Questions about moving to a D2 from an iphone 3G

[vistadude]

First time poster here. I'm finally nearing end of my dreaded At&t contract and want to get a Verizon phone asap. My iphone 3G has been great in some ways like ease of use and compatibility with lots of features I like, but it's so slow to use that I find myself wanting to throw it on the floor almost every time I use it. Keyboard lag, crashing apps, apps not working, and poor reception really make this device poor big time. So I'm interested in mainly the Droid 2 Global, but I'll also look at the droid incredible and Palm Pre 2. I know the droid 2 global isn't out yet, but it looks to be similar enough to the D2.

1. With the D2, can you remove the memory card and still use all functionality of the phone.

2. How much of the 8 GB memory can be used to store apps, music, photos, email etc? Is it similar to the iphone storage where there are no limits to the number of apps and app size?

3. Is there a podcast store like iTunes where you can download ESPN podcasts?

4. Can you disable flash content in the browser?

5. Is there a home button to wake the phone up from sleep mode besides the power button on the top?

6. Does the phone come installed with junk/useless apps (stuff like nascar...)

7. Does the on screen or slide out keyboard lagg in apps like the iphone keyboard does?

8. Is exchange email supported?

9. How do I get the contacts from my PC onto the D2? (I don't want my gmail or facebook contacts).

10. Is there a facebook app (not a widget) so that facebook updates don't constantly load in the background?

11. Can you make/download your own ringtones and sms tones?

12. Does the D2 feel thick in your pocket?

13. can the D2 be used easily with one hand?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Super_Six_Two]

1. Yes
2. I know you can use it for apps/system, not sure what else, never tried.
3.dunno
4. Why would you want to?
5. No, you need to use the button on top.
6. Yes, there is some bloatware that can be removed if you deiced to root your phone.
7. Never had any keyboard lag.
8.Yes.
9. Gmail is the easiest way. You could create a Gmail account just for contacts, there is always a way.
10. Yes. I don't use the Facebook app so I don't know all the deatils. You can also use something like tweetdeck that integrates with facebook and manualy update it.
11. Yes.
12. dunno, I use a holster
13. Its not that much larger then a iphone, you shouldn't have a problem.

 

[doomedromance]

1. With the D2, can you remove the memory card and still use all functionality of the phone. Apps that save data to the SD wont really work. But you can call and text and stuff.

2. How much of the 8 GB memory can be used to store apps, music, photos, email etc? Is it similar to the iphone storage where there are no limits to the number of apps and app size?
Mine had 6.3GB free i think. You can use that for apps and probably email data. Photos and music are stored on the SD card. You can't access the /data to write w/o root permissions. Even when I stuck music there the Music player wouldn't recognize it. Photos get saved to the SD card, and there's no option to switch it to internal storage. Both is a big oversight IMO. I could install over 100 apps on my phone and still have over 5GB of free internal space. Definitely not properly utilizing the internal storage.

3. Is there a podcast store like iTunes where you can download ESPN podcasts?
there are RSS and podcast apps, I don't use them so I don't know any of them. i think Google's is called Listen but there are others

4. Can you disable flash content in the browser? You could uninstall the flash player I guess. I think Dolphin HD allows you to disable it, and is a very good browser. But don't listen to Jobs bs. Flash is fine. Only reason why flash sucks so bad on Macs is because they wont release the proper code that allows Adobe to optimize performance like on a PC. So because of Apples closed ecosystem Flash runs terrible.

5. Is there a home button to wake the phone up from sleep mode besides the power button on the top? D2 lacks physical buttons so no. Just the power button or sliding the phone open.

6. Does the phone come installed with junk/useless apps (stuff like nascar...) unfortunately

7. Does the on screen or slide out keyboard lagg in apps like the iphone keyboard does?
No, those are problems with the old hardware on the 3G not being able to handle iOS4. The 3GS doesn't suffer from this. Droid2 is fine. Any lag in scrolling contacts or swiping between screens is a result of bottlenecks in the android OS. and are Very minimal.

8. Is exchange email supported? yes, but i dont use exchange so I cant say how well it works. I have heard it works better than the stock android email client. I prefer the D2 email client to the stock android email client for pop3 accounts.

9. How do I get the contacts from my PC onto the D2? (I don't want my gmail or facebook contacts). use the facebook app from the market and not the preinstalled facebook account and you'll be fine there. As for gmail, w/o syncing you'll be entering them in manually i think. In your gmail account you can setup contact groups and only the ones you choose will sync to the phone.

