Just upgraded from the Droid1 to the Galaxy Nexus.. Update: Got the Droid4.

[sygyzy]

Have you considered switching to an iPad with the optional keyboard?

 

[Eli]

Have you considered switching to an iPad with the optional keyboard?

An iPad? Really? Where the eff would I put that? lol

 

[Dulanic]

An iPad? Really? Where the eff would I put that? lol

Oh come on... it's whats in!

On a serious note... anyone who uses a tablet as a phone and/or carries it around everywhere looks retarded. I was laughing so hard when someone at a concert I went to was holding one up taking a video only for it to get knocked out of their hands and I am sure it got smashed.

 

[Bateluer]

On a serious note... anyone who uses a tablet as a phone and/or carries it around everywhere looks retarded. I was laughing so hard when someone at a concert I went to was holding one up taking a video only for it to get knocked out of their hands and I am sure it got smashed.

Second. I've seen people at a few museums now taking pictures of their kids with their iPad.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Second. I've seen people at a few museums now taking pictures of their kids with their iPad.

It would be one thing if the iPad actually had a nice camera but any point and shoot camera from the last decade or so will take much better pcis.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Yeah, it makes sense with a phone since that's something you can just throw in your pocket.

But you have to make a deliberate effort to bring a tablet with you to a museum. Why not bring a point-n-shoot or even your iPhone 4s?

 

[Bateluer]

Yeah, it makes sense with a phone since that's something you can just throw in your pocket.

But you have to make a deliberate effort to bring a tablet with you to a museum. Why not bring a point-n-shoot or even your iPhone 4s?

Any smartphone . . .

Its a status thing. They need to tell everyone around them how much better they are because they have an iPad.

 

[ChronoReverse]

I was trying to stealth in a dig there lol. But yeah, any decent smartphone would be better to carry around for a quick snap.

 

[cecco]

Previous OG Droid owner here. I thought this would be a problem for me as well, but once I knew I would get this phone, I started using my droid on touch mode typing only to get used to it. Turns out, after a while, it wasn't that bad anymore and when the Nexus hit the stores, I was ready to go. I say if you like the rest of the phone, hang in there and give it another week.

 

[jiffylube1024]

It would be one thing if the iPad actually had a nice camera but any point and shoot camera from the last decade or so will take much better pcis.

Or any smartphone from 2011 onward.

 

[DefDC]

I came from a D1, but rarely used the keyboard. I used Swype on my Omnia previosly, and loved it. Swype worked great on my D1. The tiny hardware keyboard key were a PITA. Made the move to Swiftkey when I got the Nexus. I only miss the HW kb when in certain rare circumsstances. Definately worth the sacrifice in size and form factor.

Use Swiftkey or Swype and stay in portriat mode. Give that a shot for a week. You'll still have plenty of screen real estate for reading messages, and your typing will be get much quicker rapidly. In fact, once you START to get used to Swype or Swiftkey, you'll probably see the flaws in the tiny kb.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Or any smartphone from 2011 onward.

2011? I asked a restaurant for a picture of a room for an event and he sent one from his iPad. It was the worst yellow, grainy mess I've seen in years! My dumbphone in 2002 was about the same quality I think. Maybe it's because I almost exclusively use my DSLR or nothing now, but what people consider acceptable pictures (especially indoor!) these days is pretty pathetic.

edit: ops, I checked the exif on that photo, and it actually says iPhone 4S. It's 8 MP so must be that right? Wow, I thought that was supposed to be the better phone camera..? I definitely don't want to see the worst ones then.

 

[Eli]

I am getting more used to it, but I hate auto correct and I make WAY more mistakes. Still haven't tried Swype or Swiftkey.

The Droid4 is supposed to be out on the 9th, still within my 14 day return period. I probably won't end up switching, but I'm still annoyed with it overall. My only other complaint is that battery life is abysmal.. and I thought the Droid1 was bad.

 

[trmiv]

Battery life isn't great, but it's way better than the Droid 1. It's certainly not great compared to something like the iPhone, but considering the great performance and massive screen it's waaaaay better than my Droid 1 ever was. I do have the extended battery, but with my normal use pattern I can get around 20 hours on battery. If I use the phone a lot, maybe around 12-15 hours. Even with a lot of stuff turned on, I've been able to get my idle battery drain to around 3% per hour. I could turn off a bunch of stuff that I like to have running and get it to around 1.5%, but then it's not much of a smartphone. I like my widgets!

 

[Ravynmagi]

I hate that when in panorama mode, you can't see the message you're replying to.

I'm okay with virtual keyboards, but this particular thing really bugs me with Android.

