I'm thinking about replacing my old, abused Samsung SPH-M500 with a Motorola Droid. Recently, the speaker has given out on my current phone making it very hard to hear the other party. The outside screen is totally broken and the standby battery life is down to about 6 hours. Although I've had a nice 5 year run with it, I think it's cooked.
So, the Droid. Why or why not? Does anyone have one?
TIA.
Having a grand time with mine (ordered just before Christmas, IIRC, and delivered after my return from a trip to NY over New Year's (shipping was REALLY slow around the holidays due to weather)). Speaker is EXCELLENT for a phone, IMO, battery is user-replaceable and lasts for most of a day's hard use for me (I use it as a book reader and other PDA-type functions, for example, so it'll be on and actively burning power for HOURS each day) or for more time than I've ever left it alone on standby. The docking mode is really nice - when you place the unit in the charging cradle, it automatically shifts to an alarm-clock/media-player mode, which for me has taken over primary alarm-clock duty on workdays - provides access to time, music, weather (connects to Weather.com, I believe, for that). When I got it, they were advertising 10,000+ apps - if they're up to 25,000+ now, they really HAVE been busy! There's lots of good stuff available, though, both paid (I purchased Aldiko book reader, Documents To Go Full Version for portable MS-Office functionality, and Act 1 video player - and came in under $20 total) and free (everything else on my phone is free - Mabilo Ringtones, Pandora, Weather.com, Facebook, a dictionary, sudoku, assorted games and console emulators...). It DOES require dataplan access, which is $30/mo for unlimited access on Verizon for us non-corporate types (I think the MS Exchange access plan is $45, if you need to hook up to your business network) - I think the practical data limit VZW imposes is supposed to be something like either 5 or 20GB, which I haven't come close to yet. I like both the onscreen soft keyboard (quite accurate, really) and the physical keyboard, and the browser is generally fast and gets me to what I want to look at. Navigation - map & driving directions or turn-by-turn GPS-based nav - is FREE, with Google Maps. I don't yet have a car mount for it, though. Got a screen protector for it, though I can't remember the name of it - a pity, since I *REALLY* like it. Gonna have to track that down. Get a screen protector. Using the stock Verizon leather velcro-close horizontal-carry belt case, which is okay, but already starting to wear out, so I'll need a real case here before too long. Seido, I think it is, makes a line of products for this phone, including a car mount and home charger which can take a Droid inside one of their (Seido's) hard cases with no need to remove it, which I'm thinking about - though I'd have to replace my Moto/Verizon home charger if I do that. Anyways, get a case too, preferably (IMO) one which allows you to place the screen facing in towards your body. Charges at ~1 percent per minute, apparently - full charge in a little over an hour and a half, if you run it all the way down. Comes with a 16GB MicroSD card installed, which IS user-replaceable but you have to remove the battery to do it. You can plug the phone into a USB port for data transfer ("mount" the card on the phone's window-shade pulldown menu to do this, and unmount it before detaching from the PC), and it'll charge, too, though slower than via a dedicated charger.
To be honest, this is the device I've been waiting nearly a decade for, to converge my PDA and cell phone into a single unit. Yeah, if you use it a lot, you'll need to charge it frequently - there was a review which commented on that need, pointing out that people had unrealistic expectations about power usage with smartphones, and said, "If you aren't using it, put it on the charger." Sound advice, and I have chargers for home, car, and work. Between that and the ease of carrying around a spare battery in my pocket, I haven't had any problems - and I've needed that spare battery precisely once, because I accidentally left it on in book-reader mode, which disables power-save features like auto-off. All in all? I loves me my Droid.
I know nothing about the upcoming Nexus 1. Droid currently ships with Android 2.0, and is SUPPOSED to be getting an OTA update to 2.1 "soon".
