Mike Prawicki » verizon

Motorola Droid Review

Mike Prawicki — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:01:20 +0000

As you know, the hugely anticipated launch of the Motorola Droid was on Friday. I went to a press event held at a Verizon store to get a hands on with the Droid and some footage to share with you guys. Boring, but I’ll take what I can get. Surprise, surprise, Verizon was nice enough to let me hang on to a Droid for two weeks so I’m able to give you a more in-depth review.

The Droid runs Android 2.0. Android is an open source mobile operating system, originally developed by, and heavily supported by Google. If you use Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, or Google Voice, having Android is a very good thing. It means those apps are going to run smoothly and you’ll get more out of them. More on that in a minute. Verizon has put a lot of effort into their network, and the hope here is that you don’t get the amount of dropped calls or inconsistent service a lot of people complain about with AT&T. In my experience with iPhones on AT&T, dropped calls are less of an issue than calls I have to drop because I can’t understand the person on the other end of the call or they can’t understand me. The Motorola Droid provides vastly better sounding calls than my iPhones. In a perfect world both phones would be available on both networks so I could tell if it’s a hardware issue or a network issue.

The Motorola Droid has the best screen on any handheld device I’ve ever seen. It’s a 3.7 inch touchscreen with a resolution of 854×480. That’s over 400,000 pixels, and you can definitely tell a difference. We’re showing you The Droid playing a movie in HD. The Droid screen is brighter and richer and point 2 inches bigger. The downside? No multitouch in the US. It’s capable of multitouch, and the GSM version in Europe has multitouch enabled, but we’re not allowed here in the US. Instead, you double tap to zoom or use the plus and minus buttons on the screen to zoom in or out. If you’ve been using an iPhone, you’re going to natually want to pinch the screen. The Droid’s method of zooming isn’t bad. It has nice animation, but precise pinch and zoom is better.

The best part about the 5 megapixel camera isn’t the additional pixels. What I liked was the software based zoom. I was taking a picture of some Thai soup when I discovered the feature by accident. Just double tap the screen to get up close and personal. You can snap the photo from the screen, or use the physical button on the side of the phone. Just like on a regular camera, hold the button half way down to focus, then click to take your photo.

The Droid has both an onscreen keyboard and physical slider keyboard. iPhone users tend to agree with Apple that physical keyboards are overrated and I’m in that camp. However, there is a large market for whom the iPhone is off the table just because it lacks physical keys. No amount of Apple evangelism is going to convince someone who insists on a keyboard that they really don’t need it. I say Motorola was smart to zig where Apple zagged. It’s important to point out, though, since the keys are flush, there isn’t really any tactile difference between the virtual keyboard and the one with real buttons. The biggest advantage of the slider keyboard, whether you think it’s necessary or not, is that you can type and enjoy the full screen at the same time.

One of my favorite things about the Droid is that it allows you to run up to six applications at once. This is one of the main complaints from power users about the iPhone. Being able to listen to Pandora while browsing the web or tweeting is HUGE for me. I do it on my laptop, and that desire doesn’t change just because I’m using a smaller device. Apple doesn’t allow that because having six applications all processing data at the same time puts the phone at risk of a crash. I totally get that! However, I’d rather have the choice to take that risk.

I mentioned Google apps before, and I want to get back to that. I don’t know how many of you are in the same situation as me. I can’t use the Mail app on the iPhone or any mail app on any phone because I use Gmail. That wouldn’t be a problem (the iPhone supports Gmail) except I use labels and filters like crazy! Most of my mail is sorted automatically and doesn’t even see the inbox, so any time I can’t easily see and use my labels on the go, I’m severely crippled. Since Google supports Android, they’ve made it possible for me to use the Gmail app successfully without having to go into the browser.

There are 10,000 apps in the Android store, called Market. There are 100,000 apps in the iPhone store. No surprise there. Apple has a head start. That said, there are plenty of Twitter apps, if nothing else!! With the ability to run apps in the background, you’re able to set up Twitter apps, for example, to notify you when something new arrives in your feed or Direct Message inbox. This is a great way to save on SMS costs if you don’t have an unlimited plan.

One thing I was super excited about was the turn by turn navigation with voice commands. No need to pay for an app – it’s already installed when you buy the phone. The voice is very synthetic, but it works AND speaks in complete sentences!

One of the coolest possibilities you get with the Motorola Droid requires an additional purchase. It’s just $30, though and it’s a dock for charging the phone. What’s special about it is that it turns the phone’s display into a digital photo frame, a widget display and an alarm clock. When you set the phone on the dock and use it as an alarm clock, you can dim the time and set the alarm.

Motorola promises 6.5 hours of battery life when used continuously. I’m getting close to 10 or 11 hours of normal use. If you’re ready to buy one, let’s talk price. It’ll be $199 with a 2 year agreement. This is after a mail in rebate, but David Pogue from the NY Times says that if you buy it from Best Buy, you’ll get an instant rebate. Voice plans start at $40/month for 350 minutes and data plans start at $30/month.

