Motorola Droid

Even though this phone was almost immediately outclassed by the Nexus One and replaced by the Droid 2 after only 6 months, my Droid remains the gadget I use more often and find most useful throughout the day. That it is more useful than the day I bought it is a testament to the Android platform’s growth and the persistence of the open source custom ROM development community that has sprung up around it. Here is a list of my most-used apps.

• Communication: Google Voice, GMail, Touchdown (Exchange for Android), Facebook, Twidroid Pro, eBuddy
• Productivity: VitaDroid, Calendar Pad Pro, EverNote
• Entertainment: NewsRob, Amazon Kindle, TuneIn Radio, Subsonic, Pandora, Act1 Video Player, NFL Network
• Utilities: USB Tether (a Froyo feature), Gentle Alarm, Lightning Bug
• Games: Angry Birds, Robo Defense
• Travel: TripIt, FlightTrack Pro
• ROMs: CyanogenMod 5 and 6, Sapphire 1

Amazon Kindle (2nd Generation)

I love my Kindle, and prefer to read books on it than on paper now. Part of the appeal is that it is a gadget, but, even more importantly, the Kindle is lighter and smaller than most books, and takes up a finite amount of space as my library grows. The only downside to the Kindle is that its contrast is not great, and screen glare is a problem in mediocre-light conditions. (Oddly, glare is rarely a problem outside or in bright light.)

Boxee Box

I love my Boxee Box. Even though my Amazon.com review, the #1 most helpful for the product, is less than glowing, I love the Boxee Box’s handling of local media, and wait eagerly for it to get apps for Netflix and, to a lesser extent, Hulu Plus.

I just upgraded (I wiped cache and data, just to be sure), and so far things are working very well.

While CyanogenMod has more interface and application tweaks than Sapphire, Sapphire runs more stably on my phone (compared with CM6 RC1 and RC2), which is far more important. One of Sapphire’s killer features is that it integrates the basic overclocking/underclocking mechanisms found in the SetCPU app, which enables you to overclock without SetCPU (unless you wish to set up profiles). The rest of the Froyo goodness, including the JIT compiler, wifi tether, Exchange support, and Chrome-to-Phone, are all included.

If CM6 isn’t working well for you, I highly recommend trying out Sapphire. I found it a little tricky to install via ClockworkMod Recovery/ROM Manager, because you have to downgrade ClockworkMod Recovery to do so. The instructions below reflect the steps I took to switch from CM6 RC1 to Sapphire 0.8.4. If you’re new to flashing ROMs on your phone, know that it requires root access. Also, Sapphire appears to be compatible with the Motorola Droid only at this time.

1. Install/upgrade to the latest version of the ROM Manager app via the Android Market.
2. Open ROM Manager.
3. Due to an incompatibility of the latest ClockwordMod Recovery, Sapphire will install with ClockworkMod 2.0.1.3 or earlier. To flash this recovery, scroll to the bottom of ROM Manager’s main screen and select “All ClockworkMod Recoveries” from the “More Recoveries” section.
4. A recovery selection popup will appear. Choose “2.0.1.3″ and click the “OK” button.
5. ClockworkMod 2.0.1.3 will be flashed to your devise. (If for some reason the recovery does not install, use ROM Manager to “Flash Alternate Recovery” and then repeat steps 3 and 4.)
6. From the “ROM Management” section in ROM Manager, select “Download ROM”.
7. Select “cvpcs” under the “Free” section.
8. Select “Sapphire 0.8.4 (Froyo)”, which is the latest stable release at this time.
9. A screenshots popup will appear. Click the “Download” button.
10. A kernel selection popup will appear. Choose a kernel from the list. I use P3Droid’s 125-800mhz Low Voltage kernel. You may choose one with a faster top speed if you wish. Click the “OK” button.
11. A theme selection popup will appear. Choose a theme from the list. I stick with the “Stock (Default)” theme. Click the “OK” button.
12. A ROM addons selection popup will appear. Check “Google Apps” so that Google’s standard apps (including the Market) will be installed. Check the “Market Hack”, too. Until Motorola releases an official Froyo build for the Droid, copy-protected apps will not show up  in the Market when you run a Froyo ROM. The Market Hack fixes that. Click the “OK” button.
13. ROM Manager will download the necessary ROMs.
14. When the downloads complete, a ROM pre-installation popup will appear. Check both of the options: “Backup Existing ROM” and “Wipe Data and Cache”. Always back up your current ROM prior to flashing a new one. Sapphire’s developers say that it is important to wipe data prior to the install. Froyo will re-download your apps from the Market after a reinstall, so it isn’t as much of a pain as you think it might be. Click the “OK” button.
15. ROM Manager will reboot into recovery and install all the ROMs you selected.
16. When the phone reboots again, you will be able to log into your Google account and set everything up. The Market will download all your previously-installed apps during the sync process. Just be patient!

I prefer the ADW Launcher to the launcher that Sapphire comes with. ADW Launcher is a free download from the Android Market.

Motorola Droid

At the time, there was a rumor that Motorola was going to release an update about one month later, and I was willing to wait. Unfortunately, that day came and went. And so did the next rumored day. And then the first promised day. It was really frustrating. I completely lost faith in Motorola and Verizon Wireless in their ability to keep up with Google’s software release schedule.

When the first Android 2.1 root package came available, I immediately rooted my phone and installed it. It didn’t take me long, and it wasn’t scary at all. After rooting, I did have to spend a few dollars to install some very useful apps (RootExplorer and SetCPU), but it was totally worth it.

