Why I will get the Droid Bionic

I am planning to get the Droid Bionic on its release day. I currently have an Original Droid 1 (OG) and my contract expired a few months ago. I have been paitently been waiting for the release of a 4G dual core phone for Verizon.

There were rumors that the Bionic was supposed to land in June or July and I got really excited to upgrade. After it was rumored that the bionic would not be released until September I was disappointed. I wanted to upgrade and was annoyed by all the delays by Motorola. I searched for other new phones to be released and found out about the Samsung Galaxy 2, HTC Vigor, and Nexus Prime were all dual core phones and were coming out in the near future.

I was thinking of getting the Samsung Galaxy 2 but rumors are out today that it won't be available for Verizon.  The Nexus Prime is also just in rumor phase and it supposed to be realeased in October but even if it is, there is no guarantee that it will be on Verizon. And for the HTC Vigor..I haven't even seen a picture of this device.

With that being said let me also say the Bionic will be a beast of a device. I am really excited for it for a few reasons.

1) First Dual Core 4G LTE device
2) awesome battery life
3) speed

Let me know what upcoming phone(s) you are planning to get in the comments.

State Farm Pocket Agent

I recently came across this app in the market and must say I am IMPRESSED. State Farm got it right with this one. The app has a lot of handy features for every day use like the ability to contact your agent or a built in search engine to aid you in finding hotels, gas stations, tow trucks or lock smiths.

What really grabbed my attention was how EASY they make it to submit a claim after an auto accident. A built-in checklist guides you so you don't leave anything out:

Some of my Favorite Features:
- Vehicle Damage: Image of a generic vehicle is displayed, you simply tap all areas of the vehicle that is damaged.
- Pictures: Take and upload pictures of the scene.
- Describe Scene: Use a mini-note pad to record your notes OR use the built in voice recorder.

*Prior to using the app you will need to register for a State Farm account online. https://online.statefarm.com/apps/InsRegister/YourAccount.asp

~*~ Droid Diva ~*~

Converting Videos for the Droid using Ubuntu Linux

One of the first things I wanted to do once I got my Droid was to try out the display by watching high-res videos. Unfortunately, mostly all my movies are in DivX or Xvid formats and will not work without converting them. I am a Ubuntu Linux user so I knew I would be able to find some software to do it, but its not always easy finding a simple, easy to use program. After tying a few, Arista Transcoder is definitely easy and works great. I would suggest converting using the "Apple iPod" device format but try it out and see what works best for you.

If you are a Mac/Windows user try out Handbrake (its free open-source software) and check out androidforums.com for the conversion instructions.

Arista Transcoder on Ubuntu Linux

To Transfer your videos make sure to mount your SD card. Once this is complete just create a "Videos" directory and copy the files over.

Once the files are copied to the SD card you should be able to open them though the gallery.

Converted Videos on Motorola Droid

Please note that acceptable video formats are: 30fps playback, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264

Android 2.1 on the Motorola Droid

I was able to get a Nexus One Rom port for the Droid. Droidforums.net has instructions on how to do the install. Most of the links to the files you need are dead but if your interested send me an email and I can send them your way. The rom I have is really good and only has minor bugs. The only issue I have come across are that Live Wallpapers crash the phone. But turn them off and everything else works great. Here are some of the new features on Android 2.1

• 5 Home Screens with little circles on each side to show which screen you are on. Long press the dots to bring up the each of the 5 screens in a card like view.

• Updated Photo Gallery UI has new look and feel. Its very slick and the images tilt when rotate the phone left and right. The background also changes colors based on colors in the photos you are looking at.
  

• Updated App Drawer UI also has a new look and feel. The drawer has a 3D effect that make the icons appear to flip over and under the current set of icons.
  

• News/Weather Widget - Awesome widget that gets the weather based on your location. The news is separated into predefined categories or can be customized just like in Google News. The widget can also be customized to be on one widget for Weather and News or separated out into two.
  

