Motorola Droid X

[Loupey]

Two days ago I decided that my old phone finally needed replacing. Not knowing what the current crop of smartphones were capable of doing (never followed nor cared about the Android vs. iPhone war), I thought the built in mobile hotspot capability of the Droid X made sense for me (eliminates a cable DSL line at work, doesn't require a separate cell line of a MiFi or mobile broadband device, and I don't have to carry multiple devices).

Tried to buy the Droid X yesterday but found out it wasn't coming out until today - the sales associate held one for me (Verizon sales associates are excellent BTW).

I'm just floored at what these new devices can do. I'm quite the cell phone dinosaur (I still don't text and have never used the camera feature) and I don't know how long some of these features have been around but man it is incredible. So I now have the built-in mobile hotspot for up to 5 devices at a time but I also have an FM radio, music player that plays all my tunes (MP3 and iTunes AAC), Google Maps, GPS navigation, HD video recorder, and 8MP camera. I didn't think I'd like not having a keyboard but the screen is extremely large and typing isn't hard to master.

It will definitely take a load off my laptop usage and minimize what I need to carry around. I'm sort of afraid to see what apps are available if you know what I mean. I'm sure I'll probably only use a small fraction of the capabilities; but so far I'm more than impressed.

[Jimmy B]

I hear what your saying, I just had to get a new phone on Monday. I ended up with a touch phone and still scratching the surface of what it can do. The camera has a flash, but I cant control it.
Jimmy B

[mwfanelli2]

Too bad it's Verizon. That would make it a no-go for me were I in the market for something fancy.

[Greg McCary]

Congrats Loupey, my son got my Droid and I am now using the Incredible. I am sure you will be happy. It's hard to think all he things that can be done with one. If I was more into it I would root mine. But that is more time consuming than I would like. There are a couple of great Droid forums and you will learn to us it more by visiting those.

[draymorton]

Hope to be getting one soon. I still use a razr. Takes a half hour to text a sentence.

[Loupey]

Greg - thanks for the tip about Droid forums. I had no idea that there would be forums specifically for these things.

LOADS of great info and tips in those forums. This "phone" is going to be even more useful than I expected. I downloaded a few apps. The surface has just been scratched.

The one minor nit is that the battery doesn't last very long. But otherwise a wonderful amalgamation of SO many different tools.

[n8]

I just got on this wagon last week myself. Funny what you mention about the sales reps though. I also had my incredible put on hold as I had previously ordered one from Verizon, but saw that a store had them in stock, and so I had to wait until the next day. Upon going back in, they sold my phone that was one hold, and were sold out as is. The nice thing is that they still managed to find one within the hour.
I was first skeptical whether I even needed one, but of course I'm finding reasons why it's indispensable now. Being able to have my work calendar at all times is handy, now having a decent p&s and camcorder (which can also be upgraded via app), a DoF calc on hand, basic photo editing, kindle, pdf/word/exel viewing, and the list goes on.
Specifically regarding photo apps, I'm still vacillating between Vignette, which offers a lot more control then the default camera, but is much slower. There's a photoshop app, but compared to PicSay, really fails to live up to it's name. There are several camera calculators out there, some free, some pay, and the best DoF specific one I've found is a freebie.

[Loupey]

...If I was more into it I would root mine. But that is more time consuming than I would like...

It only took the hackers a week to find a way to root the X. Not sure I'll attempt it yet since I'm still learning the capabilities out-of-the-box.

[Loupey]

...now having a decent p&s and camcorder (which can also be upgraded via app...

Yeah, pretty handy features indeed. What other p&s has a 4.3" screen and is less than 1/2" thick? I've taken only sample photos but they look pretty good. I'll have to play around with it some.

I've also downloaded the stopwatch and compass apps - pretty cool. Could have used the compass when I took a boatload of people out on Lake Erie and a thick fog rolled in faster than I could outrun it (OK I ignored it at first ). Had a dome of visibility only 50' in radius and it was pretty unnerving hearing other larger boats still moving about. Motored around blind for nearly an hour until we finally found shore. Since then I always planned on buying a digital wristwatch with a compass feature.

[Loupey]

Just got back from the Verizon store to make some changes. These things (smartphones in general I suppose) are crazy powerful. I'm beginning to see the power and so I had another phone line forwarded to the Droid X as well - in addition to the 5 email accounts I already use for work, photography, and personal stuff.

I found out that the contacts that I keep in one place (google mail) which can be accessed and modified from anywhere on the planet is instantly updated on the Droid. So when I pull up any contact on the phone, I can call, email, text, or get driving directions with a single tap.

Pretty awesome that when I'm traveling I can pull up customers and suppliers and instantly find the best driving directions from wherever I might be at the time. No typing in addresses.

[Greg McCary]

Just got back from the Verizon store to make some changes. These things (smartphones in general I suppose) are crazy powerful. I'm beginning to see the power and so I had another phone line forwarded to the Droid X as well - in addition to the 5 email accounts I already use for work, photography, and personal stuff.

