Wait, which one was the droid I was looking for?

January 19, 2011 12:51 PM

Smartphone newb seeks new Verizon phone. Likes: high-quality cameras. Dislikes: iPhones, spending money.

I have a dumbphone. I have always had dumbhones. I'm cheap like that. However, events have conspired to make me reconsider this choice.

First, Verizon (my carrier of choice and the only one that works in my hometown) is increasingly requiring data packages even for dumbphones (any phone with a keyboard, according to them, is "smart" enough to need a data plan). I will never go back to a dumbphone without a qwerty, and I've long been pondering making the smartphone jump after my current phone goes to the great upgrade in the sky.

Second, my ancient (3MP, Kodak, circa 2004) digital camera just bit the dust.

It occurs to me now that if a) I'm going to be shelling out for some sort of data package anyway and b) these newfangled smartphones, I hear they take pictures, then c) hey, maybe I'm better off doing the smartphone jump now and having a camera and phone rolled into one rather than spending a hundred or two on a new camera and then again on a phone later on. My research seems to say that right now, the HTC Incredible is "the best" (for some definition of "best") Verizon android phone, but I don't know what's coming down the pipeline to challenge the best, and there's just so much information out there on so many phones in general that I need an organic processor, namely you guys, to help me sift.

So, let's run with this. AskMe, help me find a smartphone that fits my requirements:

Must:
1. Run on Verizon. Switching is not in the cards right now, and frankly I prefer Verizon's service.
2. Have a camera that can rival a standalone camera. Not a fancy one that a camera geek would spend hundreds of dollars on or anything, but a decent enough one that I will be able to zoom and that my photos, even in low light, won't come out too grainy. Decent enough to be The Official Camera of someone who's not a photo geek, basically.

Bonus points:
3. I think I prefer Android phones, just for the ideology. Definitely no on the iPhone. If there's a blackberry that doesn't have that horrific squeezed-narrow keyboard that they all seem to have, I'm open to hearing about that. I'm also open to hearing about the new Windows phones, which I don't know much about.
4. Decent battery life. I'm willing to charge every night and during hard-use days, but regularly running out of battery before I get home from work is going to be a problem. Yes, I realize this is largely dependent on background apps. Try to generalize for me.
5. Touch screen. Yum, modern technology!

Considerations:
1. I use social networks, but not obsessively. I don't need my phone pushing an update to me every time someone tweets, but a Facebook-accessing app, for example, would be useful. Someone mentioned to me that I should avoid MotoBlur if I don't want a constant bombardment.
2. I'm curious about but not dedicated to the notion of rooting. If the phone comes with a reasonably un-terrible interface, I probably wouldn't bother rooting it. If the phone has a proprietary interface of fail, though, let's give some extra weight to the ability to root.
3. I'm trying to do a mental balancing act between "oh god the MONEY" and "well shit, if I'm making the leap to a smartphone-as-multitasker, I might as well get the best one." In a perfect world, I'd spend less than $100 (after New Every 2 discount) for this phone-of-all-work. In the real world, I expect it'll be closer to $200, and if it's the most awesome phone that ever awesomed, I might be able to talk myself into going up toward $300.

Give me ideas. Give me suggestions. Ask me questions about specifications I forgot to mention. Just for the love of Cthulhu, help me pick a phone!

posted by badgermushroomSNAKE to technology (20 answers total)

Android is great, and right now, my favorite phones from Verizon are the Droid Incredible or the Motorola Droid X (depending on your size preference, mostly.) That having been said, 4G phones will start coming out as early as February... In general, $200 with New Every Two is certainly possible, and it might well be possible to go lower still.
posted by JMOZ at 1:00 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Seconding the Incredible. I'll think you'll be pleased and will match your needs.
posted by kuanes at 1:06 PM on January 19, 2011

New Every Two is dead...
posted by SweetJesus at 1:13 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

JMOZ: 4G phones will start coming out as early as February

When the 4G phones come out, how likely are they to still be within the $100-$200 range, considering they'll be new, shiny, and exciting?