I kinda understood with Android 2.x and 3-4 inch 800x480 screens. But we got a Galaxy Nexus with a 4.65 inch screen, 1280x720 resolution, and Android 4, why are they STILL using the full screen to type in landscape mode? Ugh.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Not all keyboards do that. I like Hacker's Keyboard which features both a dedicated number row as well as NOT doing that.

 

[Red Storm]

It also seems to be app dependent. In the browser landscape typing leaves part of the screen visible. In Google Talk it does not.

 

[Eli]

Battery life isn't great, but it's way better than the Droid 1. It's certainly not great compared to something like the iPhone, but considering the great performance and massive screen it's waaaaay better than my Droid 1 ever was. I do have the extended battery, but with my normal use pattern I can get around 20 hours on battery. If I use the phone a lot, maybe around 12-15 hours. Even with a lot of stuff turned on, I've been able to get my idle battery drain to around 3% per hour. I could turn off a bunch of stuff that I like to have running and get it to around 1.5%, but then it's not much of a smartphone. I like my widgets!

Hmm.. I must be doing something to suck it up. I'm only getting about 7 hours on a full charge with moderate use.

My Droid1 would last 8-9 hours with moderate use.

I suppose I should get the 2100mAh battery.

 

[trmiv]

Check out BetterBatteryStats and look at your partial wakelocks. That really helped me figure out what was eating my battery. The stuff I turned off that helped was Books Sync and Wallet sync, which I never use. Also make sure if you use Google+ that you have it set to only upload pictures when you're plugged in, or if you don't use it at all, just freeze the app. Another thing I did was turn off the click for navigation and screen off noise. It annoyed me anyway, and saves a little battery throughout the day.

 

[Bateluer]

edit: ops, I checked the exif on that photo, and it actually says iPhone 4S. It's 8 MP so must be that right? Wow, I thought that was supposed to be the better phone camera..? I definitely don't want to see the worst ones then.

Even with a decent smartphone camera, it takes some skill and practice to get a good shot. Good lighting too.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Even with a decent smartphone camera, it takes some skill and practice to get a good shot. Good lighting too.

It was an indoor shot. But even so it was crazy noisy, and the colors where terribly muted. Even if the best camera is the one you have with you, these shots are unusable so you might as well not even bother. I'd rather have fewer good shots than waste my time with cell phone shots I just have to delete anyway.

 

[Spoooon]

I am getting more used to it, but I hate auto correct and I make WAY more mistakes. Still haven't tried Swype or Swiftkey.

The Droid4 is supposed to be out on the 9th, still within my 14 day return period. I probably won't end up switching, but I'm still annoyed with it overall. My only other complaint is that battery life is abysmal.. and I thought the Droid1 was bad.

I usually can't get much past 3 hours of screen on time. My standby drain is down to around 2% per hour (4G, have latitude on, email syncing, all that crap).

The battery life is better than what I got on my Droid, but is still kind of disappointing (I think they need to do a larger extended battery, and not that Seidio monstrosity).

 

[notposting]

There was a time I could get 20-30+ hours of battery on my OG Droid. Some email problems with Google's email client really killed that though--getting stuck in wakelock originally with Yahoo, then with Hotmail via Activesync (the only way to make it truly useful, ie syncing email, contacts, calendar). This was probably in 2010 though and things went downhill all last year.

 

[Yuriman]

The OG Droid isn't as slow as you'd think, running newer builds of Android.

An old vid I made when UD3.0 came out, one of the earlier gingerbread releases:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btjqmXcY5s0

Since then I've seen incremental increases in smoothness and stability - I'm currently running CushZero's rom with a custom-voltage kernel from RaidZero (800mhz @ 0.4v below stock volts for 550mhz) and it's more responsive than in that older video, partly thanks to the devs at CM getting the UI fully GPU accelerated.

I recently purchased a new battery on amazon for ~$15 and it's like having a brand new phone. I'm getting somewhere around 4-5 hours of life running Little Empire.

/2 cents


Though admittedly the GNex is tempting, if for no better reason than for the modding community and native ICS.

 

[Eli]

I returned the Galaxy Nexus today and picked up the Droid 4.

I gave the touch keyboard a fair chance. I certainly got better with it, but it still annoyed me. Way too many mistakes. Just wasn't ever satisfied with it.

I think I'll like this much better. So far it feels just as snappy as the Nexus, though I do notice there are a TON of silly apps that I'll never use nor do I want.

So far the only thing that's annoying me is that you have to unlock the phone twice? First the side swipe, then with your custom visible pattern swipe? Kinda odd.