Rooting enabled me to take control over my phone, and run it how I want to. Now, I love my zippy, custom-skinned, overclocked Droid even more than the day I bought it.

I really think that phone manufacturers and carriers making Android devices have to increase their software development capacity to keep up with Android’s pace of development. Motorola has made it trivial to root their Droid phone (though it does void the warranty), which is a consolation for techies like me. If you’ve flashed the firmware of your router, you can flash the firmware of the Droid phone. You might as well, in my opinion. I’m really happy with the results.

Android 2.1 on the Motorola Droid

I had to set my phone up anew after upgrading it, though I only had to redownload one of my apps. This is a serious update, but if you’re already rooted, I highly recommend it!

Motorola Droid

The Body and Physical Appearance

This phone is a heavy, black brick, with very masculine styling. I don’t mind the heft, but this isn’t a friendly looking device. The design is divisive: you either love it or hate it. Overall, I like it.

The only thing I don’t like about the phone’s body is the battery door, which slides off too easily. It has fallen off several times when I’ve taken the phone out of my pocket, which is embarrassing and annoying. Luckily, the battery doesn’t fall out. My recommendation: don’t ever open the battery door if you don’t have to.

Another gripe is that screen rotation doesn’t work as well as the iPhone’s. When I leave the phone on my desktop and wake it up from sleep, it often switches to landscape orientation for no reason. Also, perhaps because the phone has a slide-out keyboard, the landscape orientation is fixed to one direction. It would be nice to be able to flip the phone the other way when watching videos, to move the headphone jack to the other side.

The physical keyboard, with its flat, cramped keys, is actually not as bad as I thought it would be. I find myself switching between it and the virtual keyboard quite often. It is nice to be able to type without obscuring the screen.

The Screen

The screen resolution, which is about twice that of my iPod Touch, is fantastic. Text looks crisp and readable, even at tiny point sizes. Video looks sharp and vivid. A month ago, I thought the iPod’s screen was gorgeous. Now it looks woefully dated to me, with its massive pixels and noticeable screen door effect.

With a screen this nice, I certainly don’t want to scratch it. I don’t know if  it is prone to scratching from keys and coins in my pocket, so I purchased screen protectors at the Verizon Wireless store. I have to say that those screen protectors are not good quality. They attract dust when you put them on, and are prone to bubbling and peeling far more than screen protectors I’ve used in the past on my iPod Touch and (long ago) Handspring Visor. I replaced my screen protector twice in the first two weeks.

Video Playback and Audio Sync Problems

Video playback looks gorgeous on this device, thanks to the high-resolution screen. It easily bests the iPhone/iPod Touch’s screen. I like sideloading videos onto the phone better than having to import videos and tag them in iTunes before syncing. That said, I do not use this phone to play videos. The reason: audio/video sync is terrible. HandBrake-encoded videos that encoded for the iPhone/iPod Touch look fantastic on the screen, but the audio lags so much that lips are out of sync. I’ve tried tweaking the HandBrake encoding settings a dozen times, but nothing has worked well thus far, and it shouldn’t be this difficult. (As I am writing this article, I discovered another Droid owner’s Handbrake recommendations. I will try these out as soon as I can.)

Also, it is not obvious that the pre-installed Gallery app is also a video player. I had to search for a decent front-end in the app store, which is not user-friendly.

Audio Playback

The phone works fine as an audio player. It plays more formats than the iPod, and there are some nice media player apps that you can download for free, such as TuneWiki and Meridian. I prefer the latter app.

By the way, the audio/video apps all act as front-ends that simply expose the underlying operating system’s playback capabilities. All the apps I’ve tried are more primative, in terms of design, companed to the the iPhone/iPod Touch’s built-in media capabilities.

Camera

The camera is slow to start and doesn’t autofocus properly sometimes. This is a known bug that Motorola will fix with a software updated, which will be pushed to users in a couple weeks. The video capabilities are nice, and work very well for casual use.

Android Platform Growing Pains

The Android platform is powerful and flexible, but feels a little rough around the edges. Out of the box, it isn’t obvious how to play media files, how to customize the home screen, or how to load files onto the device. The user experience isn’t meticulously controlled, as it is with Apple’s products, which takes some getting used to. If you are not prone to treating a phone as a miniature PC, which needs to be set up and customized, you will find this phone frustrating for the first few weeks.

The application experience is good on this phone. The Android app store offers enough variety and quality for almost any user, in my opinion. I’ve found quality apps to do just about anything I wanted to do. Twidroid, for example, is a great Twitter/Identica client. The Facebook app is not as slick and feature-packed as the iPhone/iPod Touch version. Google’s Listen is a great, free podcatching application, which offers functionality I haven’t seen in the iPhone universe. Locale shows you what restaurants, stores, gas stations, and so on are nearby, wherever you are. Google’s built-in navigation application is outstanding as well. Third party apps can run in the background, and plug into the common notification system, which helps make for a uniform experience.

Another sign of growing pains, or of an open platform, is that the apps I downloaded are updated very frequently; I have updates to download almost every day. Updates are easy to download and install, but there is no way to update all of your apps with one command, as there is on the iPhone. Overall, I’ve never had a problem updating applications, but if you dislike being on the leading edge of mobile platforms, you might have reservations about all the update notifications.

Locale Compatibility

The very cool Locale app does not update its geographic location properly with this phone. I’m not sure if this is a problem with Locale, or with the Droid phone itself. It would be awesome if the phone really were location-aware all the time.

Phone Calls

It’s easy to forget that this device, which is basically a palmtop computer, is also a phone. I think the sound quality is great, and I like the integration of the address book with Facebook, Gmail, and Google Contacts.