5 days with Droid X

Initial Thoughts:
On Monday morning I rushed into work so I could get my hands on Verizon’s finest piece of hardware, the Droid X. The phone feels somewhat massive, yet it’s comfortable. It doesn’t feel nearly as heavy as you would think. I plugged it in to charge it up before activating, and then I started up Astro on my Droid to backup some of my software. After giving my phone enough opportunity to charge, I pulled my SD card from my Droid and inserted it into my Droid X. I booted up this beast, then activated.

The first thing I noticed was an abundance of applications installed that I would never have installed myself. I think my favorite things about the ROMs on my Droid was that they were void of any unneeded software. This is a common complaint with the Droid X, so I won’t go in-depth with it. I did notice an initially welcome addition to the software lineup, a program that listed the city and state when a call was coming in. This seemed very nice, until I found out that it was a trial. The first time it nagged me I went to uninstall it, and I found out that I couldn’t.

I used the MOTOBLUR additions the first day, then decided to add in my normal applications. First I installed QuickDesk, then SlideScreen. When I clicked home, it asked which home application to make my default. It listed both QuickDesk and SlideScreen, but it did not list the default home app that comes with the phone. After toying with it a bit, I found out that if you have a second launcher installed, it’s default upon install. I could find no way to have a second launcher and still use the boxed one as primary. Weird.

I setup QuickDesk as the default of the two that I installed, and then setup SlideScreen as the default in QuickDesk. On my first double tap of the home, I found out that QuickDesk did not come up like intended. Instead, it opened up the voice commands menu. After digging around, I found out that double home tap can be set to a few different options, but QuickDesk isn’t one of them. Very disappointing.

Another convenience feature of my old Droid was the long press of the search button. I had mine set to the Quick Settings plugin, so I could alter my settings at any point with ease. However, with this phone, I’m not given the option of what I want to do with my own buttons. Instead, long press of search brings up the voice search software.

I ran SlideScreen for a day, but then uninstalled it again. I just couldn’t decide what I liked on this phone. First, I love SlideScreen because it puts ALL my information on one screen for me. But the social networking in the MOTOBLUR setup was very nice. I wish the widgets were skinable (as they’re somewhat ugly) and I wish it was a bit more of a stream (showing more than one person’s update on the widget). When you see a status, just tap on the widget to open up the social networking program. Once there, you can retweet (if in twitter) or like or comment (if in Facebook) on the status, and swipe away that status and goto the next one. It’s a convenient software because it handles multiple social networks, it only shows you the new statuses (like a ‘social inbox’), and it’s full featured enough to look at pictures and interact with your friends and followers.

The Droid X comes with a battery manager, which is turned onto the medium setting by default. If you find your phone sleeping for 30 minutes, the phone with automatically turn the data off to conserve power. The good of this is if you’re not a heavy data user, without a need to be constantly connected, you’re all set. The truth is most of us Android users like the data, and like to stay connected. I chose performance so that it wouldn’t turn the data off whatsoever, and installed JuiceDefender. JuiceDefender helps people like me stay connected to the outside world while keeping the data off for large periods of time. I did review it previously, so I won’t go into it right now.

I use the alarm on my phone to wake up in the morning. The very first morning using this phone I noticed how nice and polished the alarm application is compared to stock Android. Stock Android has two buttons, one to dismiss, one to snooze. This application has a big red area to tap to snooze. However, if you wish to dismiss, it requires using a slider. Much nicer considering I’ve accidentally dismissed the alarm in the morning.

The phone also comes with a media sharing manager that will help you share data between your phone and a PC or a TV. I’ve not really used it, but seemed like a very nice addition. The phone has some custom icons and graphics, with sometimes make it a nice addition, and sometimes feel very alien.

Pros:

Massive screen
Fast processor and lots of RAM
Battery manager installed by default
Great alarm clock
Media share wizard
Swype keyboard

Cons:

Preinstalled software that cannot be removed
Unable to assign ‘double home tap’ or ‘long press search’ to custom applications
Not stellar battery life
No ability to load ROMs, and that ability might not come for a while

Final Thoughts:
I definitely recommend the phone. However, with those not used to the MOTOBLUR experience, you might have to tinker a bit to make yourself comfortable. The phone is plenty fast. The battery has a shorter life than I’d like, but what Android handset doesn’t? I had my Motorola Droid overclocked to 1.1 GHz with Froyo, and the Droid X still outperforms. I’m guessing it’s because of the additional RAM. I do highly recommend this phone, and as much as I loved the freedom to load ROMs onto my Droid, I’m very happy where I am.

Also, they just achieved root, and if you’re daring enough you can get rid of the crapware that comes with the phone.

Final Rating: