random thoughts and bleary eyes RSS 2.0
 Wednesday, December 02, 2009
The Droid has been performing very well in the last couple of weeks. Only once has it locked up on me, and I suspect there were some little issues with several apps I had running interfering with each other. Calls are clear and most of the apps (I only use FREE ones) actually do what they say. There are lots of choices for apps, so if I don't like one I can pick another.

Battery Life
I have been getting 12-15h battery life, that's actually using the device. A couple short phone calls, bluetooth pairing in the car and the house, sending tweets, getting email, playing music for a few songs worth, light browsing, etc. This is quite adequate for most normal uses I think. Most people will have a charger in the car and the house, and probably a USB cable in the office anyway so this capacity seems useful. I don't use the WiFi since I have 3G internet, but I suspect the WiFi will eat the battery faster. I also use a battery management program that dims the display pretty quickly, and I turn off bluetooth unless I am in the car or at home.

Good Music News
My new Ford F150 has Sync and will actually stream my music from the phone over bluetooth through the sound system. This is a sweet seamless transition. I don't have to do anything or plug anything. While listening to my playlist at the gym, I walk out with my headphones on and the tunes cranked. When I get in the truck, I remove the headphones from the jack (which pauses the music) and as soon as I turn on the engine, the phone bonds with the stereo and when I select streaming media, the song continues right where it left off, now through the sound system. THIS people, is AS IT SHOULD BE. Amen.

Bugs
The exchange client on the device works fine, but has one small bug (IMHO). It does not have a concept of folder hierarchy. Many of us use folders and sub folders, and it lists all of them as if they were off the root, and in alphabetical order - mixing up the hierarchy. Also if there are subfolders with the same name, I have no idea which is which since they are disconnected with the tree structure. There are other exchange client apps I haven't tried which may be able to handle this correctly.

The biggest problem for me was the SD card not being mounted as a drive when I connected it to the computer. So I use an app to do this, and just have the app mount it when I am ready to sync to it or access the card. However, even after unplugging it from the USB cable, it still thinks it's connected. Not sure if this is a bug with the app or the O/S, but it seems minor and doesn't affect functionality - it only leaves a notification up on the screen.

Wishlist
It is cotton-pickin hard to type numbers on the little keyboard. I need an app that puts a small number bar across the bottom of the screen when the keyboard has slid out so i can touch those instead of having to ALT- each tiny key. Try typing in a 6-digit bonding code for bluetooth before it times out in 20 seconds...

Keyboard
**FREE MONEY MAKING IDEA HERE*** I aint gonna do it, but somebody needs to... We need a bunch of tiny little plastic sticky dots about 1mm in diameter that go on each key so that my fat fingers can know which one they are touching. They can't tell the transition between one key and the next since they are all flat. I just need a little texture that tells them when they are on the center of a key. Please let me know when you produce this product, I'll buy one right away.

Latest rumor on the street is that Verizon/Motorola will be releasing a new update for the OS firmware in about 10 days... we'll see what happens when they push it out...

stick around super-glue fans...

Wednesday, December 02, 2009 9:23:05 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0] - Trackback
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John E. Boal
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