I like the Droid but have a few issues and beefs with it

[bravo4]

context: I am a smartphone user for as long as there have been "smart" phones (I had the original blackberry and a Nokia brick which opened and had a keyboard).

I like the droid, very snappy and some cool features. I had the iPhone 3GS and had to move over to Verizon for work so I had the Blackberry Storm II last (which I hated). So today I picked up my droid. The virtual keyboards are great, I don't know why they even included the lame physical keyboard, I don't even use it. I estimate they could have saved at least 5mm in thickness by not having it. Too bad.

My issues (some of which just may be ignorance, I have only had the phone since the AM):


No auto-text - I need a dictionary I can edit for often used words and phrases (I couldn't do this on my iPhone but could on my Storm II, is this that difficult to implement?)
I can't get the gmail active sync to work - I thought using the native email client would be easier and only poll local contacts for auto-complete. It accepted all my settings but I can only reach my gmail account and get gmail push through the gmail app. Also both Gmail app and the email app want to auto-complete all the addresses from my extended Gmail address book (anyone I've ever email or who has emailed me, tens of thousands) rather than just my local address book. It was so easy on the iphone to just select a contact after pressing the To: section. This has to be typed and it is pulling up tons of irrelevant addresses. All I want is my contacts.
Contact scrolling is lame, I can't jump to a letter section.
Phone interface is not intuitive for multiple calls. On the iPhone it was easy to switch between several different callers and isolate just one of those calls. Not so on the Droid. You just have to try to figure it out, swapping didn't even tell me what the other caller's number was so I had no idea who I was on with. Pretty bad.
No pinch zoom is sorely missed. Where is the hack for this?
The battery life is no better than the iPhone. After a full charge, I am still running out of juice before a full day's use.
Can't view VCF v-card files - people in business send me v-cards all the time with their contact info. There is an app to import them off the SD card, but not from email attachments. This is huge for me.
No media management software (I knew this before I bought though).
No full skype? How can iPhone have that and this not? That's poopy.
Not as many great apps as on iPhone, plus some don't seem to work on the Droid, like they are phone specific. Too bad.

So I'll be eBaying this off when the HTC Passion comes out on Verizon, and then that again when the Sony X10 comes out. At least we're heading in the right direction. However, if an iPhone comes to Verizon, I'll probably go to that and just jailbreak it so I can multitask and get mroe out of it. it's still better, IMO, unfortunately.

[constellanation]

i think that most of those are legitimate concerns.
the first three i think are all possible to overcome with your phone as is.
and the battery life can be tweaked for a little improvement. (still won't be great, but you can get it better.)

some of those like the vcard, i don't have any idea about. and i find the pinch zoom to be a preference (one that i personally don't find that necessary. and when i did have it implemented onto a couple of areas on the phone i found it frivolous)

but if you keep messing around with the phone, i'm sure you can solve a few of your issues.

[bravo4]

the first three i think are all possible to overcome with your phone as is.... if you keep messing around with the phone, i'm sure you can solve a few of your issues.

Thanks for your feedback. If you have any tips, please feel free to send them my way :)

[constellanation]

well i'm not sure what the difference between 2.0 and whatever rom i'm running these days, but for the auto dictionary try going into your settings and go to locale and text there shoud be a user dictionary there.

it's been so long since i've done anything with the gmail syncing but i think you can choose somewhere to only sync certain parts of your contacts, and i remember at one point choosing something that stopped the suggested contacts (unfortunately that was over a year ago, at this point, so i don't remember what it was.)

and when you are contacts it's easier to type the first couple of letters then scrolling if you have a lot of contacts or if it is a letter late in the alphabet.

and the battery stuff is all somewhat common sense. if you have a twitter app, don't have it update every 5 minutes. don't keep bluetooth on when you don't need it, don't run gps all the time, lower the screen brightness and so on.

and again, i'm assuming these things run across the os, and aren't to different from phone to phone.

[bravo4]

well i'm not sure what the difference between 2.0 and whatever rom i'm running these days, but for the auto dictionary try going into your settings and go to locale and text there shoud be a user dictionary there.

it's been so long since i've done anything with the gmail syncing but i think you can choose somewhere to only sync certain parts of your contacts

User dictionary let's you add words, but not text shortcuts, so I can't make a string like "dd" auto insert a long phrase I might often use, like in this case "Direct Distribution" as the Blackberry does.

I do not see any setting anywhere to sync anything other than contacts. I think that defaults to syncing "My Contacts" with your Gmail account, but when using the To: section it is auto-completing with all contacts information. Also, I can't just click a to section and have it bring up my contacts.

It just has a long way to go. It's too bad too, because it could toast iPhone if someone would bother to put the development weight behind it.

[smokin5s]

my biggest complaint is when I'm using "messaging" when I'm typing in names, it won't always let me put people in my To: when I'm trying to type in a contact for SMS'ing. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong... if anyone knows what I'm doing wrong, please let me know.