Is anyone able to make a guess whether the Incredible will hold up against the new competition or if I'd just hate myself if I bought an Incredible in January only to see phones with new, better everything come out in February?
posted by badgermushroomSNAKE at 1:14 PM on January 19, 2011

I don't really like the Android interface. If I had to do it over again, I'd have gotten the Palm Pre or Pixi instead - WebOS is a really slick system, with lots of small details done right. Very user friendly.
posted by Slap*Happy at 1:14 PM on January 19, 2011

I have a Droid Incredible.

One of the nice things about Android is that you can do a lot of customization without rooting. I use Slidescreen as my "Home" screen, and a custom keyboard that somebody backported from a beta version of the Android OS. Neither of these require rooting to install.

Social networking integration is very good. Slidescreen makes it even better. HTC Sense's ability to collate and combine all of your contacts is wicked cool, and kind of creepy. (If somebody calls me that I don't have in my phonebook, but is facebook friends with me and lists their number, their Facebook photo will automatically pop up along with the call)

Also, Android's GPS capabilities are pretty great. The Navigation app produces better directions than any physical GPS I've seen. Google just updated it so that it can tolerate the loss of a cell signal for large swaths of your trip.

I'm not a fan of the Evo, and similar bigscreen phones. "Is that a smartphone in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me" comes to mind often. They're cool to use, and less cool to carry.

I haven't been thrilled with the Incredible's battery life. I recently swapped kernels, and installed JuiceDefender (which may or may not be a placebo depending on who you ask), and things seem to have returned to tolerable levels.

I haven't come across any music player that's as slick as the iPod app on the iPhone. Caveat emptor. Also, the iPhone touchscreen seems MUCH more accurate than any I've used on an Android phone.

As a bonus, you can get one almost for free, although the data plan is really the truly expensive part.
posted by schmod at 1:19 PM on January 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

SweetJesus: New Every Two is dead...

I read that article yesterday and frankly couldn't make heads or tails of what it was trying to tell me. Part of it seems to say that there will never again be a "renew your plan and get a reward" discount (in which case, yipes), while another part seems to say that they're just cutting back people's ability to get a credit in months 13-20 of their contract (in which case, I've never gotten a phone upgrade before month 20 anyway, so this shouldn't affect me). It also seems to be saying that with my next plan renewal I will get my NE2, but after that never again.

In short, if that morass made sense to you, can you explain it to me, please?
posted by badgermushroomSNAKE at 1:20 PM on January 19, 2011

My understanding of the NE2 is that this will be your last time getting the bonus discount. After this next phone, you will pay the discounted (i.e. 2 year contract rate) but not get the $30-100 discount.

As for your other question to me- I tend to doubt the 4G phones will be much over $200. That seems to be the magic price point. When the Droid came out, it was as shiny and new as any phone, well, probably ever, and I don't think it was ever over $200. (Again, discounted rate.)
posted by JMOZ at 1:34 PM on January 19, 2011

In short, if that morass made sense to you, can you explain it to me, please?

Not sure I can very well (I'm not a Verizon Wireless customer) but it's something I read the other day, so I thought I'd add it to the discussion. From some other reading I'm doing, it looks like the NE2 still exists those who have current 2 year contacts with Verizon that were entered into on or after Feb 15, 2009, but isn't available to new customers.

So I guess if you've got some NE2 credits, now is the time to use them....
posted by SweetJesus at 1:58 PM on January 19, 2011

A cellphone camera will not rival a standalone. I have a Droid Incredible and I've taken pictures 10x better with a $200 dollar Canon digital camera of recent make. The lens is too small, megapixels are marketing hype. You get higher resolution crappy pics.
posted by zebraantelope at 4:19 PM on January 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

I'm extremely happy with my Verizon HTC Incredible. As cell phone cameras go, the 8mp camera blows my mind with its quality, and the Google mail/apps/etc. integration is superb.

