During our travels I had the pleasure and opportunity to pack up a brand new Motorola Droid 2 (did you know they have to license the “Droid” name from Lucasfilm (another favorite!)) from Verizon and try it out. After suggestions from The Queen of Free to try it out, they put me in touch with the right people and I got the phone just a couple of days before we left Indianapolis.
My main reason for wanting to try the phone was because my previous experiences with Wi-Fi access at Walt Disney World have been less than “magical.” Since we were going to be away for so long and I would need to do quite a bit of online updates and social media interaction, I really needed a phone that I could hopefully use as a wi-fi hotspot and the Motorola Droid 2 and the Verizon . The network did not disappoint.
Almost every night when we arrived at our hotel for the night, I would plug the Droid into the charger, turn on the wi-fi hotspot and immediately be online checking email and updating my various profiles and social media posts. . I’m still amazed at how many hotels don’t offer free Wi-Fi to guests in their room, and I’d say that over the course of our vacation, this little Droid saved me over $100 in extra internet charges.
Perhaps the most convenient and incredible use of the phone was on our trip from Tampa to Pensacola. We weren’t quite sure if we wanted to keep driving for the whole trip, so I didn’t confirm a hotel reservation before we left. Our progress went well and we decided to call it a night in Pensacola. I placed the phone on the dashboard of the car and proceeded to fire up my laptop to book a hotel room for the night on Priceline. It worked great!
The only real problem I had using it as a wi-fi hotspot was trying to do a major FTP transfer or uploading large files. That seemed to last forever. For example, trying to upload some videos from my Flip camcorder to YouTube was a “get started and go to bed and be done in the morning” process. But actually, that wasn’t too unexpected.
Although the original need was to have a wireless hotspot (which the rest of my family could also use, since up to 5 devices can be connected at once) available to me, I really fell in love with the phone over the course of our trip. .
First of all, I love the feel of the phone in the hand. It had weight! It didn’t feel like a toy. The smooth, polished stainless steel? the case was great. With a ZAGG invisibleSHIELD screen protector, I wouldn’t even worry about putting another case around it (wouldn’t I?!?). You are running the latest version of the Android operating system, Froyo 2.2. Finally! The ability to install applications on your SD card! And, because it’s Adobe Flash enabled, it can do much more than many other phones on the market.
Verizon’s Motorola Droid2 handled all of my favorite apps (next post coming soon!) without batting an eye: Pandora, Foursquare, Hootsuite, Gowalla, and more. Take fantastic photos and videos. Battery life was pretty much the full day and that was with continuous use of GPS and wi-fi and use of the 3G network. Since the phone didn’t have my cell number on it, I didn’t use it much for phone calls, but when I did, the call quality was excellent. It also seems that the phone’s microphone handles ambient noise better, including wind!
Here is the only drawback of all this ordeal. It’s time to turn the phone back on! Wouldn’t you know? My personal phone (Samsung Moment on Sprint) is starting to feel really slow and acting weird. I am now debating whether or not to leave Sprint and switch to Verizon. The phone alone would be worth it.