[TheJuan]

Bro try this app here's a staff review http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f52/review-handcent-sms-20572/

[thunderstruck]

Do a full discharge on the phone, then keep turning it on until the battery is dead and the phone won't power on any more. You are not actually extending the battery life but you are calibrating the meter for that battery. Before I did this my meter would get down to 2% and stay there for a couple of hours, now it's much more accurate with relationship to the actual state of charge.

[bengrulz]

dude this is like the third thread youve posted the exact same thing.. how much attention do you need man??

[bravo4]

As much as possible! :)
please vote for these issues to be fixed:

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257

&

VCF file attachment in email should be recognized and importable to contacts by default
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3537

[devwild]

I agree that handling ICS makes a lot of sense, especially since you can use them on the desktop. If you look at the bug now, you'll see Verizon has escalated the issue and is pushing for a fix.

As for VCS... well, you'll notice only a handful of people have voted for that feature. vCards are one of the stupidest email "enhancements" ever invented (my opinion as a member of the IT world), and has largely died off in recent years. In the past 6 years in a corporate environment, I have only seen one vcard in my mailbox, and that was from a vendor's salesman.

Within certain corporations and business lines it has a place, especially with blackberry users, but in the world at large it's really small fry stuff, so don't expect a quick fix.

My expectation for a fix in that regard would be just the ability to download the vcs file (or any attachment) from the gmail app to your SD card so at least you could import it to contacts. Sure, you can download it from the web version of gmail, but... why should you have to?

If you really want to know why the Droid is unsuited for business, my opinion is it's the complete lack of built-in security - strong access passwords (swipes? really?), encrypted SD cards, etc. Without it, you can't use it in any business governed by regulatory security standards - healthcare, insurance, legal, government... as is, android is still purely consumer level gear, and you have to look at it as such... for now. Changes will come now that Verizon is finally backing it, I'm sure.

Of course, I was aware of all this before buying mine, so I'm quite happy with it so far. :)

[bravo4]

As for VCS... vCards are one of the stupidest email "enhancements" ever invented (my opinion as a member of the IT world), and has largely died off in recent years.

My expectation for a fix in that regard would be just the ability to download the vcs file (or any attachment) from the gmail app to your SD card so at least you could import it to contacts. Sure, you can download it from the web version of gmail, but... why should you have to?



vcards might be used more often than you'd think, however stupid . Want to send a contact to someone? It defaults to vcard. I get all my client assignments every day via vcard attachments, that is the default way blackberry (I am pretty sure Outlook too) sends contacts. If I recall correctly, I had no trouble importing them right into my contacts on an iPhone. Gmail allows you to import them into you contacts from their full-featured web interface (which I can't get to on my Droid, for some reason, just loads mobile or HTML only versions).

Right now there is *no* way to do this, not a manual download or anything (vcardIO doesn't appear to work with Droid OR it's because most vcards are the latest standard, which it does not support). So yes, for some, it is no big deal. For others, it is mission-critical.

Please vote? :)

[devwild]

vcards might be used more often than you'd think, however stupid . Want to send a contact to someone? It defaults to vcard. I get all my client assignments every day via vcard attachments, that is the default way blackberry (I am pretty sure Outlook too) sends contacts. If I recall correctly, I had no trouble importing them right into my contacts on an iPhone. Gmail allows you to import them into you contacts from their full-featured web interface (which I can't get to on my Droid, for some reason, just loads mobile or HTML only versions).

Right now there is *no* way to do this, not a manual download or anything (vcardIO doesn't appear to work with Droid OR it's because most vcards are the latest standard, which it does not support). So yes, for some, it is no big deal. For others, it is mission-critical.

Please vote? :)

In my experience most people don't send vcards/attach contacts (they wouldn't even know how), they just type in the contact info in the email. :) I'm not saying it doesn't happen, particularly in blackberry rich companies, just that it's nowhere near as big of an issue as ICS files, which are used widely for calendar events (You don't have to know how, it just does it), so it will probably take longer to get a proper fix.

You shouldn't have to use vcardIO, Contacts will import vcards off of the SD card directly - go to the web version of gmail to download the vcard, then go into Contacts and hit menu and import, and it will scan the SD card for vcards.

[bravo4]

You shouldn't have to use vcardIO, Contacts will import vcards off of the SD card directly - go to the web version of gmail to download the vcard, then go into Contacts and hit menu and import, and it will scan the SD card for vcards.

Hey! That's a great work-around! Thanks! No one else has showed me this.

Seems like it wouldn't be too much more for them to make it just open the email/Gmail attachment and have the option to import :)

[devwild]

Hey! That's a great work-around! Thanks! No one else has showed me this.

Seems like it wouldn't be too much more for them to make it just open the email/Gmail attachment and have the option to import :)

Yeah, it should be easy enough, though I think it should be addressed as more of a general attachment handling thing (you should be able to download any attachment and/or open with an associated app).

I just tried it myself by sending some vcf files from my work account and it worked fine, though one minor hiccup - it imports the new contact to your "My Contacts" group (which admittedly is google's kinda default group, but I wasn't showing it), so if you aren't displaying that group, it won't look like it worked at first. Go to the display options and turn that group back on so you can find and move the contact if you weren't showing it already.