[UNCMo96]

I'm thinking about switching from a Storm 1 to a Droid X. I played with a friends Droid X and it seems to be pretty slick. I have a few questions/reservations:

1. Push Email:
My phone is both my work and play device. With Froyo will push email work as seemlessly as on the blackberry? If not what will I lose? I was reading that people were using something called touchdown to improve their push email.

2. "clean inbox": For both my work account (BES/Exchange) and home account (gmail) the vast majority of my email autofiles to folders/labels. On the desktop apps this works nicely for me but has resulted in some quirkiness on the blackberry. For the work account anytime I create a new inbox subfolder and a rule to autofile incoming mail to that folder I need to call our hospitals BES administrator so they can check the box to allow that subfolder to sync to my blackberry. Until then I do not see the email on my device. This is an annoyance at times. For my gmail account I get some quirkiness. Email that does not skip the inbox shows up in the gmail icon. The email that gets auto filed shows up in my messages tab mixed up with everything else. How would both of these accounts behave in a Droid?

3. Calendaring: Will I lose anything here?

4. BerryBuzz: Is there a berry buzz replacement on droid?

5. Keyboard: Is there an option to use the keyboard in portrait mode with "bigger buttons". Most of the typing I do is in portrait mode with the surepress keyboard that autosuggests words. Is there something like this on the droid?

[Snarfler]

Can't answer those questions, but around me the vzw stores offer the X for $250 plus a $50 rebate for cost of $200 (+ taxes on $250) but they won't have them in stock for a few weeks. However the vzw online offers it for $200 without a rebate, then if you're eligible throws in a $50 NE2 discount bringing the price to $150. And free next day shipping if you order before 4PM.

So if you decide to change to the X, it might be worth considering buying it from vzw.com instead of from a store.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[bigdaddynyy]

I made this move about a month and a half ago, and have not regretted it once. The X is much better all around, at least in my case. I will try to help answer your questions, if you have any other, feel free to PM me.

I'm thinking about switching from a Storm 1 to a Droid X. I played with a friends Droid X and it seems to be pretty slick. I have a few questions/reservations:

1. Push Email:
My phone is both my work and play device. With Froyo will push email work as seemlessly as on the blackberry? If not what will I lose? I was reading that people were using something called touchdown to improve their push email. I have being having my email pushed to my phone since I received it, and it has been just as good as my BB ever was. I have my corporate email and gmail account pushed, and my other hotmail accounts set to retrieve every 30 minutes as I don't get anything important on those accounts. I have not found a need for Touchdown, but I have read good things about it. I believe that some of the issues others were having were when they were trying to connect to Exchange 2003, but the new Froyo update appears to have corrected that issue. As long as you have other users connected to your exchange server on an Android or iPhone, you should be fine, otherwise you may need to have ActiveSync enabled on your exchange server. If you have access to OWA, you should be set.

2. "clean inbox": For both my work account (BES/Exchange) and home account (gmail) the vast majority of my email autofiles to folders/labels. On the desktop apps this works nicely for me but has resulted in some quirkiness on the blackberry. For the work account anytime I create a new inbox subfolder and a rule to autofile incoming mail to that folder I need to call our hospitals BES administrator so they can check the box to allow that subfolder to sync to my blackberry. Until then I do not see the email on my device. This is an annoyance at times. For my gmail account I get some quirkiness. Email that does not skip the inbox shows up in the gmail icon. The email that gets auto filed shows up in my messages tab mixed up with everything else. How would both of these accounts behave in a Droid? All of my subfolders sync automatically on my X from Exchange. As soon as I add a new folder, it adds that folder to my phone, and when I open the folder it syncs any new emails added to those folders. The one thing that I can't verify is whether you will receive notification when an email is added to that folder, as I only have Outlook notify me when a message is added to the main inbox, the subfolders just show the number of new messages. On the phone, it appears that these folders sync when the folder is opened on the phone, but again that could be my settings, I don't have any important emails auto routed, so this has never been a concern, I just check these folders periodically and this works for what I need. Hopefully someone else can help with this.

3. Calendaring: Will I lose anything here? Calendar on the X has been just as good as it was on my BB Storm. Didn't notice any differences there, but depending on how you use your calendar, there could be a difference that I am not aware of.

4. BerryBuzz: Is there a berry buzz replacement on droid? I never used berrybuz, but if that is to use custom LED colors for certain contacts, then I have not found an app like that for the X yet. There have been many discussions about it, and a lot of recommended apps, but I don't recall reading about one that actually worked. I also have not found a way to assign a specific ringtone/notification for emails from specific contacts, it works for phone calls, but haven't found a way to do this for emails/mms.