The mainstream media keeps looking for an iPhone killer. That’s not me. I want the iPhone to continue to succeed, but I want other alternatives to succeed too. I haven’t been looking for an iPhone killer. I’ve been looking for a smartphone that plays effectively on the same field. The Motorola Droid does that. Will I buy one? I have a couple weeks to decide so I’m going to take advantage of that. My sense so far, though is that moving from iPhone to Droid will not be a downgrade and in a few ways, like call quality and Google Voice integration it will be an upgrade. I’ll write more about my experience with the Droid on my blog at www.calilewis.me.

review by Cali Lewis

Verizon Customers – Just Say No!

Mike Prawicki — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:36:46 +0000

It is easier to seek forgiveness than it is to get permission according to Verizon, which has once again shown us what large corporations should not be doing when it comes to customer service.

David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and the more recent Everything is Miscellaneous received a letter today from Verizon. A “legalistic pamphlet” that informed him he has 45 days to opt out of ‘agreeing’ to let Verizon share his personal information.

Weinberger, unlike the majority of us who rarely read the associated paraphernalia that arrives with bills and the like, noticed that Verizon’s modus operandi was to share Customer Proprietary Network Information – the data created as a result of your relationship with Verizon Wireless – unless you ask them to stop.

This information includes “services purchased (including specific calls you make and receive), billing info, technical info and location info. They promise to only share this with ‘affiliates, agents and parent companies.’ It will definitely not be shared with ‘unrelated third parties’ … unless, perhaps that third party pays Verizon to become an affiliate, whatever the heck ‘affiliate’ means,” Wienberger wrote.

While getting this in the mail is great, what about those people who only receive electronic copies from Verizon? Did they too receive a message? I didn’t, so I decided to investigate, and sure enough, after logging into my Verizon Wireless account I couldn’t find a mention of the CPNI. As Weinberger pointed out, there is a link to it in my messages, but alas, as he also mentions, the link is “not available.”

Verizon has not been having a great run recently. Sure, in January Microsoft opened its wallet to Verizon and struck a five year partnership with the wireless carrier in hopes of getting access to its more than 80 million subscribers, but what if those subscribers begin to slowly dwindle away?

Verizon was dealt a blow last month when the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied the company’s request to overturn a decision by the Federal Communications Commission regarding its marketing tactics. Earlier this month the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission decided Verizon’s customer service “stinks” and sought a settlement to improve customer service. Next week, Delaware customers with complaints about their telecommunications service will have the opportunity to air them during the states Public Service Commission hearings.

Verizon spokesman Harry Mitchell, in discussing next week’s public forum said the company still does not believe the hearings are necessary. “There were some issues we did have, but we worked through those, in collaboration with the commission staff, and made great improvements,” he said.

While they may have fixed the problems associated with gripes about their old copper pipes in Delaware, they clearly haven’t yet addressed their customer service issues.

For a company that prides itself on operating the nation’s most reliable and largest wireless voice and data network, and spends an absolute fortune on creating masterful ads to entertain us, it clearly still has a way to go. Perhaps it’s time the company started putting some of its energy into the Twitter account it set up, and got up close and personal to its community and their needs.

Note: David Weinberger’s post walks you through the process of opting out of Verizon’s ‘share your information’ default setting. If you haven’t done it yet, we highly recommend you do.

4G race gaining speed

Mike Prawicki — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 05:46:15 +0000

Twenty-six operators are committed to the long-term evolution 4G standard, according to research released this week by the Global Mobile Suppliers Association. While the forum for GSM and 3G suppliers worldwide decidedly has a stake in promoting LTE, the number indicates growing momentum for the standard, which promises download data rates of at least 100Mbps.

Fierce competition has arisen to become the world’s first LTE operator in an arena regarded as the next generation of mobile phone service and a huge draw for customers.

Ten network operators are ready to launch their networks by 2010, according to the report. In the U.S., these include Verizon, which committed to 4G at the 2009 GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February; MetroPCS; and CenturyTel.

TeliaSonera in Sweden and Norway has signed on. In Japan, NTT DoCoMo and KDDI are onboard, and in Canada, it’s Rogers Wireless, Telus, and Bell Canada. Sixteen more telecommunications companies will launch their LTE 4G services after 2010.

With earlier launches of new mobile-network standards, handset availability has been a limiting factor for the commercial launch of the service. In the GSA report, two mobile players have already predicted release dates of their LTE phones. Sweden’s Ericsson says it will have an LTE-capable platform for commercial release in 2009 and will deliver mobile products based on the platform in 2010. South Korea’s LG has announced that its first LTE mobile phones will likely reach the market in 2010.

For users, 4G wireless technology is primarily about higher data rates to match the increasing capabilities being offered by phones. But consumers probably won’t experience the full impact of 4G until 2012 or 2013, when Strategy Analytics forecasts that the global LTE handset market will increase from 70 million sales units to 150 million.