My first cell phone was a Motorola bag phone in the mid-1990's, and after a ton of dumb phones, the Incredible is the first one I've ever owned that I don't hate.
posted by imjustsaying at 5:18 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

I should have added that if I have any gripe with the Incredible's camera, it's that the (from what I can see) unchangeable level of jpeg compression is so high. Lens quality is decent and it does not take much, if any, longer to lock autofocus that many p&s cameras. It does offer considerable manual overrides for exposure, etc.
posted by imjustsaying at 5:22 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

The cost of the phone itself is going to be dwarfed by the cost of the service over the duration of the contract. It's a lot of money, once you add it up.

Cameras on smartphones are ok, but not a good replacement for a decent P&S camera. The lack of physical controls and a half-decent flash is problematic. Also the tiny sensors in smartphone make for pretty grainy picture quality in less-than-perfect light. That said, you'll find that you take a lot of pictures with the smartphone just because it's always there.
posted by kenliu at 5:47 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

A cellphone camera will not rival a standalone.

Seconding this. It will not rival a standalone camera in terms of picture quality, versatility, or range of use. Such a phone-camera does not exist this year and probably won't in the coming year.

I'm curious about but not dedicated to the notion of rooting.

The Incredible (and some others) can be rooted very easily with unrEVOked. If you're thinking of another phone (like a Droid2) then I'd look at androidforums.com or xda, find the subforum for that model, and see if the step-by-step rooting guide is something you feel comfortable doing.

The Incredible looks like it's essentially the same as my HTC Desire with slightly better specs, and I'm quite happy with it, so the Inc is probably a safe bet. The only other contender I see on teh Verizon website is the Droid2. I'd suggest going to a shop at a slow time and asking someone there to give you a guided tour of them both and some hands-on time. Ask what it is specifically that each model offers that the other doesn't.
I believe if you like the feel and keyboard of the Droid but prefer the Sense interface of the Incredible then you can simply instal LauncherPro or Zeem or another "launcher" program for a good approximation of that winning combination.

Either one should last a day with what I think of as normal usage. And spare batteries & chargers are cheap on eBay (if you can wait for shipping from Hong Kong).
posted by K.P. at 6:02 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

You can get great deals on the Droid Incredible right now (one for free, or two for one) because it's on the verge of being superseded. It is also widely known for having crap battery life. I think it would have been the perfect phone for me last year otherwise. A friend of mine has one and keeps chargers at home, work, and in the car just in case but says he typically gets through the day just fine. He loves it. Some people advocate buying at the end of a product cycle to get free/cheap phones that are great and only a year off from the cutting edge.

That said, the big change in the industry is the switch to 4G. All of the big carriers are fibbing about having 4G tech - they don't, none come anywhere close to 4G specs - but each has a technology that's faster than 3G so the label is not so important. Point is, they're all fairly recently rolled out and while only a handful of phones are currently designed to take advantage of 4G networks, a whole slew were just announced and will be released in March, April, and by summer. So you can buy 3G now and maybe that's fine with you, even as 4G speeds are available, but if you wait a few months you can get in on the front end of 4G.

On Verizon, for 4G phones, you're looking at the forthcoming HTC Thunderbolt, the Motorola Bionic, the LG Revolution, and a Samsung 4G LTE phone that has been announced and shown but not yet given a name. Rumor has it that the Thunderbolt will be released in March, the Bionic in April, and the others to follow, but I don't know if that's confirmed yet. Verizon said at least one would be out in March. I just recently I heard about something dropping next month, also not confirmed.