10. Is there a facebook app (not a widget) so that facebook updates don't constantly load in the background?
Yes, with the official app you can change the update interval to Never. And just not add the widget to your screen.

11. Can you make/download your own ringtones and sms tones?
You can put anything on the sd card. Have it in a Media folder (not necessary) and make ringtones, notifications, and alarms folders.

12. Does the D2 feel thick in your pocket?
nope dont really notice it

13. can the D2 be used easily with one hand?
Yeah I do all the time. and I use the HTC_IME that XDA member made. With that keyboard I can switch to compact qwerty (Blackberry Pearl) to type easier with one hand. But, the Swype keyboard also makes it really easy to type with one hand.

 

[Thornfullessrose]

4. There is an option to set flash always on, on demand, or always off.

 

[vistadude]

Wow, thanks for the quick responses! It looks like the D2 is going to be a great phone, fast, not too big, and supports a lot of the things I like with mobile. I tried out the droid X for a bit but I decided I just couldn't use it since I needed 2 hands all the time to reach the top of the screen. To answer the flash question, I'm fine with having flash capability (Job's handles it in an idiotic fashion) but what I hate the most is loading webpages that have like 6 mb data and incredibly long loading times and also windowed video. I guess it would be great if there were a flash on/off button in the browser so that the webpage would load quickly, but could play an optional flash video full screen upon a click or tap.

The other question I had is about the browser. How are you feeling about compatibility? I know the iphone pretty much works on lots of mobile version of websites, such as airline check-in websites. Have you had any major issues with website compatibility, or strange graphics in websites or apps given that the screen resolution is non-standard? Thanks.

 

[doomedromance]

Flash videos won't automatically load. The ads don't matter much as far as load time. If you decide to root, then you have ways of blocking most ads and they won't even load in the browser.

The web browser is almost same experience as desktop. I've been able to use my banks desktop website and log on and transfer funds. I've ordered things online from my phone, w/o using mobile sites. You can even play facebook games from the phone, although its pretty torturous. The only thing you really can't do is upload files through websites upload, mainly being that the file browser on the phone isn't compatible, but if it were youd be able to.

Scrolling on Android browser is a million times better than iphone. You can scroll to the bottom of a gizmodo page in one swipe as opposed to the 10 it would take on the iphone. The "momentum" you can throw is far greater on android.

 

[Thornfullessrose]

Fun fact for ya! Did you know the Froyo (Android 2.2) browser was dubbed fastest mobile browser? Its only true. No checker board if you scroll fast even when the page isn't done loading. Unlike iphone where even if the page is done loading, if you scroll down you get blank checkerboard on the screen cause it has to load.

Also, almost everyone sets the plugins (flash) to on demand. Its very much like an on/off button. It works like this, the page doesn't load any flash content until you tell it to. You can choose what flash content you want to load by pressing what will look like a white box woth a green arrow in it. That's telling you its flash content but won't load until you press it. This ondemand option allows the brower to move just as fast as it would without loading flash. I highly recommend using that option.

Iphone users say they don't need flash because it just slows down the browser but that's just an excuse because adobe and android made the on demand option.

 

[vistadude]

Cool, I think I'm getting sold on the D2. A couple more questions.

a. How do you quit apps so they don't make the phone slow down? Do you restart your phone every few days?

b. Can you multitask like a PC?

c. Only the real announcement can say, but do you think the D2 will accept 3G american SIM cards or will it be locked down to Verizon?

Thanks!

 

[Super_Six_Two]

a. You don't have to. Android manages this for you, and does very well
b. In most cases, yes. You can use the browser, listen to music, play a game.
c. no idea. I have never owned a VZW global phone.

 

[doomedromance]

A. There are task killers that will kill the running apps. But they're pointless because within a few minutes most of them will be running again. They don't actually "run" though, as they aren't using the cpu and if you need more memory android will give them the boot. Task killers have been known to slow down phones and decrease battery life, because the apps will restart automatically. That takes CPU usage and if they check gps loc, or have to sync data again then it drains your battery. So if you do install a task killer make sure you kill it along with the other tasks and don't keep it running. (...awaiting the inevitable Task Killers are good response. =) )
B. I just turned on the stock music player, pandora, and winamp then started Angry Birds and beat level 4-1 with no lag, no skipping.
C. it will be locked down, just as all carrier released phones are. If you can unlock it you'll be able to run it on GSM networks here.

 

[vistadude]

Cool! I just heard an ad on the radio for the Droid 2 Global. It should be coming out soon!

 

[Thornfullessrose]

Cool! I just heard an ad on the radio for the Droid 2 Global. It should be coming out soon!

I heard it when i was on hold with CS.