Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Smart Phone Review: The Droid

Two months ago, before I renewed my contract with Verizon, I started to look at different smart phones on-line and in the store. I knew I wanted to upgrade from my Samsung i760 which was a great windows mobile phone two years ago, but is not pretty and completely outdated by now. In starting my quest, I looked at some of the typical benchmarks, like camera quality, touchscreen capability, and keyboard comfortability.
Droid Picture




Of all the phones I could get, I wanted to stay with Verizon because the service is by far the best out there. All of my friends with iPhones do nothing but complain about how they can't get a signal with AT&T or how poor the sound quality is (a function of the phone as well). I know there are rumors about the iPhone coming to Verizon in the summer/fall (which will be true), but I just can't wait that long and I don't think it would be worth it. The Nexus One also looked appealing, but I wasn't going to wait six months for it to come to Verizon either.
So really, the only options I was going to consider were the Droid or a Blackberry. After playing around with the Blackberry Storm and the Droid, and then reading up on some articles about each: (Droid), (Storm 2) I knew I wanted the Droid. While the ability to work with Outlook was a big draw to the blackberry, it's social media capabilities are lacking. Plus, I've used Google Calendar in the past and it's really easy to migrate my calendar on-line. I know that's putting a lot of trust in Google, but they haven't steered me wrong so far.
I couldn't have made a better choice. The Droid has been one of the best investments I've made in technology; and that's saying something. Granted, it may be more useful to me than most because I'm working at a kick-ass social media company over in Cambridge that thrives on social media interaction.
If you have been around BU's campus at all using Foursquare, you may have seen me as the mayor somewhere. The GPS capabilities of the Droid are unmatched and I would go up against an iPhone any day. Speaking of which, as it's an Android phone, the Google Maps application is outstanding. I was able to find my way around New York two weeks ago without getting lost once because the walking directions were spot on.
I've recently learned that you can overclock the OS on the Droid (something I'm looking forward to), but I really don't think is necessary because it's already significantly faster than any other phone I've seen that runs applications.
My only complaint is that when I'm using the Droid for twelve hours straight (literally.. with check-ins, music and web browsing) it dies.. But that's okay, because it usually only happens once a week when I go travel somewhere and spam my foursquare friends with check-ins all day. ;) (Don't worry, I don't do that anymore. I now only selectively update my friends).

I hope that helps if you're trying to make a decesion.

All the best,
Ethan

No comments:

Post a Comment