Pros & Cons of moto droid 2??... lil help

[JUSTQUAN2]

hey wassup everyone, i am looking to move to verizon. i currently have the epic from sprint. i was wondering can any of you help me out with pros and cons of the motorola droid 2? you know such issues as battery life, screen wobbles etc...

this would be helpful for anyone taking the time to type so much appreciation and thanks in advance.

 

[pool_shark]

Any smartphone if used to its potential will have bad battery life.

I charge mine frequently, others buy extended batteries.

I've only read of one person talking about the screen wobbling, mine never has.

 

[Daisy 53]

My battery life is good for one day max.
No issues with the screen at all. All in all, the phone is awesome!
Daisy

 

[Checkka]

From a hardware standpoint, the phone is great. It has a very sturdy build and is very resilient to drops. Battery life is much better than I expected, I've been able to get much more than a regular workday on the phone (I've never seen it go below 20% when I charge once a day).

But like anything, there are issues:
My biggest problem with the phone is the poor programming that went into many aspects user interface. motoblur is often buggy and I occasionally have homescreens in a frozen or messed up state.

Much of the hardware seems underutilized, finger scrolling on the screen doesn't seem as responsive as it should be. As the Quadrant benchmarks have shown, there's nothing at all slow about the hardware. But the buck stops at the bad programmers which can drag any processor down.

 

[doomedromance]

• I get 14+ Hrs on my battery. Not really a heavy user. (Today only sent and received about 15 texts. Used the internet for like 5mins, used the music player full volume headset plugged in for like 20-30mins. Download/updated 10 apps. I'm at 50% battery at 15hrs 37mins unplugged)
• The bootloader is locked, so can't install custom kernels and boot yet. But ROMs are possible.
• 8GB internal memory (6.4 or something useable) Wont have to worry about running out of space for apps, useless and inaccessible for anything else. I still have 6.02GB free. I can't put music or save camera pics and video to it. It's just wasted space.
• Speaker seems quieter than my Droid1. It's pretty loud, but when it's under my pillow I can't hear the alarm go off and on the Droid1 I could hear it loud and clear.
• There's only a shift and alt key on the left side. Annoys the shit out of me because on my D1 I used the right shift and alt all the time.
• Blur is a waste of space.
• The stock blur launcher sucks. install ADW.Launcher or LauncherPro
• The Contacts take forever to load the pics, and it doesn't seem to cache it so it will always be delayed
• Facebook, Myspace and twitter blur log-in will load EVERY single contact you have there. If you download the Twitter app you can pick use only existing contacts, but Facebook app won't link the contacts at all, So you're stuck with all your Facebook friends from Blur account, or none at all. You can sort and choose to see only GMail contacts, but can't choose only exisiting facebook contacts. So all your contacts will be there even if you hide them. For me it was over 400 contacts. Bands from myspace, Politicians, News people, celebrities from twitter. I have no real friends on Twitter.
• Blur contacts app doesn't have tabs to phone and recently called, that would be in the Dialer that's still there. I use DialerOne because the contacts in the Dialer lag like crazy when scrolling. Blur contacts scroll smooth but pics take forever to load.
• Lock screen toggle switches from Ringer to Vibrate instead of Ringer to Silent
• There's a double tap home button setting and you can choose for it to launch a variety of apps but you can't choose to turn it off, so it has to launch something. Annoying for me because I use ADW and I have it set where I hit home to go home and home again to bring up all the home screens. So if I double tap it too fast it tries to launch an app. Default it was Voice Command which would just freeze up my phone everytime it tried to launch. Even w/o rooting or custom roms. Normal stock phone VC would just freeze up when double tapping.
• There's a half-ass sound equalizer for music in sound settings, at least it's something.
• Stupid City ID and Tether apps, You have to pay to use them. Stupid Blockbuster app. Kindle, Amazon MP3 you can't uninstall w/o rooting
• Quickoffice is an app you can launch. No need for adobe reader or Documents 2 go
• Messaging app won't let you turn off deleting messages. So the max you can keep is 1000 per person. You have to type 999 then hit the up arrow.
• Blur Email works way better than stock android email. It doesn't tell me I have new email for the same email over and over again like the stock one does. It doesn't freeze up when you multi select too many emails. GMail is the same.
• It still has google search and google maps and google nav. Not stupid Bing and VZW Nav, like the dumb Fascinate
• I just launched Voice Command from the App tray and It froze for like 15 secs. Second time launched immediately.
• There's no clock dock. It's just Alarm and Timer (which stock doesnt have) I assume because they want you to buy the media dock to access that.
• The Gallery doesn't look as fancy but it doesnt take forever to load the thumbnails like the cooliris (stock) gallery would.
• If I think of anything else I'll add to this long list.

