First impressions of Gingerbread for the Droid X

So I posted this review on the Motorola support forums (here), but apparently even though I didn't give out any details about where to get the leak Motorola still felt that me talking about Gingerbread (even if it was mostly positive) was unacceptable and they locked down my post and removed the review. Fortunately, I saved a copy, and I'm reposting it here. Also, since this is my site now and not theirs, I have no qualms about linking to the leak pages:

Get your Gingerbread goodness over at My Droid World! Huge thanks to P3Droid and the crew for pulling this together for us!

I've spent the last half hour or so browsing through my newly Gingerbread-ed X, and I wanted to let the community here know my initial impressions. It's still early, so I probably won't cover everything but I'll update this thread as I find new things. For the sake of reference I was using Liberty 1.5 just before I updated, so I'm going from Blurless to full on Blur. (Quite the switch!)

Why I love my Android, but bought my wife an iPhone anyway

Yes, I'm one of those crazy blokes that was up at 3AM (well, 1AM in my timezone) to pre-order an iPhone as soon as it came out on Verizon. But not for me, for my wife. Her old feature phone was dying and she had made certain wistful comments about how nice a smartphone would be, so when given the chance I jumped at it. It arrived yesterday, and so far she seems to be in love. Yay!

There was a funny moment when I gave it to her though, one that caught me off guard. After an initial moment of shock and excitement (it was a surprise) she turned to me and said: "But wait, why didn't you get one for you?"

I laughed in her face.

It was a totally involuntary reaction, and I felt bad for it, but in all honesty the idea of getting an iPhone for myself seemed a little absurd. I absolutely love my Droid X, and wouldn't trade it for anything Apple has to offer. At the same time, I would never buy my wife an Android phone (or at the very least not any of the ones Verizon offers at this point). I feel it's worth examining the reasons why:

• I don't want to give my wife a phone crammed with bloatware. I don't want to try and explain why that stupid Verizon bookmark will never go away, or why VZ Navigator is stuck there, even though she'll never use it.
• I don't want to ever be concerned about wether or not she's going to get the latest software and OS updates. I don't want to tell her that the cool new feature that they just announced may not be coming to her phone at all because the manufacturer is too lazy to update it.
• I don't want her to deal with a buggy, bloated skin. I don't want to have to explain why my phone looks and acts different than her phone which looks and acts different than her parents phone, even though they're all on the same OS.
• I don't want to EVER tell her that she needs to pull her battery to get her phone to respond again. I've needed to do that weekly in the past with my Droid X (before I started using custom ROMS).
• I don't want her to worry about wether or not an app in the store will actually work on her phone. I don't want her to pay for something only to have it crash and burn when she tries to run it, because it was developed on Phone X and she has Phone Y.
• Basically: I don't want to give her a phone that needs maintenance, by me or anyone else. It's a freaking PHONE! If she has to keep running to her geeky husband just to keep it running, it has failed in the most fundamental way possible.

Say what you want about walled gardens and draconian policy, you have to admit that Apple puts the rest of the mobile world to shame when it comes to making a smartphone that just plain works. There's a lot to be said for that, and I honestly believe that that is the core reason why they still sell like mad.

Of course, on the flipside there's MY phone, which comes with an entirely different set of qualifications:

• I don't want to ask permission (much less pay) for the "privilege" of running a program that I built on my phone.
• I don't want to be told that I can't run something just because I didn't get it through their "official channels." If I find a cool project online, who are you to tell me I can or can't try it?
• I don't want to ship my phone off for a week because my battery died.
• I don't want to pay through the nose just to get more storage.
• I don't want to have to use some proprietary cable when I have several perfectly good micro USB cables lying around.
• I don't want to be forced to use a particular music, email, browser, or messaging app just because the phone maker doesn't like competition.
• I don't want to lose my widgets! Holy crap, how do you people live without them?
• Basically: I view my phone as a small computer, and I want to treat it as such! I don't mind a bit of tweaking and fiddling in order to have more control over my device.

Of course, these two viewpoints (Absolute stability vs. absolute control) are somewhat opposing ideals, but it is certainly nice that there's enough choices out there to satisfy both parties. Granted, I think both sides could certainly be improved by trying to meet somewhere in the middle: There's no good reason why Apple can't free up their platform a little more, and there's no excuse for me ever needing to pop my battery because my OS locked up! Until we hit that point, though, it's a bit sad to say that the iPhone really is the only sane option for users that want a reliable device without dealing with a lot of crap from the carrier and manufacturer.

Android still has a long way to go in that regard.

A few other random notes before I go, after observing my wife with her phone:

• No matter how much I try to delude myself into believing that my phone has a snappy UI, that illusion disappears the moment I interact with any iOS device. It's so much more responsive that it makes me want to cry. This is important, Google! Fix it!!!
• It's unfortunate that many of the Android apps out there are mere shadows of their iOS counterparts. (Pandora comes to mind immediately.) Many Android apps look like amateur knockoffs in comparison, even when developed by the same company! And that's not even considering the multitude of apps that have no Android equivalent! (Netflix! I'm looking at you!)
• It's completely baffling that Apple would do something as clumsy as sticking an actual temperature (73 deg) on the weather app icon and not make it update! The first big question my wife had about the phone was "Why isn't the temperature right?" It took me several minutes of googling to discover that the value shown is static. Same goes for the clock. Seriously?!?
• I didn't realize how much difference two features really make in how I use my phone: The notification bar, and the app drawer. The fact that I can get notifications about anything on my phone in a spot that I can easily see (AND easily ignore) from pretty much anywhere is something I totally took for granted. Likewise, the ability to keep infrequently used apps hidden away in the app drawer while reserving my homescreens for the things I use all the time is absolutely invaluable.

