Low Ringer Volume

Recently I noticed that my Droid's ringer was almost inaudible even though I had it set to the highest volume setting. I played around a little and found that playing music was also extremely low (volume wise). I thought that maybe my speaker was damaged, but turned on the in-call speakerphone and bam, loud as hell! So, I did some quick searching and found plenty of people complaining of the same issue.

It looks like a lot of people are pointing to using headphone with the Droid as the culprit, but not everyone. I think it is probably a little more flakey then that, but fortunately, the rumored Dec. 11 OTA firmware update seems to have some fixes mentioned for "volume issues". Kudos to Verizon for getting this out in the first place and huge props if this fixes the problem.

As for a fix now, just pop out the battery and reboot.

The Droid Catches Fire!

Obviously, the release of an Android based phone on the Verizon network has sparked developers into porting popular iPhone apps in a way that never seemed to happen with the Blackberry.

Since my last post, just over a week ago, two of the apps on my wishlist have made their way to Android. NFL Superfan (from Direct TV) and TripIt. Gotta love it!

The Apps I Want

As you can see, I have a lot of love for this phone already, but I am definitely missing some apps that I use either on my iPod Touch or my BlackBerry Storm.

NFL Superfan
An essential app for any lover of football. Last weekend, I was in the DC airport watching the Saints game until they closed the doors to the plane and forced me to shut off my phone. As soon as we hit the ground, I fired it up again and caught the entire 3rd quarter between taxiing to the gate and the cab ride home. Amazing. This weekend, I will be on a train for most of the game against the Rams and I wish I had an app I could use!

MLB.tv
Same idea, but the season is over. Maybe they'll have one by the time spring training rolls around. Go Braves!

Google Reader
I have no idea how this is not already a native app. I use Google Reader religiously to keep up with probably over 1000 posts a day from tons of different sites. The mobile website is good, but a native app that would let you cache stuff for offline reads (like on an airplane!) would just rock so, so hard.

Tripit
The iPod Touch app is great. I have most of this info shared and synced with my calendar, but having the app just makes all this info better organized which is essential on any sort of trip, especially POAs! For now, the mobile website is OK.

NetFlix
The mobile website is actually pretty good, but a native app would be really, really nice for quickly adding things to your queue, looking up info, etc...

Daily Burn
Again, the mobile website is decent, but there is already an iPod app that is great. When you are in the gym and cannot remember how much weight you need to use in your next exercise, it'd be nice to have it right there. I have a 15 minute walk home from the gym too, so I could log it all instead of having to remember to do it later. Don't judge me. If I don't go to the gym I get fat, plain and simple. Logging all this crap keeps me motivated.

What's There to Love?

So, I have written all about the bad and ugly of the Droid, but what about the good? Here are some of the biggest highlights for me! The first few are about the Google Integration as I use Google email, contacts and calendar for my personal and work life and keep it all pretty well separated. Android v2.0 lets me pull all the information from where I want, how I want.

Google Integration - Contacts
I keep separate Contact lists for work and personal accounts in GMail which has always been a pain. Now, I can sync the contacts from both accounts with my phone and it handles add/update/deletes for me without any trouble.

Google Integration - Calendar
I only use one account for my calendar, but with tons of sub calendars to organize things. Not only do they all get synced, but I can easily show/hide calendars to see only what is important (maybe an afternoon agenda without the Liverpool, Georgia Tech Football and Braves games).

Google Integration - Mail
Holy crap, the mail app is fantastic. You can see everything in conversation view, all of your labels, search, etc... Pretty much as close to everything you can do via the website. Amazing. Also, my biggest pet peeve on the BlackBerry was that if I read a message on my computer (which I do 99% of the time) it did not get marked as read on my device. All of that is seamless now (with Google accounts, not sure about the Exchange stuff).

The Browser
A great, great, great browser experience. The screen makes it visually amazing. The bookmarks are great (although you really need to be able to selectively sync them with XMarks or something like that). You can open multiple "windows" like tabs to easily swap back and forth (can you say between gamecast and fantasy stats?). Inputting info to a form is really slick and it remembers passwords for you. And finally, you can create shortcuts to bookmarks right on your home screen.

Home Screen Widgets
Somewhat limited right now, but very powerful and cool. Have your calendar, weather, scoreboard, FaceBook or whatever on your Home Screen for quick access. I only use the Music Player widget right now, but 3rd party apps can create these widgets, so there is definitely more awesome to come!

Market
The Market is awesome. Just as good as the Apple AppStore in my opinion. Application management is fast an easy too.

Gallery
This is where you see pictures and such. The setup is pretty great in that you can very, very easily "Share" a picture or whatever via gmail, FaceBook, Picasa, etc... Very nicely done (even though I cannot get Picasa to work right now).

FaceBook
It is a good version of the mobile app, but has its quirks. I don't really use it except to sync up profile pics with my address book. I have uploaded a picture to my Profile and that was easy and super fast. Overall, very good.

