Hi guys, hope you are all enjoying your Droids. I have a few questions and will preface this to say that I’m not a hater and hoping that my problems are due to some defect or setup problem. I had an iPhone and Blackberry before this, long time Treo user. Perhaps some can share experiences.
1) Keyboard – It sucks badly, mind numbing design (except for gamers). We knew what it was coming in but I found out that using a case (especially Verizon’s stock) makes typing impossible. This is because the small amount of space on the top between the screen and top rows of the keyboard are totally necessary to reach those keys. Is there any case that is thinner and more forgiving in that area?
2) Pop mail does not work reliably to pull based upon time. I set it to pull from my server and it did a few times. Now I get tons of yellow "error" messages that are unexplained. When I go into the email account and it checks email, more often than not it will then pull the email without an error.
3) Email is poorly done. Is there a replacement email application? My problems are as follows: (a) Like the iPhone, every time you just go into a mailbox to review mail the damn phone checks for new mail. This will kill your battery and, at least on an iphone, there is no manual way to turn this off or set it. Is there one on the Droid? (b) Using the keyboard means losing the back and forth arrows in email – what the…? (c) I can’t seem to put in signatures for POP email but, worse, there is no bcc to myself if I send email from these accounts. (d) How do you get it to download full emails and pics? I travel out of range a lot and just want the phone to download all email from all accounts and get the contents of the email for offline viewing.
4) How do you auto quit applications or switch between them? It’s maddening that apps will stay open forever or even run multiple copies. How can you see what apps are running and easily switch, e.g. on the blackberry you hit a key and can cycle through all the apps. More importantly, how can you quit an app? There is no exit/quit on most of the apps I had.
5) How can you backup the phone? I have not found any way to backup my apps and the data. I looked at the Palm Pre and I wonder if this is the same maniacal obsession with "the cloud" that is there. If you have a to do application that doesn’t sync to a wireless or web based app, I can’t find a way to backup your applications you downloaded and the data that was in that application. Am I missing something? On the Palm this is a HUGE hole.
6) How do you set the LED light to do alerts? Isn’t that what it is there for, e.g. blink when you have new voice mail messages, etc.
7) Is there an app to condense space between icons? It’s almost as bad as working on a blackberry. You have 12 icons on the front screen. If you reduced the vertical space you could easily fit another row. How about the left right screens? There seems no way to nicely organize all your apps other than these ‘favorite’ areas as in the big repository it’s all the apps thrown in – and you can’t even make stuff invisible that you won’t use like "corporate email" or the like.
We have outlook on our PCs, not exchange. We have a LOT of offline emailing where we travel with netbooks and Outlook is great to read and reply to email, sent when you have a connection. I can’t find any easy way to sync Outlook contacts and calendar information, including notes and to dos. I downloaded Companionlink and it’s a mess, IMHO. It doesn’t sync the calendar, only the contacts. Maybe I did something wrong but the only way I can see to even "sync" is to sync Outlook calendar to google and google to the phone. Contacts requires companionlink which is "ok" at best and then they have their own notes and memo app. VERY VERY lame.
9) I get too many errors com.google.android.phone
10) I’m worried about the slider mechanism wearing out – how are yours faring?
That’s a lot of text and hopefully some of you can take parts to help me through it. I want to like the Moto Droid but it has a lot of failings for such an expensive phone. The workings are clunky. As much as I dislike Apple and think the Palm will be gone soon, I think Android 2 and the Droid are a somewhat clunky embarrassment. Much of this feels awkward like old Windows Mobile but even less reliable. I hope I’m wrong and that you guys can help me remedy some of the challenges I’m having.