5. Keyboard: Is there an option to use the keyboard in portrait mode with "bigger buttons". Most of the typing I do is in portrait mode with the surepress keyboard that autosuggests words. Is there something like this on the droid? With the screen size of the X, the button size has never been an issue for me. And I highly recommend that if you get the X that you give Swype a chance. There is a learning curve, but I can type much faster using Swype then I ever could using SurePress (even though I do sorta miss the clickscreen). Auto suggest works with both the multi touch and Swype keyboard, but I prefer Swype.

Hope this helped, if you have any other questions, please let me know.

[dukebluedevil]

Big Daddy NYY hit the head on the nail on most your questions.

As far as BerryBuzz (which was one of my favorite BB Apps) I was told there a few "led apps" but the droids LED is VERY SMALL so I havent pursued a replacement yet.

I made the switch from the Storm 2 and the ONLY thing I missed was BBM. (I started using G Talk and its been a sufficient replacement)

Only complaint I have had about the Droid X so far was battery life. I got the extended battery and changed a few settings and now its good.

Make the change and join the club!

[slipperman]

changing to ANYTHING from the storm will be a step in the right direction.

push: droid is actually better because it does 2-way sync! i dont know about you guys but even after 2-way sync was announced, it still didnt work for me.

keyboard: all i can say is swype. swype. swype.

good luck

[UNCMo96]

Thanks for all the input. As far as buying the phone, I'll get it through my hospital so I'm not worried there. NYY's summary is just what I needed to hear.

When it comes to battery life how bad is it? i.e.with moderate useage can I make it 24 hours without having to recharge?

[dukebluedevil]

You will read so much about battery life. Some of these folks say they can go 2 days etc but its like they arent using their phones. Out of the box my battery life was bad. I messed with some of the setting and noticed that the main hog was ...you guessed it..that big screen. I dimmed that and could get through the day with moderate usage.
However I then started to use the phone for everything so I invested in the extended battery and have been pleased.

[bigdaddynyy]

Depends what moderate use includes. If I use mine for email/texting/light browsing I usually have aout 50-60% remaining at around 11:30pm, after taking the phone off the charger at 7:30am. There have been days that I use the phone less, and have 70-80% remaining (but that is usually on a weekend when I don't want to be bothered with emails), but there are also days when I can be down to 40% by lunch time (those are the days that I don't put the phone down). I do know that use of the video camera, and watching movies is a major drain on the battery, but that was expected.

To be honest, I don't think it has been that much worse than my BB Storm was. I charged that every night, and I charge my X every night, so if my Storm would have been 50% remaining compared to the X being 40%, it is not that different.

I did pick up a Motorola portable battery/charger (P790) that I have used when travelling and no charger/outlet available (on plane and at conference), and that has worked well for me. You can pick one up on Amazon or Ebay cheap.

[techman4112]

u could go from a storm to an lg dare and that would be an upgrade.

[Markisss88]

u could go from a storm to an lg dare and that would be an upgrade.

lol good point on that one.

[Retrokid223]

i get excellent battery life even when i had the stock battery. only reason why i bought the extended battery was because i foget to charge the phone after 2 days of use

[karlac]

Made the S1 -> Doid x switch exactly ten days ago and I will not be going back.

It takes a change in mindset, but once you quit looking for where things are it'll be all over.

This from a big bb/RIM fan ... I don't even miss BBM that much after the first week, and that's a biggie for me.

FWIW ...

[UNCMo96]

This is even more encouraging. If I listen to Pandora for an hour going in to work, do emails all day, with some BBM and texting thrown in I've run out of battery on the way home.

Another random question, how does the Droid X pair with BMW's navigation system. I have an '09 335xi? Do the contacts transfer over? I was going to ask on the BMW forums but figured i'd take a stab here. thanks to everyone for their help.

[dukebluedevil]

This is even more encouraging. If I listen to Pandora for an hour going in to work, do emails all day, with some BBM and texting thrown in I've run out of battery on the way home.

Another random question, how does the Droid X pair with BMW's navigation system. I have an '09 335xi? Do the contacts transfer over? I was going to ask on the BMW forums but figured i'd take a stab here. thanks to everyone for their help.

Cant speak for BMW but my Droid X pairs with my Lexus without ANY problems!