Contact Favorites
This was missing on the BlackBerry big time. Speed dial sucks, but clicking contacts to see your quick list with all of the info you need to call, email, text, etc... that is fantastic.

Maps
This probably goes without saying, but the maps are ridiculously good.

Notifications
This is just done so well. All of your apps seems to use this space at the top of the screen to show you when you have a new SMS, email, what music is playing, background apps are running, etc... Just pull the menu in this area down and you can see it all. Really well done.

Droid Wallpaper

Thinking about making wallpaper for the Droid? Nothing tough about it. Just make an image that is 960x854, but make sure that the main focus of the image is no wider then 480. This will let you see everything on the main screen and it will scroll and scale nicely. You probably have to see the implementation to understand what I mean, but it works, trust me!

I've attached a simple New Orleans Saints wallpaper I created. I like the solid colors so you can see the background and you can arrange your icons to make the logo visible. Like everything else, you need to play around a bit to make it work for you, but at least this will show you a starting point!



Reebok used the above logo on Katrina Relief gear that it sold after the hurricane. I believe all the profits went to help the city of New Orleans. I am putting this here so I don't get hit with a copyright violation or something like that. I just love the logo!

What Apps Am I Using?

Man, I have gone through a ton of apps already. Here is a list of the highlights!

YouMail
There are a few Droid related bugs that I mentioned in another post, but all in all, this is an amazing Visual Voicemail app.

Google Listen
Being able to get podcasts without syncing with the computer is amazing.

Google Scoreboard
Again, a bug with NCAA Basketball, but overall very nice. I love that you can select your favorites and get notifications while games are in progress. The in-game action seems a little lacking, so I am going to keep my eye out for something else.

Pandora
The app is amazing I just don't think I will use it too much as it is a battery killer!

Qik
I don't do a lot of video, but when I do, this app is incredible. It will display a delayed stream as it uploads your video in real-time. It will also allow you to post the video to FaceBook immediately. Amazing.

Video Player
It will let me watch videos encoded for the iPod Touch. Definitely not as slick as the iPod, but very functional.

OpenTable
Works great, especially in a pinch.

Disspelling Droid Myths

So, in every review I read about the Droid, I heard a lot of negatives, all of which were valid, but were incomplete. I am going to address them here.

The battery sucks.
I have been using it hard as hell since I got it and yes, the battery life is nothing to write home about, but I think that for normal daily use, it will be fine. Of course, you need to charge it every night, but that goes without saying these days. The swappable battery definitely helps for travel!

The keyboard is terrible.
Compared to what? It is more then usable in my opinion. It isn't perfect, but it is so, so, so much better then not having a keyboard at all.

The music player is awful.
I don't get this at all. The music player is just fine. The fact that your running music can be a home screen widget or up in the notification area so you can get to it very quickly is amazing. I think what most people are complaining about is that it does not integrate with iTunes, which it never, ever will, but just copy music over to the phone and listen to it and it all works great.

Most apps are not Android v2.0 ready.
Developers seem to be busting their butts to get new apps out. I have only had the phone two days and at least a half dozen of the apps I installed right away have been updated specifically with bug fixes for the Droid. Give it 3 months and there will be an explosion of apps!

The Droid

I just picked up a Motorola Droid on Verizon. It runs Android v2.0 and so far I love it. It is far more polished then I expected, the "Android Market" is just as good as the AppStore on the iPhone and since I use Google accounts for mail, calendar, contacts, etc.. the integration is pretty seamless and amazing.

I could go on and on about all the great things I am doing with this phone (and I will in other posts), but for now I want to list the things that should work, but don't (at least not for me). Here is where I am having issues so far...

Multiple FaceBook profiles listed for some contacts.
I assume a bug that will be fixed in a future update. Very strange.

FaceBook profile picture not imported for all contacts.
I think this is just something buggy and will probably be fixed in some sort of update in the future.

Some FaceBook Friends just do not show up at all.
I have no idea why, maybe becuase of privacy settings for those particular people?

Picasa uploading errors out with a "failed to retrieve account information" message.
I can't find anything about this problem. I wonder if I configured something wrong?

Google Scoreboard cannot figure out NCAA Basketball info.
People have already complained about this in the Market, so I am assuming Google is working on a fix. Otherwise, awesome, but it is the only Sports Scoreboard app I have tried so far, so I wonder if there are better ones.

YouMail cannot figure out how to play through the handset speaker instead of the speakerphone.
This is a known issue with the Droid and it looks like the developers are working on it. Overall, amazing app! A much better implementation then on the BlackBerry.

YouMail is not pulling the contact picture from my addressbook.
From what I can tell, this may be only for ones that are linked to Facebook (which is pretty much all of them). Not sure. I cannot find any info about this.

SMS Character Limits
The SMS app does not show you how many characters you've typed. That actually sucks because if you go over your allotted 160, it just crops the message instead of sending more then one. There are 3rd party apps that try to resolve this, but they are not quite ready for v2.0 yet.