So, I've got the phone. The service, the browser, the internet all works great. I didn't know 3G could be as fast as it is, since all my family has iPhones. I'd say it feels about five times faster than my iPhone experiences, but I've done no comparative check, and most of my family lives in an area with notoriously bad ATT coverage (The US).
The phone, itself, feels like too much. I've always thought I didn't need a smart phone. I still don't think I needed one. The plan was only a minor cost upgrade, so I figured I'd consider it, and after talking with family, I did decide to get it. Now that I've got it, I don't know what to do with it. The touchscreen works well, I suppose. I accidentally got tricked into buying a case from the sales-person, because the case for it absolutely sucks. I'm going to go shopping for a different one, and hopefully I can find one that flips over to protect the screen when it's not in use and doesn't impede quick scrolling on the touch screen.
I've had no experience with an Android-based operating system, but this one, so far, seems mediocre. While the apps and such seem to load quicker than they do with the prior generations of iPhones, I don't have comparative experience on the iPhone 4. However, the thing is bogged down with a bunch of random social-networking based apps from the get-go. By apps, I mean programs integrated to run in the background of the operating system. When you sync up a twitter account, for instance, everyone you're following is added to your contact list. This isn't so bad, since you can favorite contacts or even just search through phone contacts as a category, but it's still weird.
I'd much rather have twitter as a separate, individual app, where I can click and then see the most recent tweets, and have general twitter access. As it stands now, there's not even a character counter on the twitter thing. I don't like twitter, when I use it, it's for PixlBit purposes, and I don't really want it so integrated into my phone.
Likewise, I don't want a full notification every time one of my gmail accounts gets a new email. I'd rather have a flowing list of recent emails accessible at a click, and an easy to see counter of the inboxes whenever I go to look at my email.
Beyond that, there's a ton of pre-installed apps and seven pages you can fill up on your desktop/home page. I looked at all of them, and about half of them had duplicate purposes or were generally confusing.
Over all, I'm not so certain I like it. I don't know if the problem is the phone or me, but I've got a 30-day trial type of scenario, and right now, on day one, I'm considering taking advantage of it. I'll use it on an upcoming trip, and if my impressions don't improve, I'm sending it back. I'm going to have to fiddle with things to customize them. I've already downloaded an app to kill programs that run in the background unnecessarily, and you wouldn't believe how programs just keep running and running. Half them time when you go to the home screen, the program closes, and the other half, it just stays open. Apparently that can eat up processor and battery power, which is kind of sad. It could, again, be me that's the problem, but I'm not sure.
I will go on record and say I do like it better than an iPhone, except they've got a wider variety of cases available. The vibrate function is used to offer feedback, and when dialing, it makes more authentic touch-tone phone numbers, things I feel old when I admit I like them. Also, I hate having to slide a bar to pick up the phone when someone's calling and the phone is locked. If only one hand is free, it's annoying.
Anyway, I thought I'd say some initial impressions. I'll be talking to Nick about writing a review for PixlBit at some point, I'm not sure if it exactly fits our market or if I'd be the best person for such a thing, but I'll let people know here as my impressions grow. When a solution pops up to modify the firmware to something less Droid X'y and more Android-ish, I'll probably do that, since, from what I've read, half of my complaints have to do with what Motorola has done to the operating system.
Edit: I've used the touch screen a little bit more to type, and I'm instantly having an easier time hitting keys than I do with an iPhone. Hooray!
Topic: Verizon phones (Read 129072 times)
