I got a Droid…Why I miss my iPhone

I recently purchased a Motorola Droid X Android smartphone from Verizon Wireless after having been an iPhone owner for a little over two years. I made the switch for a few reasons, the two primary being a.) AT&T’s network sucks and b.) upgrading to iOS 4.0 on my iPhone 3G rendered it useless due to performance issues. Before I go into my reasons, I’ll openly admit that I’m an Apple addict and have been since I was in middle school. I love almost all things Apple and dreamed of the day the iPhone would be built. In the beginning I had many complaints, but over time either adjusted to its deficiencies or Apple resolved them with new capabilities. That said, I began my journey with an android phone with as much openness I could and to be honest was a little excited to make the switch and see what it was all about.

Android User Experience is Clumsy

One of the immediate challenges with the Android ecosystem of hardware vendors is that they are all making modifications to the user interface and in some cases almost entirely changing the experience. This is unfortunate as it means the evolution of improving the operating system and user experience will be disjointed and slowed as each group will do their own thing thus dividing the total potential resources that could be focused on making it better.

Keyboard Accuracy

The first major issue I had with my phone was typing. The keyboard and touchscreen that comes with the Droid X responded poorly to my input. I find the auto-correction to be much less accurate than what I became accustom to with the iPhone and found my ability to type simple emails and text messages tedious and slow. I have been really disappointed by this as it seems we had made large strides in the phone world with tiny thumb keyboards becoming increasingly accurate and predicting what we intended to type and automatically correcting any fat finger mistakes we may make without us taking pause or correcting words ourselves. I have learned to be slower on keys such as the “space bar” and reach further out to hit the letter more directly, but I shouldn’t have to make these adjustments. Regardless, I still can’t type as fast as I could on an iPhone.

Smaller Nits

  • Browser double tap and zoom – When you double tap on a content area within a web page from the browser, the zoom often crops the text in a such a way that you have to scroll left and right and misses the mark. The Safari browser elegantly determines the content area you’re trying to focus in on and accurately zooms in without trying to reformat it.
  • Notification count on app – The notifications window is a neat idea to be able to see everything and not have everything distract you with a pop-up as it does on the iPhone, but the implementation misses two critical features. The first is that I need to be able to see the notification and choose to not make it go away. For example, if I accidently touch the item it clears that notification, even if I haven’t read the SMS. Second, nothing on the application icon itself tells me that there is something needing my attention.
  • SMS app still alerts me when I’m in it? That’s just silly.
  • How did we go backward in basic PDA Functions? – The calendar application is missing the description field so if I click into an entry to know what the agenda is prior to walking into the meeting, I don’t’ have access. (Calendar missing description http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeTdJSzdVfQ). Task managed in Microsoft Outlook are not sync’d.
  • Flick scrolling selection wheels –I’m sure this is one of those items that is simply missed as Apple has the patent, but it’s really annoying that I can’t just flick the hours forward or backward in the clock application to change my alarm. This simple slot machine type interface is so much easier than pushing a “+” or “-“ button.
  • Passcode unlock – Why do I have to click the check mark?
  • Using the physical key to get into application menu’s feels wrong (Droid X specific)
  • Favorites in Phone (Contacts) can’t be sorted?
  • Whoa battery life – Everyone gives the iPhone a hard time for not having “multi-tasking”, but other than listening to Pandora (now possible with iOS 4.0 API’s) I’d challenge anyone to show me that they can get in and out of things faster on a Droid. All I seem to get is applications that stay open and drain my batter. Yes, I realize I can get the Kill Apps app, but this should be more elegantly handled by the operating system (hear Fryo solves).
  • iTunes integration – My life is in iTunes and iPhoto. Not being able to connect to these easily is very annoying (I blame you apple). So, I will eventually switch my photo album to Adobe’s Lightroom, which gives much better control of where the photos are kept as well as more capability, but I still haven’t figured out what to do with my music.
  • Lack of apps – The first night I sat back on my couch with both my iPhone and new Droid X, the first thing I did was referenced my iPhone and opened the Android Marketplace to add all my apps…most were not there.
  • Android Marketplace needs sub-categories

What I like

  • The browser doesn’t refresh constantly when I return to it or hit the back button.
  • Snooze is great on calendar notifications, but I should be able to set the snooze time
  • Calendar widget is great at a glance
  • Calendar allows me to decline a meeting later that I already accepted and send a note with it (iPhone just sent the decline without allowing me to add a message)

Overall it feels like an immature operating system that is being pushed out haphazardly and has had very little attention to the customer experience. That said, it’s young and has a lot of supporters so probably by the time this gets posted to my blog, much of my complaints will be solved. More importantly it’s an open platform that can be expanded on much more than the iPhone so I expect great things. Oh, and it’s nice to be able to watch hulu.com.

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