Kevin's Watch

I bought a droid phone yesterday. My old phone was getting close to be sent to the knackers. I have Verizon and didn't want to have to go to ATT for a iphone.

It seems as good as what I've seen of the iphone, the screen loads quickly and I was able to get a signal in a place where I usually had trouble with my old phone. It has an interesting voice activated search feature. Speak into the phone and it runs a google search. I'm not sure why they put in the slide out keyboard. The pad activated keyboard when the phone is horizontal is far better than the slider.

I'll see how it does on a full battery charge. It seemed to drain pretty quick yesterday. The fellow that sold me the phone made a point of downloading an app that shuts down running apps after you're done browsing.

I was thinking about getting one of these. I hate my iPhone. My biggest complaint is reception area. Phone won't work lots of places my Razr would. #1 example- My house! I'm never there, it's not really a huge issue. But I finally took the sim card out of it and started using Walmart cheapie. Gonna switch to Verizon- I've been with Cingular/ATT for ten years, had Sprint before that. Main reason for this is that I have a Kentucky phone number and my wife does not. We do not live in Kentucky. I can't change my # because of business contacts. And I have 4 other numbers forwarding to it. Anyway, ATT won't let me add a line for her as our area codes are different- she needs a local number and can't get a Kentucky number because so many people have regional plans or whatever. Anyway, Verizon will let us both keep our old numbers. And it looks like we'll save about 80 bucks a month by being on the same plan with the same carrier.

The outcome of all this is that we're both getting new phones and a new plan in a few days and I was considering the Droid. But if battery life is a problem, it's not gonna work for me. If there's any truth to those tumor stories, I'll get one on each side. I use thousands of minutes monthly. So I gotta have something with some battery life.

I'm open to advice if anyone has any.

Interesting Harb.

I've got an iPhone as my personal phone, and an HTC Hero (which uses the Google Android OS) on Sprint for my work phone. Hands-down the iPhone smokes the Hero in ease of use, function, and service ('cause Sprint sucks). I have been exactly one place in the last 6 months that the iPhone couldn't get a signal, but then again, neither did anyone else's phone.

I'm not sure what the differences between the Hero and the Droid are, but if they're similar then the Droid's a decent phone. Battery life on any touch screen phone is going to blow if you use it a lot, but that's the price you pay for cool. I just plug mine in every time I get in the car.

Harbinger, have you thought about getting Google Voice? I also have AT&T, but I got a phone for my mom in NV and one for my mother-in-law in GA. The phones themselves have NC numbers, but with Google Voice they have alternate, local to the area numbers. Works great, especially if you have the +10 plan or whatever.

My experience so far on the droid is if there are a number of apps running at any one time it will draw the battery down fairly quick. I left it in the car for an hour with Google maps running, without the power cord in, and it lost 40% of the charge. However, it's like Cail says, you keep the power cord handy in the car. It recharges pretty quickly. I've played around with a couple of iphones and I don't think there's a lot of difference between it and the droid.

Where I live, there's no real difference in coverages, but my brother tells me that AT&T's coverage can be pretty spotty outside of metro Chicago area, at least. I've only had trouble a couple of times with Verizon; way off the beaten path in the Michigan U.P.

I was in NYC a few weeks ago where they say that AT&T's iPhone coverage is crap. Other than the interference from all the tall buildings mucking up the GPS from time to time, the phone worked flawlessly.