If it wasn’t for Oliva Munn, I would never turn my TV to G4. Attack of the Show got their hands on the new Motorola Droid and has a short review up. They generally liked the phone, but kept complaining about the lack of multitouch (which is incorrect). Check out the video below.
What You Need To Know
- The first thing you notice about the Droid is that it’s pretty hefty: the phone weighs almost 6 ounces and feels sturdy.
- It has the same dimensions as the iPhone but with a 3.7″ screen.
- It’s the world’s thinnest phone with a full sliding QWERTY keyboard.
- The phone operates on the Android 2.0 (Eclair) OS.
- It has the largest touch screens we’ve seen on a phone, making it easier to use.
- The glass screen is super responsive and is just as good as the other Android phones we’ve reviewed.
- But there’s still no multi-touch! (wrong)
- The full keyboard is good but the directional pad on the ride side gets in the way while you’re typing.
- There’s also multi-tasking: just hold down the Home button and you can switch between 6 open apps.
- Since there are two processors (one for data and the other for voice), it’s one of the fastest phones we’ve ever used.
- The web browser is also one of the best: It’s Flash 10 ready and the giant screen makes for a great experience.
- You double-tap to zoom, but it would have been perfect with the pinch and zoom feature.
- The search works by typing your query to universally look through your contacts, media, text or just Google search what you need.
- The 5 megapixel camera takes okay photos and has a flash.
- The camcorder is great and records at 720×480 resolution up to 24 fps.
- Google Maps also has turn by turn voice directions.
- The Micro SD card can hold up to 32 gigs.
Price
- $200 with a Verizon contract. The Droid is worth the price with Verizon’s 3G coverage.
Rating
4 Seals of Approval out of 5.
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Taylor Wimberly
Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He loves playing with all kinds of gadgets, but most importantly cell phones. His other hobbies include cooking (BBQ hero!), politics, football, and watching every MMA event possible.
22 Comments
You will have to put up some videos displaying the multi-touch feature when you get the Droid.
From what I understand… The Core OS does not use Multi-Touch except for the keyboard. If that is true, then it appears Google might not have wanted to get into a fight over patents and instead left it up to developers to implements Multi-Touch operations in their own apps.
Engadget said it didn’t have multi-touch.
Motorola said it does have Multi-Touch… I tend to believe the manufacturer.
These reviews are being done by morons. The Engadget one is especially funny because they even mentioned that 2.0 has multitouch in one of their articles when the Droid was shown. I think multitouch is now used for the virtual keyboard, i dont know if there are other uses (i think I heard two finger swipe?)
What I really wanna know is how do you give it 4 out of 5 when they praise basically everything. What in the world could this phone need to get a 5, an Apple logo?
There are two things I’m really confused about this phone. Everyone who has one says there is no multitouch. So how is that wrong? What good is the functionality if you can’t use it. Its like saying you have a ferrari because its sitting in your driveway but you don’t have the keys so you can’t drive it.
The other thing thats got me blown away is the memory. I think this should be an easy fix for developers. You can basically offload all the large parts of an application onto the SD card when the app is installing. Just like we used to use CDs on our computers when our hard drives were only like 250megs. Am I missing something there?
You are wrong. It doesn’t show open apps when you hold the home button. Instead it is showing the last 6 apps that you have opened.
Just so we all know whe “You” is… “You” is actually “They” as this article basically was a summary of what “They” said in the review.
That being said, yes it is an inaccurate statement to say that it specifically shows running applications. Some of them may be running but most likely, only 1-3 will actually be running. That is a mistake of people who don’t really know Android reviewing Android.
About multi-touch:
***Android 2.0 supports multi-touch.***
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_frm/thread/962b1a27a31e450d/425f0f5d14e3f071#425f0f5d14e3f071
Application can track multiple fingers on the screen. The framework API and the underlying hardware support this.
However, Google’s stock-apps (browser) do not use it, it seems. Maybe patent related or something… (don’t wanna start that discussion).
Dang, whats up with all the awkward laughing in the background…
“this phone has two processors, one for data and one for voice”
You mean one regular processor and one for graphics? First i thought he meant “antennas” but then he started talking about it’s speed so i think kevin just doesn’t know what he’s talkin’ ’bout. Perhaps AOTS should bone up on its nerd credentials a bit.
Also, the funny thing about the multitouch is it has all the multitouch i care about, meaning a multitouch virtual keyboard and support for multitouch in games and apps (not positive on that but it’d better). It just doesn’t have the pinch gestures that everyone thinks about when they think multitouch. Honestly, i think those are just kinda gimmicky.
God that show sucks even worse than I remember.
The g1 with android1. 0 had multitouch support for apps as evidenced inthe pinch zoom feature on phonemypc. Did anyone else notice that?
Is this a joke? Come on i couldnt even watch this. Really? A pirate? Whatever hes dressed as? COME ON!!!!!
wow i really wish that people who have never owned an android handset and wear whale outfits wouldnt give reviews on something in which they are clearly uneducated about. just because there is no multi touch in the browser doesnt mean its not there in the underlying framework. and as all of you will agree, its not really necessary. i have a CM rom with multi touch in the browser and hardly ever use it.
whatever….im just ranting lol
The Droid seems to lack the innovative styling that was the big seller for the Razr, but still, the picture quality truly is remarkable and it’s nice to not have to depend too much on the touch screen
Ok a lot of people complain about this d-pad being unnecessary but lets be honest this phone was made for gaming and IMHO a d-pad for gaming makes a hell of a lot more sense then a trackball which is harder to use on games in my experience.
When all these reviewers say “The Droid doesn’t have multi-touch”, they really mean “The Droid doesn’t have pinch-zoom in the browser.”
So while all you people saying “No, the Droid *does* have multi-touch” are technically correct, the Droid *is* missing the most visible and most-used multi-touch feature. Are there really any other commonly-used gestures on the iPhone?
I think this review was way to short and done by amateurs. I’ve been keeping an eye out for great android phones since I was turned on to the G1 a year ago and the droid is a huge step. Albeit, there ad campaign is quite childish, cmon guys leave the competitor bashing to apple they’ve based their entire company on being “better” than one other company. I’ll say there is one feature of the android phones that I love more than anything is that their features only get better with time. My G1’s features have grown exponentially since I bought it and as well I have the support of the open source community. Android is where its at.
those people suck.
Haha Lamers making a review of a geeky phone. What I want to see is quake 3 arena ported to this one and then someone tell me the d-pad is obsolete pew pew Railgun frag!
This dude is a moron and not funny