[Fat Ryan]

i had an ANR line from an old at&t retailer i worked at:

2000 min/UNL tXT/UNL internet - $20
BB package - $10

they cancelled it today so now i gotta go to a regular *** plan. im not extremely fond of my bold. i love it, but i kinda want more. i hate apple, so iphones out. and im thinking about hoping back on my parents plan cause it'll be cheaper. well they have verizon. verizon's BB's suck so im thinking about the droid. my buddy has worked for verizon for 6 years, hes a manager and pda expert. he had the droid for a while as a demo and said its an awesome phone and its very very snappy and responsive. he doesnt, however, use a lot of the functions. hes not big on the internet browsing or media or apps or anything. im trying to get some more feedback on that. also, i know BB is probably king for email, but how i\bad is the droid's email setup? my buddy said it wasnt great but it works. and the biggest complaint he had about it was the physical keyboard. he said he constantly hit other keys. hes a tiny guy and im huge lol so it may be a big issue for me. what do you all think of it? or do you have any other recommendations ad why?

[PJnc284]

dThe droid browser is top notch. Browsing the web is extremely fast and mirrors a desktop experience. It currently doesn't have pinch-zoom out of the box but that can be added fairly easily.

The music planer isn't fancy with coverflow or anything but it works well. The gallery is also simple but looks to be much improved in the future 2.1 update. The 2.1 gallery and music app can be used on the current 2.0.1 build though.

Email is great if you use gmail or exchange as both offer push notifications that are comparable to a blackberry. Yahoo set up is a little iffy and it along with other accounts will need to be polled at certain intervals.

The keyboard isn't as good as the touch pro 2 but it's acceptable and certainly usable. I mainly use the onscreen keyboards but the physical keyboard is a nice option to have and I haven't had any issues when using it. It'd be nice if they included auto-correct with it though. If you have big hands, I could see where it could be an issue though.

The Droid has its quirks but overall it's a great device and extremely powerful. It's easily customizable and will hold its own against pretty much any device on the market. There's pretty much an app for anything you may need. The droid offers pretty much endless potential especially with the new custom overclocked roms.

[LTLFTCer]

On my end anyhow, I think Hotmail and Yahoo have improved the past couple days. By this I mean I can delete messages on the phone and they will delete form the server, and if I read them on teh phone, they will mark as read on the server.

Before they would not do either.

[Fat Ryan]

dThe droid browser is top notch. Browsing the web is extremely fast and mirrors a desktop experience. It currently doesn't have pinch-zoom out of the box but that can be added fairly easily.

The music planer isn't fancy with coverflow or anything but it works well. The gallery is also simple but looks to be much improved in the future 2.1 update. The 2.1 gallery and music app can be used on the current 2.0.1 build though.

Email is great if you use gmail or exchange as both offer push notifications that are comparable to a blackberry. Yahoo set up is a little iffy and it along with other accounts will need to be polled at certain intervals.

The keyboard isn't as good as the touch pro 2 but it's acceptable and certainly usable. I mainly use the onscreen keyboards but the physical keyboard is a nice option to have and I haven't had any issues when using it. It'd be nice if they included auto-correct with it though. If you have big hands, I could see where it could be an issue though.

The Droid has its quirks but overall it's a great device and extremely powerful. It's easily customizable and will hold its own against pretty much any device on the market. There's pretty much an app for anything you may need. The droid offers pretty much endless potential especially with the new custom overclocked roms.

thanx for all the info.

what do you mean that the pinch zoom can easily be added?

and im a bit confused about the email thing. are you saying you can only get an icon and instant notifications with gmail? othe emails you have to go to their site and logon? i had heard something about being able to link a bunch of email account to gmail, is that possible? could i simply link my verizon, comcast, and VT email all in gmail?

i dont care much for the music players looks. most important to me is 1) how fast it ascesses the microSD card (my BB takes like 2-5 min to scan ), and 2) how easily it can be controlled. i LOVE how my Bold has the ability to change tracks, volume, and pause/play with the mute and volume buttons on the outside. i can simply leave it in my holster on my belt and press it, so convenient.

will the overclocked ROMs burnout quicker?

lastly, how responsive is the touh screen? ive used a number of touchscreen phones and many had issues with txting (basically high speed tapping on the screen). of all at&ts touch screens ive used, only the eternity was acceptable. the iphones virtually never ****s up, so thatd be the ideal responsiveness. but something like the incite would drive me INSANE in literally 20 seconds lol.

sorry for all the questions

[jdwx]

On my end anyhow, I think Hotmail and Yahoo have improved the past couple days. By this I mean I can delete messages on the phone and they will delete form the server, and if I read them on teh phone, they will mark as read on the server.