I found out that the contacts that I keep in one place (google mail) which can be accessed and modified from anywhere on the planet is instantly updated on the Droid. So when I pull up any contact on the phone, I can call, email, text, or get driving directions with a single tap.

Pretty awesome that when I'm traveling I can pull up customers and suppliers and instantly find the best driving directions from wherever I might be at the time. No typing in addresses.

Your Google calendar is also synced. As many Dr, appointments I have these days that really saves me from missing them.
Wait till you try Pandora radio, that is an awesome app. If you like music. On top of the I put a 16gig micro sd card and have all of my music on it and can just plug it into my car stereo and hit shuffle. Who needs satellite radio?

[Loupey]

... Wait till you try Pandora radio, that is an awesome app. If you like music. On top of the I put a 16gig micro sd card and have all of my music on it and can just plug it into my car stereo and hit shuffle. Who needs satellite radio?

I haven't tried that app yet. I did put about 1 gb of my own music on the 16gb micro SD card that Motorola supplies on the X. That and the FM player is good enough for me it think. And, yeah, the music played over the car stereo system or my bluetooth headphones is really nice. Besides, I haven't been able to find my iPod since I lost it two months ago

[Loupey]

Couple of quick snap tests. Halfway though I was thinking "I wish this thing was stabilized" and then I discovered it has that feature. Doesn't seem to be able to go very macro in stabilzed mode tho.

A bit too overly processed and the shutter lag is evident but fairly short. It struggles a bit with AF at extremely close distances. But now I can't say "Darn! If only I had a camera (or video camera)".

These are straight-out-of-the-camera (I mean phone), except for resizing for posting.

[Loupey]

Where's the photos? I have done this before

Anyway, here they are:

[Greg McCary]

I got my first look a the X today at the WalMart, what a big screen. There a few photo apps you can download too, DOF calculater, ect.

[Loupey]

A few more snaps. Again, no PP and no cropping - just resizing.

I discovered that you if leave the GPS enabled when you shoot, you can later pull up the image and navigate to it later. How cool is that?!? So if someone says "where did you shoot that?", you can email them the exact coordinates or have the Droid navigator give you turn-by-turn driving directions back to it.

[Franglais]

I think we need a "Cell phone camera" forum. This thing is obviously a real camera even if it doesn't look like one. So is the iPhone4. There are probably more photos done on cell phones today than on point-and-shoots, judging by what I see out in the street.

[Loupey]

I think we need a "Cell phone camera" forum. This thing is obviously a real camera even if it doesn't look like one. So is the iPhone4. There are probably more photos done on cell phones today than on point-and-shoots, judging by what I see out in the street.

Charles, I agree with you on all counts.

When I traveled to Japan two years ago, I was astonished at how many people used only their cell phones (simple flip phones mostly) to photograph some very photogenic sites. Hardly anyone was using dSLRs. I had a couple tour guides, friends, and family say something on the lines of, "wow, you have a professional camera" when I pulled out my Canon 5D with the 24-105mm to which I would reply something like, "um, no, but thank you" in very butchered Japanese.

But after receiving some "cell phone images" via email taken by their cell phones, I was equally astonished by the image quality. At that resolution, the images were virtually indistinguishable from those taken by my G9.

Makes me think that perhaps in a few years the dedicated P&S camera will be a thing of the past (at least the low end, auto-only P&S cameras).

[armando_m]

Just got back from the Verizon store to make some changes. These things (smartphones in general I suppose) are crazy powerful. I'm beginning to see the power and so I had another phone line forwarded to the Droid X as well - in addition to the 5 email accounts I already use for work, photography, and personal stuff.

I found out that the contacts that I keep in one place (google mail) which can be accessed and modified from anywhere on the planet is instantly updated on the Droid. So when I pull up any contact on the phone, I can call, email, text, or get driving directions with a single tap.

Pretty awesome that when I'm traveling I can pull up customers and suppliers and instantly find the best driving directions from wherever I might be at the time. No typing in addresses.

Watch out for the data charges when traveling outside the USA, a friend of mine - from USA - had a smart phone replicating all his work mail while on vacation for a week, his bill was in the 2000 dlls range, all of this while he left the phone at the hotel room

[Franglais]

Watch out for the data charges when traveling outside the USA, a friend of mine - from USA - had a smart phone replicating all his work mail while on vacation for a week, his bill was in the 2000 dlls range, all of this while he left the phone at the hotel room

This is a technology called Direct Push which is part of the Activesync service of the Microsoft Exchange messaging server. The terminal connects to the Exchange server over Internet and remains permanently connected. As soon as a message drops into the mailbox the Exchange server pushes it out to the terminal.

It's the permanent connection to Internet that costs money. You need an unlimited Internet connection - which in most cases is only valid in your home country.

A more economical solution is to tell the terminal to switch to pull or poll mode. Most of the time the terminal is disconnected from Internet. Every 15 minutes or so (or when the user forces a download) it connects to Internet and asks the mail server if there is any mail.

GMAIL isn't an EXCHANGE server and it can't do Direct Push. What we're talking about here is the user asking the terminal to go and get information from the server, which is pretty economical.