• Speak-to-Text in all Input screens

Motorola Droid ZAGG Review

ZAGG invisibleSHIELD is an "invisible" case for many cell phones and other devices. It has a lifetime warranty and comes in two coverages:Full Body ($24.99) and Screen ($14.99). I had the verizon screen protector but didn't really like it so I decided to try out the full body ZAGG. I really like the screen coverage much better and would not recommend the full body as it protects too much (i.e battery door, sides). He are my thoughts/pictures on the ZAGG full body coverage.

• Pros:
• You put it on wet so you can slide it around until you get the correct fit
• Easy to remove any air bubbles
• Liquid dries clear
• Screen coverage is very thin and can barely tell its on
• Cons
• Slow shipping. Took about two weeks to get my order
• Hard to put on little pieces
• Full Body has too many unnecessary pieces. I'm not interested in covering every crevice of my Droid.
• The small pieces dry hard and make the Droid uncomfortable to hold
• Smudges Easily   

Swype for the Droid

You may have seen the Samsung Omnia II commercials for the new swype keyboard. Well lucky for you I have found the leaked preview application for the Droid and other high resolution android phones.

droidmuff.in has the installer and instructions for getting it installed. I've given it a try and its very cool and very fast. Just slide your finger over your keyboard and it writes the word for you, accurately too. It takes some getting used to with punctuation and such but once you go though the tutorial and practice it becomes quite intuitive. Check it out and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

 

Image from droidmuff.in

Android Multi-touch Applications

I've found three great applications that utilize the multi-touch capabilities of the Motorola Droid.  Show off to your iPhone and other android users that say the Droid doesn't support multi-touch. All we need now is map support...

• Dolphin Browser (Web Browsing)  - Great web browser with pinch-zoom support. 

• Multi-touch Gallery For Droid (Photo Viewer) - Similar photo viewer as the default galley but with pinch-zoom. There are two FREE versions in the market; One with ads, one without. I'm not sure what the deal is but I am using the ad-free version. The QR below is for the Ad version but just search Mutlitouch Gallery to get both. 

• Pong Multi-touch (Game) - 2 player pong for Android. Both users control their paddles simultaneously.

Droid Factory Reset

Something go wrong with your droid? Follow these simple steps to wipe your phone and get it back as new. 

1. Backup your apps using Astro file manager -> menu -> tools -> Application Manager/Backup. Everything else is stored either with your google account or on your memory card. 
• You will loose your IM's and home screen icons/widgets. There probably is a way to back them up but I have not looked how to do this. 
2. Power off the phone 
3. Turn on your phone while holding down "X" on the physical keyboard
4. Once you see a Triangle with an "!" inside, press up volume buttons and camera button simultaneously to bring up recovery menu
5. Use the hardware keyboard D-pad and select "wipe data/factory reset" and select "Yes"
6. Takes about a minuite to complete. Once finished the last command in yellow will say "Data wipe complete" and reboot system now will be highlighted. Select to reboot
7. You may get a prompt about activating your phone, just select 1 to program your phone and let it complete. 
8. Once complete skip though wizard
9. Login to your google account to retrieve emails, contacts, etc.
10. Reinstall Astro and restore all your apps 

Droid Battery Cover Fix

If you have issues with your droid battery door coming off watch this video from Legacystar9. Try it at your own risk.

Android 2.1 on Moto Droid

Sholes.info has a blog entry about porting Android 2.1 to the Droid. Although they say its not recommended, they say it can be done at your own risk. Some of their photos are below. The GUI looks much cleaner and I can't wait for the official release.

