Motorola Droid Does, Part 2

One week ago I shared my first impressions about the new Motorola Milestone (the EU version of the Droid) I got to review. Now, one week later, I have a lot more to write since I started using that smartphone intensely everyday.

For those who missed my first review, you can find it here. In particular, I remind you I come from a BlackBerry Bold, so I’m trying to find out what the Droid does better and what doesn’t. Here are a few more thoughts about some aspect of the device.

Keyboard

In the other post I wrote I was missing the BB keyboard. I have to say that after a week I’m missing it less, since I’m fully getting used to the physical keyboard the Milestone offers. The only downside is, I repeat, it is a Qwertz, so I still have difficulties in remembering where “z” and “y” are located. Except for this little issue, after a bit of practice, Droid’s keyboard works very well.

On the contrary, I still find the virtual keyboard not that intuitive. Lots of typos, I can barely use it very slowly. I also installed an app called “better keyboard“, but it doesn’t help that much since it would be perfect for those who write in one language only, but in my case I have to switch from ITA to ENG and vice-versa very often, something that in the long run makes you loose a lot of precious time.

Battery

I have to say the Droid drains a lot of battery. During normal usage, I hit 12 hours since my latest recharge, but if I start making and receiving a lot of calls, battery duration drops tremendously. I’m using a very nice tool called BatteryTime Lite, that shows the exact time you get in case you use this or that functionality only. Now I have 30% left, and this apps tells me that it’s equivalent to 80.59 hours idle, 1.37h talk time, 1.18 web surfing etc.

I also installed a few widgets that let my easily and quickly switch Bluetooth and Wifi on or off, in order to optimize the battery’s consumption. Last but not least, I have to say that battery duration is getting better overtime, thanks to the complete charge-discharge cycles.

GMail

While push email works very well, the GMail app suffers of a big problem: you can’t save attachments. For word documents, if you have Documents to Go installed, you can open and save them from there. For other files, like .mp3 or .wav files, pdf and images, there is no way to save them. I haven’t found any way to do anything but preview them, at least. Any idea?

D-Pad

In my previous post I wrote I missed my old, faithful trackball on my BlackBerry. Now I can say I have something very similar to it: the D-Pad. It’s located on the right side of the Keyboard and it lets easily scroll up/down/left/right, making it easier to move around. Love it.

Browser

Last time I said that web surfing on the Droid was much better than on the BB Bold. Now I have to say this is even more true. I downloaded a very powerful browser for the Android platform, Dolphin Browser (version 2 released yesterday), and it makes web surfing even better and powerful. It also provides shortcuts to quickly open Google apps and commonly used websites as well as the ability to share links with the major social networks. Very fast and usable, big thumb up.

Any comment? Any useful tip from experienced Android users? Please stay tuned if you want to know more about my new gadget, a new post is coming out very soon

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Tagged as: Add new tag, Android, motorola droid, Motorola Milestone, Smartphone