Motorola’s Droid review: It’s the best phone on Verizon | via Los Angeles Times
Some notable paragraphs:
After spending plenty of time with the iPhone and MyTouch, we realized just how much we don’t miss physical keyboards. Granted, the Droid’s isn’t as nice as most Blackberry keyboards. We spewed just as many typos on the Droid’s black-and-white-and-brown keyboard as we did on software keyboards. Only problem is that we’re not offered automatic corrections like we get on the touch-screen keyboard.
Honestly, while I’ve heard tons of complaints about the iPhone’s lack of a physical keyboard, I’ve never found its software keyboard to be a problem. And no auto-correct, for me, would be a royal hassle.
On the flip side, selecting text on the Droid drives us nuts. The option is hidden behind a menu screen; there’s no clever magnifying glass to help you grab the right section; and to copy, you have to again find the option somewhere in the menus.
This design choice underlines a prevalent problem that still plagues Android. Some fairly common actions are hidden, including the basic ability to delete apps.
(Here’s a tip so you don’t look like a stooge at the Verizon store: Press the lock icon and turn to the right to open the phone. The majority of people who played with our review unit couldn’t figure out how to get into the phone.)
Hmmm… UI design is huge. “Find the options somewhere in the menus?” You read something like this and you maybe begin to understand why Apple took its time figuring how to implement select/copy/cut/paste. And you also begin to appreciate just how well select/copy/cut/paste work on the iPhone. Interesting too that it’s obvious how high a standard the iPhone has set.
And, on a final note, just what doors has the iPhone opened in the relationship between cell phone manufacturers and cell service carriers?
As we wrote last week, the Droid marks a notable shift for the nation’s largest carrier. Verizon — often renowned for its service, not its selection of phones — seems to be wisely minimizing its interference with handset makers.
This, to my mind, portends good things for wireless consumers.