Setting up an OpenGL ES 2.0 dev environment for Android (The horror!)

It is a well known phenomenon that if you give a software developer (a REAL developer) any device which contains a CPU (and even a great many that don't) you will also install in them a great and uncontrollable urge to put their own programs on the damn thing. This urge cannot be satisfied by any old "Hello World" app either, oh no. It has to be something significant. Something that uses the device in a non-trivial way. Something that makes your peers say "Woah!" (The "Woah" factor is incredibly important, ask anyone.)


As such, being a developer and recently coming to posses a shiny new smartphone I've been dying to do some code for it for a while now. Finishing up some of my WebGL stuff and keeping up with my normal work (you know, the one that actually pays me) has prevented me from acting on it so far, and I still may not get a chance to code for it for a little while, but I finally had enough time lately to sit down and actually set up the SDK and play with some of the examples.

Communication across language barriers

Had a neat experience while out walking my dog today. We came across a very kindly and very lost elderly Hispanic gentleman that flagged us down to ask for help. Since the first thing out of his mouth was "I no speak-a English very good." I was concerned that I would be fairly useless with whatever problem he was having. (Two years of Jr. High Spanish and all I can say fluently is "I don't speak Spanish".) Luckily, however, he was able to point to an address scrawled on a bus schedule and indicate that he was trying to reach that location. I knew where the address was, and fortunately he wasn't more than a couple of blocks off, but I was somewhat at a loss for how to communicate directions to him outside of vague hand gestures.

Then, in a moment of fleeting intelligence, I recalled the trusty little Android phone in my pocket that I had been listening to music on. Pulling it out, in under a minute I was able to call up Google Maps, punch in the address, have it map out the directions, and show this gentleman the results. Even though the map was in English a big blue line guiding you from where you are now to where you want to be is pretty universal. After studying the map for a moment a look of understanding and relief swept over him. He thanked me several times, a sentiment that I had no problem understanding, and headed off to his destination no longer lost and much happier for it.

For my part I was left with a mix of the warm fuzzies you get from helping another human being and wonder that we live in a day and age where I can hold in my pocket a tool that can completely transcend language and cultural differences and allow me to help someone in need. I don't care who you are, that's just cool!

As a programmer it's very easy for me (and, I think, others of my profession) to loose sight of why we surround ourselves with all this technology. We can easily fall into the trap of pursuing technology for the sake of technology. (I'm certainly guilty of that.) It's worth reminding ourselves once in a while that all of these spectacular devices and innovations are really there to serve one singular purpose: To make our lives better in some little way. Whether it does that by making some task a little easier, bringing us the information we need, making us safer, or just providing a few moments of entertainment, it's all in the name of improving our day to day existence. If we keep that in mind, magical things can happen.

Droid X Android 2.2 (FroYo) Micro-review

So anyone patiently waiting for Motorola to release Android 2.2 for the Droid X has probably heard by now that an official build of it was leaked and can be installed on any X, rooter or otherwise. I was personally quite excited by this news, since I had been looking forward to the new release to see if it addressed some of the software shortcomings that I had found in the phone. As such, it took me all of about half an hour after I found out about the leak before I was running 2.2! (Disclamer.... voided warranty... not supported... blah blah blah...)

Now, before I continue I should note that there is a chance that this is not the final update that will be released OTA. That said, I doubt that Motorola is planning on making any major changes if they still intend to hit an early September release.

If you want to skip my earlier review essentially I think that the X is a beautiful piece of hardware that is badly hampered by Motorola's terrible software. (MotoBlur, uninstallable services, etc.) So as much as I doubted it I kept a little spark of hope alive deep down in my heart that Motorola would hear the impassioned cries of their faithful userbase and use the 2.2 update as an opportunity to strip away the bloatware that we all hate so much (or at least give power users a way to do so).

Droid X: First Week Impressions

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog lately, but not for lack of activity on my part! I've been working on a fairly involved WebGL demo that I'm hoping to post soon (I'd like to get it out by Aug. 12...) that I feel is pretty dang awesome. Hopefully the rest of the interwebs will feel the same. :)

For the moment, though, I want to talk about something non-WebGL. I bought a new phone last week after my EnV Touch started randomly powering off... again. (For the record in the last two years I have cycled through 6 EnV phones: 3 EnV 2s and 3 EnV Touches. ALL of them had power issues within about 4 months or so of receiving a replacement phone. Don't get phones from the EnV line. Ever.) This time I decided to make the jump to smartphone land, and since Apple has yet to dump AT&T (and since I like to, you know, HOLD my phone) I went with the Android powered Droid X. I will admit that it was a close race between that and the HTC Incredible, though. Better battery life on the X won me over in the end.

Well, I've had it for about a week now and thought I would do a brain dump of my initial impressions of the device. Please keep in mind that this is the first Android device that I've owned or even used extensively, and as such I'm not 100% certain of where the line is between stock Android and the Droid X's software.