typed faster and more accurately on fake buttons. As now I have two phones (an iPhone and an BB) – I now loath using the BB keyboard as it feels that it takes more effort to type something than a virtual keyboard.
I’ve tried a couple of real and virtual keyboards on Android devices and feel the same way. But in the Android world – the real keyboards don’t stand up to the quality of a BB keyboard so its even worse.
I’m trying to gather the underlying point of this post. Is it that you think that Android development is happening to fast? That it should slow down? Like you’d be happier if the Droid Pro was released next year?
So, is this a good thing or a bad thing?
So people who cannot figure out what they want today and are not ok with their decisions (insecure) should by Apple?
I always thought choice and competition was a good thing.
Now we know why there is only one iPhone!
I experienced the exact same thing with the Droid Incredible. I researched the phone, looked at blurry spycam shots, lurked on message boards for months. MONTHS. I had been waiting for the phone since it was rumored to come out on Black Friday 2009.
It wasn’t released until nearly May. Since then, the Devour, Droid X, Droid 2 and the Fascinate have all been released and each crowned the best new Droid I could’ve purchased. Now add the Droid Pro to that list, which, yes, probably is the Droid I was looking for all along.
And I’m the kind of guy who spends months obsessing about which new phone I’m going to get, annoying my girlfriend with my constant checking of that forum. (There were a lot of us, tortured by the Droid Incredible’s delay. Kinda sad, really.)
Can you imagine what it’s like for someone like my dad, someone who didn’t even know what an iPad was until I showed it to him this week? It’s frustrating for consumers who don’t have a clear picture of what the market is like and how fast companies crank out bizarrely similar or sadly outdated Android phones to boost profits and what the difference is between Android 2.1 and 1.6 and 2.2 and why they can’t use Google but have to use Bing and why they can’t find that app they want because AT&T doesn’t let them or what the hell “root” is and why they might want to do it.
Buying an Android has become a mess, and I don’t know who’s to blame. Google? Carriers? Manufacturers? Apple?! (With their one-phone, one-carrier, yearly updated phone… the jerks.) All I know is: blaming the consumer is a cop-out. And this whole mess turning off a lot of the non-tech-obsessed I know.
“The Droid Pro is due out in a little less than a month, so I’m not going to return the Droid R2D2 right away…I’ll probably return it and get the Droid Pro as soon as it’s available.”
I hear that HTC will be bringing out an “incredible” Android-based phone in 5 weeks…
(Get away from this nonsense–get an iPhone.)
There are so many frustrating things about the Android platform I don’t even know where to begin. As you say, so many different hardware configurations and still so many different Android versions being used. And then there are the ‘extras’ that the carriers provide. If I want my OS skinned, I’ll do it myself, thanks. And why make it impossible for me to delete applications that aren’t core to the phone – this goes for you too Apple.
In the end, this summer I bought another iPhone. Android shows lots of promise but when you put the whole package together – hardware, OS, apps, and carrier extras, what I see is promise not fulfilled.
So, you reach for your iPod when you hit the net, and you like Verizon so an iPhone isn’t an option.
You should sit tight for another 3 months and get what you really want, a Verizon iPhone.
somewhat off topic, but you should check out today’s FoxTrot comic strip. Pretty funny and not entirely irrelevant if you look at it sideways 😉
@STL: Alex said in the first paragraph that he needs a device that can be used on Verizon.
@Tim: Also in the first paragraph, Alex says he owns an iPod Touch and uses it whenever he’s around a wifi network.
Well, you haven’t actually tried using the Droid Pro whereas you did try the 2 and the X. I think you’ll discover that you made the right choice. The Pro is positioned for people who *think* it’s the hardware configuration they want because they are coming from Blackberry to Android.
If you give it a chance, you will discover that the larger screen and software keyboard actually makes a lot more sense. You will become proficient with the keyboard pretty fast and I think you will end up realizing that you made the right decision.
As a former Blackberry user myself, I got hung up on the idea of a hardware keyboard for a while. I’m now really glad I made the leap. Enjoy your awesome new phone!
@Sidharth Dassani
Yes, but you can have both the wife and the sexier girl at the same time.
With phones, you need to take out a new contract.
The Droid 2 is far far superior to the Pro. Don’t worry, you made the right choice. With its Torch-like specs, Android 2.1 and Motoblur (virtually assuring no future updates), the Pro looks like another of Motorola’s numerous throwaway “unique form factor” devices.
“I’m a hardware keyboard guy from way back in the Treo 300 days. I type faster and more accurately on real buttonsâ€
I felt the same way and it’s one of the reasons I really liked the HTC Dream (G1 in the US). It’s also why I bought a Motorola Milestone when the Dream started getting a little long in the tooth. However, right about that time Swype surfaced and between the less-than-stellar keyboard on the Milestone and the ease of use of Swype I actually found myself using the physical keyboard less and less.
The virtual keyboard does take some getting used to but you’d be surprised how proficient you become with the right one.
If you want an iPhone, you go buy it. Your only choice is how much storage you want. If you want an Android device, you need to figure out …
The problem here is comparing “iPhone” with “Android device,” a dichotomy that makes sense to us techies but may not to the average person. They still recognize the cachet of the iPhone brand, but their choice is “which phone do I want?” instead of “which Android phone do I want?” A lot of the options are going to be thrown out from the get-go just because they don’t interest them.
If the question’s “which Droid do I want,” though, that might be a case where brand fragmentation is making things more confusing. Sorry about yours, BTW. :\
Hardware keyboards on phones are a thing of the past. The only reason some phones still have them is because BB users are so used to them. If you had never had a BB, I bet you wouldn’t be giving a physical keyboard a second thought.
Personally I think one of the biggest advantages of touch keyboards is that they are exactly that — virtual. It allows software to do predictive things such as making the keys bigger based on previous letters entered. There’s even software where you don’t need the keyboard on the screen — you just type as if there was a keyboard there and it figures out what the hell you were trying to type.
Personally I would have just gotten the Verizon iPhone though.
Grats on the Fireball BTW!
You lost me at “Verizon”.
G2.
The problem with Android isn’t that Motorola, say, creates a new and better device every week, it’s that it spreads its meager design talent across dozens of products.
Even Android as a whole suffers from this mentality. Google isn’t betting the farm on Android, it’s just a throwaway project with no real revenue model that might get unplugged next week.
You are going to have to learn to live with disappointment. I still lament the loss of Graffiti from the Palm and the Kyocera 1735. It was a way faster and more accurate way to input data and a pseudo-pen stylus is more natural to us old-timers. That said I was able to pick up iPhone two thumbs up method quickly.
Quit fighting the force, Luke, …and will generally grab my iPod touch… Just get an iPhone and enjoy.
See, that’s what you get from an “open” device where the software engineer doesn’t control (or even know) the form factor, the screen resolution, or anything else. I guess I just prefer the horrible, closed device overseen by Adolf Jobs. You know what you’re getting. When the new model comes out, you read the reviews. You hear the stats.
Now, if all phones were available on compatible, high-speed networks, that would be a genuinely open, free development.
After reading this and other articles like it, is it any wonder that surveys are showing a full quarter of current Android owners are planning to buy an iPhone next?
The Droid Pro looks extremely unbalanced to top on with the keyboard at the bottom of that tall screen.
The assumption that I don’t like virtual keyboards because I don’t have experience with them is simply wrong. I had an original iPhone, an iPhone 3GS and I currently have an iPod touch. I’ve had plenty of experience with the iOS virtual keyboard and it isn’t horrible (I like it better than the physical keyboard on the Palm Pre Plus for example), but it doesn’t come close to the keyboard on my BlackBerry (I’ve used 5 models over the years).
The iPhone virtual keyboard is far superior to the Android virtual keyboard (even with Swype), so a hardware keyboard is definitely the option that works best for me. I prefer the Treo/BlackBerry style keyboard to the Droid’s landscape keyboard.
It’s a bit of a misnomer to compare Android directly with iPhone. The real advantage of an Android is having a common platform between several flavours and manufacturers of phone. While there is a degree of fragmentation now it won’t be the case in 3 years or perhaps even a year down the road. Android isn’t perfect but it’s a vast improvement from being stuck with a proprietary interface that may not even be shared with other phones by the same manufacturer.
Perhaps if you’re not satisfied with the phone you ordered then it wasn’t the phone you wanted after all. Or maybe you’re more in love with owning a kewl phone than you are with finding the right phone for you.
I’m an iPhone 3GS user, which I mention not to add my voice to the “get an iphone” chorus because I think that kind of thing is a bit tedious – get what you like, right?
But… the 3GS. I love the 3GS. I had a (don’t laugh) Windows mobile 6 smartphone while I was waiting for something better… and the iphone wasn’t it until it included the features that came with the 3GS and its associated OS version.
Now the iPhone 4 is out… I can accept that it’s a great phone, but I still love my 3GS. Because it still does everything I need and want it to do.
If you’re still desperate to trade in your phone the moment a newer model comes out then clearly it never was the phone you really wanted. And you’re still chasing a dream.
I’m not sure whose fault that is. But it isn’t the manufacturer’s. It isn’t the carrier’s. And (as much as I dislike them) it isn’t really Google’s either.
[…] nature of Apple’s iPhone development and marketing. I forwarded a couple of friends this article, in which the author explains how within one day of buying an Android phone (after a week of […]
Get “swype” for your keyboard… It’s pretty much magic and you’ll type faster than with anything else… WAY faster than iPhone, or even a hardware keyboard.
Love the iPhone hardware and UI polish, but I’m a Google Voice/Gmail kinda guy so Android is the way to go for me. I also don’t like the idea of getting raped by ATT overselling their bandwidth.
My only gripe with Android phones is the battery life… I returned the Evo because of that… So far the G2 is pretty good though.
You should just dump Verizon… they’re evil anyway.
Or you can just keep hanging around for the mythical “Verizon iPhone” that is supposed to be shipping anytime now based on “sources briefed on the matter” – who have been wrong every single time for at least the past two years now.
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[…] think apples approach at 1 phone a year is a good practice. https://alexking.org/blog/2010/10/07/the-droid-im-looking-for J This is one reason why I think that the Android market will end up like windows with a less […]