Before they would not do either.

Are you using the native email app? Or, K-9?

[PJnc284]

You can basically just add the multitouch maps, browser and gallery by moving them to your sdcard and installing them with a 3rd party file manager like Astro. http://forum.androidcentral.com/moto...necessary.html

There are two email apps on the droid labeled "Gmail" and "Email". The gmail account that you set up in the gmail app are pushed similar to a blackberry. If you have an exchange account for work, etc, you can set that up in the "Email" app and that will also be pushed. You can also set up your pop/imap accounts under the Email app but those are polled (ie. the phone checks the account every 15 minutes or whenever you specify and brings in any new mail). The email app also supports a combined inbox where it will show all of your emails from the various accounts set up there. You also have the option of forwarding your other accounts to your gmail address which would enable push for those accounts or you can go into gmail itself and have it to fetch your emails from other accounts if they are pop enabled. I believe the latter only checks every 15min or so though.

I'd say access to the microsd card are fairly fast when loading pictures and music. One of the complaints with the droid is that it doesn't allow you to skip tracks, etc with the volume rocker.

Not sure what effect the overclocked roms will have in the long run. If you use your device heavily, it probably isn't wise to run it at 1Ghz due to heat buildup and shortened battery life. Luckily it offers a throttle option so you only use the max speed when you're working it hard but will throttle back when idle.

The touch screen is just WOW. It's capacitive like the iphone and is super responsive.

[LTLFTCer]

Are you using the native email app? Or, K-9?

I use K-9. Still working good today, maybe they are working on it due to the complaints here:
Issue 1507 - android - Email app doesn't delete emails on POP3 server and doesn't mark them as read - Project Hosting on Google Code

[Fat Ryan]

well i guess every 15 min isnt terrible. blackberry checks every 5, but even then sometimes it takes much longer.

and is there ANY way to skip tracks with the outside buttons on the droid?

[jdwx]

I use K-9. Still working good today, maybe they are working on it due to the complaints

Yeah, it has definitely improved. Couple weird things, but not dealbreakers.

One thing that stands out a bit is that when I'm watching my yahoo IM on a pc, new emails show up on the "new mail" indicator and that stays on even though I've checked and cleared the mail on K9.

On the blackberry, the PC based IM new mail indicator would go away after I'd checked the mail on the BB.

When I sign in to get rid of the indicator, it tells me there XX new messages, that arent there when I look (since I'd cleared them in K9). BB never did that either.

K9 always leaves lots of drafts in my draft folder too. It really needs to delete them when the message is finally sent.

[jdwx]

well i guess every 15 min isnt terrible. blackberry checks every 5, but even then sometimes it takes much longer.

and is there ANY way to skip tracks with the outside buttons on the droid?

K9 can be set to check every 5 minutes. I really can't complain about length of time it take to get any email on the Droid. I was quite worried tho coming into it.

Getting the mail im a quick fashion isn't an issue it seems (for me at least). There are other idiosyncrasies that are bothersome however.

[PJnc284]

well i guess every 15 min isnt terrible. blackberry checks every 5, but even then sometimes it takes much longer.

and is there ANY way to skip tracks with the outside buttons on the droid?

outside of gmail, yahoo and maybe a few others, the rim servers poll email every 15 minutes and if it finds one, it pushes it to your device and polls that account every 3 minutes for a total of 15. You can set the option in the default email app on the droid down to as little as 5 minutes or as much as an hour but it'll have an effect on battery life.

afaik there aren't any ways to skip tracks with a hard button.

[Fat Ryan]

can i have 3 seperate icons for my email accounts? verizon icon, comcast icon, and VT email icon? like on my BB...