I've been thinking about getting a droid, and I was wondering if anyone has one and has an opinion, or has heard anything about them. the reviews I'm seeing online seem to put it on par with the iPhone, and I've also heard something about open source apps. Any info you can provide would be nice. Thanks in Advance

I don't have a droid but I have owned two android phones so far and i'm very pleased with them.

It's not so much about open source apps(developers do have a choice if they want to give out the source or not). It's more that the android OS itself is open-source.

Check out http://www.androidforums.com/ for more information about android.

There are also phone specific forums in there, i'm not sure wheter you are talking about the motorola droid or the HTC droid Eris. But there are forums for both in there.

If you would like to look at apps for android there is a great mirror of the android market on http://www.androlib.com

If you do get an androidphone you can just download a barcode scanner, go to androlib. Search for an application, scan the barcode directly from the screen and you will be redirected to that application on your phone.

The android market is constantly growing, from just week 49 to week 50. 723 new applications and 111 new games were released. That's 834 new app/games in just the past week.


Well head over to androidforums.com and see if the droid(and the android OS) is something for you.

When it comes to Android based phones I'm personally keeping an eye on the Xperia X10 from Sony Ericsson.

Hoping it'll be on contract in the UK at launch, mostly because my contract is up in a couple of months (if not less) so might be worth the upgrade.

I have the Droid. I like it a lot. The GPS has been a freaking lifesaver because I just moved to a new city. The call quality is pretty good, and I haven't had any problems with dropped calls. Before the 2.0.1 release, the camera really sucked, but it seems they have fixed it. Typing on the screen is okay, I personally like the keyboard better, it's definitely nice to have the option. Most of the time you can find a free version of any pay-app in the store.

What I don't get are the claims that "Android will never be able to do sexy like the iPhone OS." Uhm, A) didn't realize I was supposed to be gaining sexual stimulation from my phone, and B) this interface is pretty damn clean, and not significantly different from the iPhone.

Battery life is good for a day of heavy use (music at work, GPS on the drive home to get to a new restaurant or bar or something) if I turn off the GPS, WiFi, and auto-web-notifications while I'm at work (I have gmail open on my workstation anyway, ans SMS comes direct to the phone). Charges relatively quickly. I don't know what type of battery it has in it, but the manual said to charge it any time I had a chance, instead of only when it was depleted, so maybe it doesn't have memory issues?

I'll be getting into programming on it as soon as I get out of the holiday season here.

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight
What I don't get are the claims that "Android will never be able to do sexy like the iPhone OS." Uhm, A) didn't realize I was supposed to be gaining sexual stimulation from my phone, and B) this interface is pretty damn clean, and not significantly different from the iPhone.

huh.. I'd never heard that claim before, and frankly I think the UI for the SE phone I linked above is awesome while also being pretty different from the iPhone (based on my experiance with my iTouch)

Up until this point my last few phones have been WinMo phones, but with the change in touch screen tech WinMo hasn't really caught up and while HTC have done a fine job and I've been really happy with their phones I'm thinking I'd like something where the whole thing is consistant across the UI thanks.

About the only thing which makes me said about Android is the Java side of things; but then I haven't coded a great deal for my phone anyway so I can probably live with that and its not like I don't know the language if I really need to code something...

Quote: Original post by phantom
About the only thing which makes me said about Android is the Java side of things; but then I haven't coded a great deal for my phone anyway so I can probably live with that and its not like I don't know the language if I really need to code something...

It's Java without being Java™. The language is Java, but the class library is something completely different. The system is a bit wonky, especially coming from doing .NET Compact Framework, which is practically identical to regular WinForms apps on the desktop (in fact, if you do it right, one assembly can run on both. I have a Conway's Game of Life around somewhere that does it).

You are not only restricted to Java, you can use the Android NDK for development in C/C++ as well. The runtime is still using the VM but you can have the majority of the app done in C/C++ if you have existing code or would like to use native code.

Quote: Original post by Saruman
You are not only restricted to Java, you can use the Android NDK for development in C/C++ as well. The runtime is still using the VM but you can have the majority of the app done in C/C++ if you have existing code or would like to use native code.

I'm pretty sure that's really only intended for doing critical portions of an app. You can't make a stand alone assembly that way, you are basically writing a DLL.

Well, the main issue is I don't like Java as a language really [grin]

I did discover what Saruman said a while after posting the above when I happened to wander over the Android website.

About the only thing which is bothering me now is trying to find any information on the 'snapdragon' platform beyond marketing speak; mostly I'd like to confirm or deny the existance of GL|ES 2.0 support *grumbles*

Quote: Original post by phantom
Well, the main issue is I don't like Java as a language really [grin]

I did discover what Saruman said a while after posting the above when I happened to wander over the Android website.

About the only thing which is bothering me now is trying to find any information on the 'snapdragon' platform beyond marketing speak; mostly I'd like to confirm or deny the existance of GL|ES 2.0 support *grumbles*

Did you see this page? It's GL|ES 1.0 for what ships with Android, with incomplete support for 1.1. Vendors are supposedly free to ship their own drivers if they want.