droidStory

I checked out Motorola’s latest Android phone, the Motorola Devour, yesterday. I was really excited when I first heard about this phone, hoping for a great entry-level Android device with a physical keyboard, but my hands-on experience, albeit short, wasn’t great.

My first impression: This phone is a tank! Depending on what’s important to you this may not be a bad thing. The Devour feels rock solid, big and heavy. The keyboard slider mechanism works great and the aluminum casing should protect it from many physical abuses. Still, the headphone jack is in a strange location and the overall aluminum body gives it somewhat of a retro look.

Did I already mention this phone is big and heavy?!

Considering the overall size of the phone its 3.1-inch screen feels puny. Touch screen accuracy is good, but unfortunately the screen would not switch to landscape when turned on its side until you opened the slider keyboard. The phone does have a 3-axis accelerometer, so perhaps there is a setting somewhere to make the screen layout switch automatically. The keyboard does feel better than the Droid’s. The keys are spaced out & responsive and the little touch pad works great.

The phone that I played with had Android 2.0 installed, even though it was previously said to ship with Android 1.6. It also comes with MOTOBLUR, targeting people that don’t want to deal with all the individual apps for Email, SMS, Twitter, Facebook , etc. MOTOBLUR uses a simplified concept  of two main information categories called Messages and Happenings that are displayed as widgets on your home screen. Messages are in essence the traditional one-to-one communications, like email and sms. Happenings are all your social feeds from twitter, facebook and the like. People that are heavy into Twitter and Facebook may like the always-on social feed on the home screen. I found the update bubbles to be cluttering the screen, forcing me to use the menu for any other functions.

The 3.1MP camera on the Devour is probably the biggest disappointment. I took a couple of test pictures that looked blurry and dim. No flash and fixed focus make this camera pretty useless.

My overall conclusion: With the many promotions Verizon is offering, the price difference between the Devour and Droid is almost negligible. The Droid is a far superior phone in almost every aspect – the keyboard perhaps being the only exception.

Skip the Devour and get a Droid instead!

With all the noise about the Google Phone aka Nexus One, a recent Motorola FCC filing hasn’t gotten much attention. The device with the codename “Titanium” is a “bar” style cell phone and could be Verizon bound based on its CDMA EV-DO capabilities. It’s probably a safe bet that this is going to be another Android device, since  Motorola abandoned the WinMo platform. Could this be round two in Verizon’s successful Droid campaign?

What get’s me excited is that this phone supports both CDMA and GSM networks. One of my biggest pet-peeves with the current Droid is that it doesn’t work outside of the US.  Now ditch the slider-keyboard and this will be the perfect Droid.

It took more than a little effort, but I finally got the Motorola Droid to work with Lotus Traveler in order to access my corporate Lotus Notes/Domino email.  It required the use of an application named Touchdown and the careful adjustment of settings.

First, some background.  IBM Lotus released Lotus Traveler for mobile email use.  The product now supports Microsoft ActiveSync and, as announced, works with Windows Mobile devices, the Apple iPhone and a Nokia Symbian device.  That leaves many Android users out in the cold — especially those who migrated to the Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid.  (Ed Brill wrote in his blog that Android support for Traveler is coming.)

The Droid has a built-in free email application that works with ActiveSync.  So, with hope, I attempted to set things up.

• I learned the hard way that you must not confuse the Domino Domain with a Windows Domain and set-up your user name in the following manner for Domino to see you:

First_Name  Last_Name/Domino Domain

• Use your Notes password
• Leave the (Windows) domain field blank
• Use your traveler URL for the server URL.

Everything logs in and authenticates just fine.  But, the Droid built-in mail insists that it knows better and adds a backslash character in front of your name to signify no domain.  It shows up as:

\First_Name  Last_Name/Domino Domain

Clearly, this does not work.  I tried to create an alias this way.  But, no luck.

Now, on to 3rd party applications.

My second choice was RoadSync from DataViz, the folks that make DesktopToGo.  I already use DesktopToGo, so I have some trust for them.  The application also looks well integrated with the Droid.  It also states in the documentation that it supports HTML mail, attachments and appointments.  All of these are important.

Unfortunately, I kept getting a 404 error.  The documentation for RoadSync does have some limited suggestions, which did not work.  DataViz phone support is also available only from 9AM to 3PM.  So, I missed the window to call.

Courtesy of AppNoodle

Finally, I moved to Touchdown from NitroDesk.  I must give credit to Goutham Sukumar, the founder of NitroDesk.  He provided significant personal support.  We had several false starts and setting adjustments.  But, he worked with us every day — several times a day — to get things right.  Now, the product appears to be working well.

Touchdown does quickly sync and show the messages, appointments, tasks and contacts.  So, it is useful.   However, it does not work with HTML messages nor with appointments.  These are severe limitations that create concern every time I use the application.  It is much better than nothing.

The interface does not look like the rest of the Droid.  Note the Windows style icons and page formatting.  The new mail icon in the status bar is also very large — which creates problems for other icons looking for a place to live.

Frankly, I will consider a switch when one of the other solutions works properly.  In the meantime, I am jumping up and down with glee over Touchdown support.

I am thrilled to report that the Motorola Droid phone now works with IBM Lotus Domino via ActiveSync and Traveler, with a little help from Touchdown from NitroDesk.