Even though bootloader is locked, I dont have Bugless Beast, and the development community is almost non exisitent (Everyone went to the X pretty much.) I still love this phone, and it's way better than the Droid1 even when I had the Droid overclocked to 1.2gHz the D2 is still snappier.

 

[hahny42]

Battery life can be a issue if you dont know what your doing, between this and the fascinate and the X. its personal preference. things look sharping on the 2 rather than the x because of the smaller screen size. but the fascinate has the best screen to date. hardware wise you will not beat motorola right now. and with bing on the Lexicon right now alot of people i know are buying D2's and X's as they think this is the last of google on Verizon even though reps have said its not. its a matter of preference. the Fascinates standard battery got better life than my standard d2 battery. but with my extended d2 battery im getting about a day and a half. no screen wobble. and to be honest my biggest beef with the phone is that from the front it looks like a wider LG voyager with way better functionality.

 

[Outlaw.99]

I get a full days use out of my battery and charge every night... Some of the Blur is meh at best, but thats the beauty of Android, you can customize with free apps....Its the best so far of the ones Ive tried below, but the Blur cpould go and it wouldmnt hurt my feelings...

 

[Chaznsc]

This is my take on the D2.....

http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid-x/193021-droid-x-convert-my-journey.html

 

[joesmho]

I love my Droid 2. I haven't had any real issues with battery or screen wobble. I seem to be getting at least 13 hours out of the battery with a good amount of usage. If you do decide to make the switch though you would lose 4G coverage and HD video. Also, the slide out keyboard, from the looks of it, is waaaay better on the Epic.

If you tell us the reasons for wanting to switch from the Epic, we could probably help you out more.

 

[JUSTQUAN2]

my R2-D2 arrived today via over night. the epic is basically kinda lacking without froyo. good car no wheels but a wonderful device to have. lost the hd and 5 row keyboard. the display on the droid 2 is ok by me, no big loss. the 4g is a battery assassin for real. some speeds are good but if you are a "at work" user then not so good. sometimes not able to stand next to a charger. i still recommend the epic if you willing to manage the time.

 

[hitdog042]

I have the X and D2, and "had" a Fascinate. Don't know what the one detailed poster is talking about saying you can't view recent calls.. that's not true. It's the same exact format as the X. I don't get one thing he says in that entire long post.

Anyway, my take:

D2:

Screen is not as sharp as my X, someone said it's sharper. It's not. It's the same resolution. X is bigger, thus easier to see.
Camera is horrid
Video is even worse
Keyboard is awesome, it's the one thing that I truly enjoy on the D2. I like keyboards. I also like the D2 build. Solid.

X:
Great phone all the way around. No keyboard, which is why I don't use it every day. A little big, sometimes a hassle to use in certain situations. Great camera, Great video. but like all Motos, no zoom on Video recording.

Fascinate:

the Bing thing is overrated. You can install Google Maps and get the free Nav. All it means is the main search bar is Bing. Big deal. Make Google.com your start page. Too many people complain about something that is so stupid.

Camera is really good. Video is stellar and let's you zoom. Thin and lightweight, great screen.

My exp with Battery Life was not good with the Fascinate. And call quality was way poor compared to both the D2 and X.

D2 would be my favorite by far if the camera didn't stink so bad. If you are not outside, it's just horrid. You would think Moto would learn from the first droid.. but they either didn't or just didn't think it was a big deal.

 

[Cilraaz]

I have the X and D2, and "had" a Fascinate. Don't know what the one detailed poster is talking about saying you can't view recent calls.. that's not true. It's the same exact format as the X. I don't get one thing he says in that entire long post.

Anyway, my take:

D2:

Screen is not as sharp as my X, someone said it's sharper. It's not. It's the same resolution. X is bigger, thus easier to see.
Camera is horrid
Video is even worse
Keyboard is awesome, it's the one thing that I truly enjoy on the D2. I like keyboards. I also like the D2 build. Solid.

I haven't had the X or Fascinate, so I can't comment on those, but:

- The screen on the D2 is sharper than the X. By definition, a larger screen with the same resolution is less sharp due to larger pixels.
- The camera is pretty bad in low light. It's not too bad in good light, though.
- Video is pretty much in the same boat as the camera.
- I've never liked slide out keyboards, and I really have no clue why I bought the D2 over the X. After using the D2, though, I absolutely love it.

I played with the X in the store after purchasing the D2 online (debated a pre-30 day exchange), but decided to keep the D2.