Last year about this time, I was using my iPhone and peering over at the screen of my Android-owning colleagues, envying the flexibility and customizability that they experienced. I had grown tired of looking at a screen with a black background and five rows of four icons. And while jailbreaking was an option that might give me a bit more control over my device, I guess what I was after was a clean break. I had been an iPhone user since it launched in the summer of 2007 and… well… it was time for a change. Or so I thought.
I’ve been using the Droid X for just over four months now and my experience has been mixed. There are many reasons why I like my Droid X running Android 2.2 (which I’ll go into here in detail) but the long and short of it is that I will be making my way back to the Apple Store, hat in hand, asking them to hand me one of those boxes with the "iPhone 4" stamped across the side.
Let me get this out of the way right now: anyone who knows me personally knows that I’m a huge Apple aficionado. I own three Macs, an iPhone 3GS, an Apple TV and an iPad. But what’s more important to understand about me is that I’m a technologist. I use and have experimented with just about any consumer electronics device and category that you could imagine. I truly wanted my Android experience to work out. Honestly I did. I wanted to carry an Android if for no other reason than to act as a counter to all of this Apple stuff that surrounds me. It’s like calling a guy a racist and then finding out that his wife is of the race you accuse him of showing bias towards. It doesn’t exactly relieve you of the accusation, but it does call it into heavy questioning.
Continue reading ‘Seeing the Droid X Through iPhone-Colored Glasses’
It was shaping up to be such a perfect situation. I purchased an EVO 4G on launch day and life was good. Yet, as I was nearing the end of the 30 day period after which I would be bound to a two-year contract, rumblings began about the release of Verizon’s entry into the 4.3-inch “super” Android phone. Like many phones I end up owning, the Droid X wasn’t even a blip on my radar 3 months ago (and I’ve been known to plan tech purchases out for at least that long.) Yes, it would have been perfect… My sister and a few other friends have EVOs. We could have shared in exchanging handy tips and other best practices. We’d be experimenting and learning the nuances of the device together. And even now that I sit in front of what is essentially a phone running the same operating system in the Droid X (Android 2.1), I want to be able to tell the world that there is no difference… that somehow it’s just a matter of choosing between minor preferences. The truth of the matter is that these phones – despite seemingly minor differences in form factor and chipset – do provide very different experiences.
Random Digital Musings... 