[mdlug] Droid report

Wed Apr 7 20:14:32 EDT 2010

 I will concur with the writeup. Had my Droid for over a month and am
loving it better then the iphone.
Now that the 2.1 update in out and installed I find it is much faster in
all functions from scrolling to typing.
Also the pinch and zoom on the default browser is a welcome addition. I
would like more menu screens but
I am getting used to only adding really wanted apps. If you pick up the
charging station it will give another micro
USB connector so that will be nice. A main point I don't like is the
fact all my contacts are on Google. Having a palm 700p
previous I do like the idea of only having the contacts on the laptop
and the phone only.

As the appstore is expanded daily and the apps are of good quality and
quantity. Multi-app stability when switching from one to
another so far has never been a issue. I would recommend a wired or
wireless headset the phone does get a bit warm
after a while of talking. Having used the VNC/RDP client it is strange
to have the size of the screen but still able to see
what is going on on the other system. The app is not super stable but
usable for playing around. The SSH clients are
rock solid as well as the FTP client/server app. It has a very good
weather, twitter, facebook and Digg app.

A few sites to look into is droid-life and droid-forums (Google for
proper URL) these sites have great info on what is out there
and any issues.

Rooting Droid, still not sure if I will or now so will keep all posted.
I have been expanding a blog with my tips and ideas on blogger.

Thanks

Pat Baker

Ingles, Raymond wrote:
>  I've had my Droid phone for close to a week, and figured I'd give a
> little report on it.
>
>  Hardware-wise, it's awfully good. The screen is beautiful. The camera
> takes decent pictures and good video. The speakers are entirely
> competent and the sound is good through headphones. The keyboard isn't
> quite as good as the rest of it, but it's perfectly serviceable, or will
> be once I've messed with the software a little. The micro-USB hookup is
> mildly annoying; I have a ton of mini-USB cables laying around, but only
> the micro-USB cable that came with the Droid, for now. (Anyone know a
> cheap source of micro-USB cables?)
>
>  The software is pretty good. Definitely some rough edges, but workable.
> The internet functions are solid: the browser's very usable, email works
> fine, etc. Had no trouble hooking up to my 802.11g WAP, etc. I was able
> to find SSH and VNC clients; haven't tried the VNC client yet, but the
> SSH client did well.
>
>  Downloaded a few games and toys, enjoyable enough. I've managed to move
> over my contacts and secured passwords from my Treo with some conversion
> tools. Still working on the calendar, but it looks doable - I found a
> Perl script to convert a Palm calendar to iCal format, and that should
> be importable once I remove some personal entries.
>
>  Video plays very well on this device. With an 854x480 screen, there's
> room for every single pixel on a DVD. I've put together some scripts
> that convert DVDs and videos for viewing on the Droid (which doesn't
> like the AVI or FLV formats but seems happy with MP4) and the results
> are a joy to behold. Commuting on the bus is going to be even more
> entertaining now. F/X blockbusters were a little anemic at 320x240 (to
> fit on the Treo's 320x320 screen) but on the Droid they look beautiful.
>
>  There are several programs that I need to write. First up, to my
> surprise, is a decent text editor. I figured out how to cut and paste,
> but none of the free text editors I've looked at support search or
> replace, nor jumping to a particular point in a file. Fortunately,
> development doesn't look too hard.
>
>  The second thing up is a modification to keyboard input. On the Treo,
> there was a utility called "KeyCaps" that sped up typing considerably.
> Hold a key for a brief time (I had it set to 1/4 sec) and you'd get the
> capital letter. Double-tap within a set time (again, 1/4 sec for me),
> and you'd get the punctuation character. Not having to chord keys on a
> small keyboard is very useful, and makes a surprising difference in
> typing speed and ease.
>
>  I want to make a client for my "Ostiary" program, of course, and an
> encrypted, secure diary/journal program.
>
>  After that, I figure it should be possible to port the old "Maelstrom"
> game (Asteroids clone from the original color Macs) without too much
> trouble. By the time I've got all the above under my belt, I should be
> ready to port a BZflag client that uses the accelerometers for
> steering...
>
>  Sincerely,
>
>  Ray Ingles                                    (313) 227-2317
>
>    "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right;
>         and if wrong, to be set right." - Carl Schurz
>
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