    Weather/Top Stories    Applications        Home Screen         Photo Gallery  

Images courtesy of http://www.sholes.info/

Droid Battery Life Tips and Tricks

Lets be honest, the droid is an awesome phone, but the battery life is not it's best feature. I think it does fairly well considering the computing power and mutli-tasking capabilities. Because of the less then stellar battery performance some people are saying smartphone users need to rethink how we use our phones by charging more often and "making compromises" like running less powerful apps. With this being said there are other ways to conserve battery life and reduce time between charges. Here are a few tips I suggest to help keep your Droid charged longer.

• Add the Power Control Widget to your Home screen. You can do this by long pressing your home screen, select Widgets, and choose Power Control. From here you have the ability to turn on/off Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Auto-sync, and screen brightness.

Power Control Widget on Android 2.0.1

• Turn down brightness when indoors or you don't need the screen blinding you. This is one of the most efficient ways to conserve battery.  
• Turn off  Auto-sync when you don't need realtime email updates. You can always go into the email/gmail applications and pull down your email. I typically turn off auto-sync when I'm at work when   and sitting in front of my computer. You can also turn this off by going to Settings->Accounts & sync
• Obviously turn off GPS/Bluetooth/and Wifi when you do not need to use these features. 
• Add the Battery Use shortcut to your home screen. This allows you to see what is eating up your battery; be it the screen, music player, browser, etc. You can add the shortcut by long pressing the Home screen and selecting Shortcuts -> Settings -> Battery use. You can also get to this screen from  Settings -> About phone -> Battery Use

Battery use screen on Android 2.0.1

• Download a free Task Killer application such as TasKiller. This app will allow you to force close any application you do not want running. This is especially useful when you first power on your phone and the Android OS starts a bunch of non-needed applications. 
• Put your phone in Airplane mode if you do not have good reception. It takes a lot of battery power to keep switching between no-service/service. You can do this by going to Settings -> Wireless network settings and checking Airplane mode (or as matt said in the comments, hold the power button as a shortcut to airplane mode)
• If you have a wifi network available use that over 3G. Wifi uses considerably less battery then 3G.

Best Apps for the Motorola Droid

Here is my list of must have apps for the Droid on Android 2.0. (updated 1/19/09). Newest additions are added first. Check back for more apps.

• Android Agenda Widget -  A very good calendar widget replacement. Allows you to customize the size (my favorite feature), colors, update interval, multiple calendars, and more.
  

• SportsTap - follow your favorite sports teams with this app. Add the widget to your home screen to have the app notify you of live scores. It also will find all local sports teams within your current location.

Sports Tap Widget

• Google Goggles - Scan a picture of a book, CD, landmark, almost anything using your camera and have it searched in google.
• Bloo - Great native facebook app replacement.  Better user interface and more features inducing Facebook calendar sync, inbox, view and tag pictures, posting pictures/video/links, and more.

Bloo Facebook App

• Twidroid / Seesmic - As of now Twidroid is the best twitter client for android. Very lightweight, fast, easy to use twitter client. I have used both the free and the Pro (~$5.00) versions. I would recommend using the free version unless you really have a need for advanced features. You can check out the differences between the versions on the features page. Seesmic is a brand new twitter client for Android, although they do offer their software on other platforms (PC, web, Blackberry). The app has a beautiful user interface but is a bit slow and buggy as it often force closes. I hope updates come out soon because it would be a great alternative to twidroid. Also view my other post comparing Twidroid, Swift, and Seesmic. 

Twidroid vs Seesmic Twitter Clients

Motorola Droid Review

Its been a while since I've posted but I have been busy playing with my Motorola Droid! Overall its a great phone and a HUGE improvement over my Blackberry Pearl. I think it can take on the iPhone feature for feature. Note that I don't own an iPhone but I have an iPod Touch (3rd Gen) and been using it for about 3 months. I also have owned my blackberry for about two years.

Things that I love about this phone:

• Screen - Its really sharp and pictures/videos look great. Even the web looks very clear; better than an iPhone/iPod touch. 
• Widgets -  I love the ability to add widgets for my calendar, music player, power management and more. Lots of apps also allow to add additional widgets.