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IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

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Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#51
post #2

Having just moved from the iPhone experience of 3 years to an android experience. YES, YES, and YES! The android is the true fully featured phone. With the iPhone, I felt the need to tether because surfing the web is so clunky. Now, even though I have the power to tether, I don't. Because its so much easier and fun on my Milestone! The annoyances that plague this guy, well, doesn't really affect me, apart from the di…

I'm glad you like your phone, but of course your brand new Android phone surfs the web better than your old iPhone. It's got a faster CPU, more RAM, and a higher-resolution screen. Web surfing is very similar among similarly-specced phones across all of the major OSes (it's mostly the same browser, after all).

Web surfing is very similar among similarly-specced phones across all of the major OSes

Actually, not at all.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/07/android-22-demol...

Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#52
post #11
post #5

We recently moved from a family of iPhones to a Droid and Droid Incredible. I can't believe we didn't make the move sooner, although I suppose the Incredible isn't old enough to have made it much sooner. Regardless, for those not wanting as large of a phone, check out the Droid 2, due out imminently: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/see-what-droid-does-...

How is the Incredible? I'm about to get one on Friday when my $50 credit comes in.

I think it's great. My only complaints are that the camera is horrendous. Every picture is blurry no matter how still I hold the camera.

Also the speaker sounds muffled and too quiet on regular phone calls. (Yes, the volume is all the way up.)

Oh and the battery life is kind of bad. I had to read a couple of articles and turn off all kinds of things off to make it last through the day. I think the battery has some kind of breaking in period too as it's been doing much better lately.

Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#53

Droid X Questions: Is it better than the incredible? Does Droid X have a hardware keyboard? I can't tell from the page. How does the HMDI thing work? Does it connect to a television somehow? Do I have to pay to do that?

> Is it better than the incredible?

it has better tech specs. the rest is subjective, imo.

> Does Droid X have a hardware keyboard?

no.

> How does the HMDI thing work? Does it connect to a television somehow? Do I have to pay to do that?

you plug it in with a type d connector (iirc). its free but only works for the gallery where you can play videos and view pictures.

Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#54
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read somewhere else that iOS4 has improved the MobileSafari speed/performance. Maybe you should try it. Whereby I couldn't really tell the difference. I have an 3GS and it was fast with iOS3 and it is as fast in iOS4.

iOS4 makes the 3G nigh unusable because the phone is constantly forced to flush memory to swap causing the UI to hang while the OS waits to write to disk. So, no, do not upgrade a 3G to iOS4 for improved anything. (Well, the icons are a little prettier.)

No, it does not. I have been running 4.0 for the 3 weeks, sure it is a bit slower, and there are things you can do to speed it up (you shouldn't have to, but you do). But it is not unstable at all. It never crashes.

Is it worth upgrading if you have a 3G? No. You get some updates apps, better email, and folders.

Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#55
post #48
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

K-9's UI is kind of terrible though it is fully functional.

Ugly it definitely is.

The notification bar says how many new messages you have. You follow the notification and get a list of messages. You read them, then they go away. You can press the star to flag. You can click reply to reply.

It's weird that you have to press menu and choose an option to send a message after you've composed it, but it's not really that bad of a UI choice.

Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#56
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The no cell data while in a call is a CDMA issue, not a phone issue. An ATT or Tmobile Android phone can use voice and 3G data at the same time the same as an iPhone. Also, I'm not sure how the no cloud push in 2.1 can be a reason for switching from Android to iPhone. Does the iPhone have a cloud push feature equivalent to the one Android 2.2 cloud push feature? I'm assuming that's the "no cloud push" feature he's ta…

I'm not sure if it's equivalent, but setting up the iPhone to treat your Gmail account as an Exchange Active Sync account gives the iPhone most of the cloud push features (Mail/Calendar/Contacts). I can add a contact on my iPhone that syncs OTA to Google that then syncs to my mac address book. Google voice texting and messages don't integrate perfectly yet, for example if I get a GV text on my iPhone and read it it d…

I'm not sure if it's equivalent, but setting up the iPhone to treat your Gmail account as an Exchange Active Sync account gives the iPhone most of the cloud push features (Mail/Calendar/Contacts). I can add a contact on my iPhone that syncs OTA to Google that then syncs to my mac address book.

The contact/calendar syncing is great and in my mind really makes MobileMe a hard thing to justify buying. The push mail is nice as well, but I found the limitations to be a little annoying (but not enough to keep me from using it on my iPad):

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38...

Specifically, deleting a message from your inbox is the equivalent of pressing the "Archive" button in the Gmail webapp.

If you drink Google's kool-aid about never deleting mails, that's great, but I don't. As a workaround I created a tag called "0-To Delete" (so it showed up at the top of the folder list when alphabetized) and rather than delete mails, I apply that tag. Gmail tags the message and removes it from the inbox, and then at some point later on I can actually delete all the mails with that tag.

Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#57
post #3

> "Wifi Tethering. I don’t need to tether often, but when I do, I do. I rooted my phone quickly, just so I could use one of the many apps in the Marketplace to tether my laptop via Wifi. Worked flawlessly, no extra charge." That's tantamount to saying "I jail-broke my iPhone quickly, so I could use one of the many apps on Cydia to tether my laptop via WiFi" ... except you don't need an app for that because tethering…

I agree with your tethering comment, but FWIW there are a handful of tethering apps you can get without rooting Android that allow any user to tether for free.

I pretty happily use PDANet for some basic stuff.

Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#58
post #4

" Every couple of days, you do need to reboot the phone. " Love how this was tossed out there as an afterthought. Huge, obnoxious deal-breaker. I love losing state every 2 days! /sarcasm

It's odd, because that hasn't been my experience with Android at all. I've got a Droid (not X, not 2, just the original), and the only times I've never needed to shut it down. In fact, the only times it's been off have been from me forgetting to charge it. Last I checked, my uptime was 550+ hours with no sluggishness at all.

I don't think I've ever rebooted my Incredible.

Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With my Droid, I regularly have to reboot to get GPS to work, and I've had the issue on all 3 of the Droids I've had (replaced due to other issues).

Have you tried just toggling the GPS settings? I occasionally have issues with it, but toggling the setting has always worked for me.

Yes, that sometimes works, but there are a lot of times where I need to do a restart of the phone too.

Re: IPhone to Droid-X: Lots to Like

#60
post #43

IMAP email is very weak. Really weak. Even the third party clients are weak. How so? I am an IMAP power-user and K9 meets all of my needs. Flagging works, push works, folders work, SSL + auth works in both directions, and it supports my self-signed certificate. K9 is infinitely better than my work Blackberry, which is supposedly the "premier push email experience". I am really not sure what more an email client could…

K-9's UI is kind of terrible though it is fully functional.

Yup, I can never figure out why so many people recommend K-9 mail. I'm guessing from this discussion that it has more features for IMAP users, but for ActiveSync it has less, and the UI is as step backward, even more ugly and awkward than the built in Android Mail client, which IMHO is like the ugly duckling of the default Android apps.
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