Today I'm going to do a tech blog for Motorola Droid people.
I've had the Motorola Droid for over a month now. I'm very happy with it. We've just had an over the air update. I was hoping it was going to fix some of the problems, but I didn't really notice any huge differences. Here is my list of droid issues that I think should be addressed in the next update. I'm hoping that someone who can actually do something about this will read this list.
1. Copy & Paste - This is by far the most irritating feature. There needs to be an easier way to do this. 3rd party apps have it down, but the android OS doesn't. The e-mail app and the browser app have different methods for copy & paste and both are cumbersome. There needs to be a universal copy & paste method and it needs to be as simple as a long press and slide like every other touch screen device.
2. E-mail zoom - I have no trouble reading e-mails, but friends of mine who are droid users have complained that there is no zoom in the e-mail app. In all honesty, there is no reason why there shouldn't be a zoom here.
3. Video zoom - As big and bright as the screen is, I would still like to see a feature to either zoom or stretch (or both) video. My 5 year old ipod has this feature, why doesn't the droid have it? On a hand held device, I don't want to see any black bars while watching video.
4. Horizontal On Screen Keyboard Glitch - Sometimes the horizontal keyboard doesn't display text as your typing.
5. Auto Quit - I think a way to automatically quit apps should be added with user control. I just think that sometimes apps run in the background when they don't need to and this drains the battery. I think it would be cool if you were able to tell the droid how long each app should idle for automatically quitting.
6. E-mail Glitch - My e-mail frequently stops auto refreshing.
7. Notifications - Notifications are a strong point on this phone, but I think it would be better if you could set individual ring tones for different types of notifications. I think text messages, voice mails, updates, and other notifications should all have ringtone options.
8. Faster Load on Camera App - I think there should be an option to keep the camera app running in the background so you can load it faster. I find myself missing a lot of good photo ops waiting for the camera to come up.
9. Droid Market sorting options - For a relatively new OS, the android market has a large number of apps. However, finding the app you want is an overwhelming task because there is no advanced search or sorting options on the droid market. I think you should be able to sort by price, rating, release, etc...
10. Keyboard - The vertical on screen keyboard is very cramped and almost impossible to type on accurately. I think they need to make the keys a little smaller and have dead spaces in between them to prevent typos.
11. Visual Voice Mail and WiFi - Visual Voicemail doesn't work while you're on a WiFi network. This seems like a silly problem.
12. Google Earth - There is no Google Earth app for this phone. Let me rephrase that. Google Earth doesn't work on the Google Phone. Can we please fix this?
13. Microphone - My biggest problem with the phone is the microphone's directionality. Unless I'm talking directly into the phone, no one can hear me. When I'm in the car on speaker phone, it works fine. I can whisper in a noisy car and people can hear what I'm saying, but when I hold the phone up to my face, it sounds like I'm mumbling unless I can consistently hold the phone in the sweet spot. I don't know if this can be fixed in the update, but it would be great if the microphone didn't have such hardcore off axis rejection.
14. Multi-touch gestures - I have apps on my phone right now that use pinch zoom. This should be a standard feature in the OS. There is no satisfactory reason for it's absence. I've heard rumors that Verizon crippled this feature to give customers a reason to buy the Eris, but that just sounds like bad business to me. There is no good reason to cripple the best device that you offer.
So that's my list of suggested fixes. Now here's a list of apps that droid users should download from the market. Most of these are Free:
1. Xscope Browser - This is a basic browser, but it gives you a multi-touch pinch zoom. It's slower than the regular browser, but it will satisfly your iphone jones. Dolphin browser is also a good multitouch app.
2. Advanced Taskill - This tells you what programs are currently running and lets you quickly quit them. This will save your battery life and free up memory.
3. Explorer by Speed Software - Since the droid has no file explorer, you're going to need this to view the contents of your internal memory and SD card.
4. To Do List by Makeraman - A simple to do list to replaced my task list from my old windows mobile phone.
5. Notes by Yuli - This is also a simple app that is just a notepad. I use it quite a bit.
6. Talk to me Keyboard by pwn with your phone - This lets you speak into your phone and it converts your speech to text. It's useful for doing verbal replies to text messages.
7. Droid LED Flashlight - This uses the droid's flash as a flash light.
8. Pandora - This is awesome. It streams music to your phone and it sounds amazing and you can customize what you listen to.
9. Documents To Go by DataViz - This is basically MS Office for your phone. Comes with a word program, excel, power point, and pdf.
10. Fandango - Check out movie times, buy tickets, and watch trailers
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