All four have 8mp cameras except the LG at 5mp, which is really fine for you and me. All shoot 720p HD video (all have HDMI-out ports except the Thunderbolt). But we don't know the actual quality of the photos yet since they haven't been released yet. We've only seen them fiddled with at CES earlier this month. But I can guarantee that they won't rival even my 3mp 3x zoom Pentax Optio S bought 10 years ago. They will very likely continue the trend of performing poorly in low light and offering only digital zoom (useless). At least they've got LED flash these days, though don't expect much range out of them. I'm with you in that I'm ready to only have one device and want to ditch my point n shoot, but we're still not there yet. This'll be fine for day to day unimportant stuff, but if you go to Paris or something, you'll wish you had a real camera. You could always give it a try and see if it will suffice and only then buy a relatively cheap digital point n shoot to supplement if needed.

None of these four have a hardware qwerty - all use virtual keyboards.

The Motorola Bionic is the only one of the four with the new dual core processor. That's supposed to give it a performance advantage, but many people are saying that the current versions of Android (2.1, 2.2, 2.3) aren't optimized to use dual cores. And if you get a 2.2 phone and maybe only ever upgrade to 2.3, what's that other core doing? I don't know enough about that to comment either way. It would be neat to have the latest tech for whatever it's worth but it's possibly overkill. Guess we'll see.

The Bionic also has the best screen specs on paper - qHD (540x960). The others all have WVGA (800x480). Thunderbolt is Super LCD technology. The Samsung is Super AMOLED Plus. I don't think we know yet about the LG.

So far it's been said that the Thunderbolt will allow simultaneous voice and data. Don't know about the other three. I don't know if that's a feature of LTE or something with the phone. I think I read that voice will still be handled by the 3G signal while the 4G will handle the data? I might be mangling that.

Battery life is going to be an issue with all of these new 4G phones if for no other reason than 4G eats up more juice. But all four phones also have 4.3" high tech screens too, which is another drain. And that's on top of whether they do a good job with power management to start with. I want the Thunderbolt but am worried about what appears to be an underpowered battery at 1400mAh (1500 is kind of the standard for the current crop of phones). Some say the next generation processor should help with that but we'll see. Meanwhile the Motorola Bionic has 1930mAh but also reportedly more power-hungry DDR2 RAM... but less of it... but also two cores... which is supposed to help it use less power? I'm getting a headache. So it's hard to say what the battery life will be like at this point. Let the lusty early adopters put them through their paces and tell the rest of us before you buy.

Technically any of these phones are rootable, since I think the rooters have yet to be defeated by anything. Some are harder than others, but the XDA people seem to just see that as a challenge and always seem to get it done. Motorola's Motoblur doesn't get much love, but some say that's based on earlier versions of it. Some with current Droids say it's not that big of a deal anymore. So maybe you'll want to root to get around that and maybe not. Motorola does something that I think the others don't do, which is lock its bootloaders, which makes it difficult or impossible to load custom ROMs onto the device. I don't know if that's been gotten around on the current Droids or not. So one avantage of HTC and possibly others is that they're more hackable/customizable. Then again, HTC's Sense user interface gets the most love of any of the UIs. Some say it's even an improvement over stock Android. So maybe there again you won't care about rooting, not that there aren't other reasons to root.

I think it's a safe bet that the new phones will be a minimum of $199 with a 2 year contract. I could see $299 but more would be a tougher sell I think. I don't know what effect your NE2 deal will have on pricing but from what I've read, you should still get one more bang out of it as a pre-existing member and then it stops. A quick call to Verizon customer service will sort you out. But like somebody else said, the difference in handset price won't matter as much as your monthly service price. Even a difference of $200 in handset price divided over 24 months doesn't bump your bill that much each month. It's handy to calculate total cost of ownership over 2 or three years when you compare phones.

Someone at Android Central is maintaining a spreadsheet that compares the specs of the four announced Verizon 4G LTE phones. Check it out in this thread.

If you're buying Android on Verizon today, you're looking at the Droid X (biggest), the Droid Incredible (sveltest), the Droid 2 and Droid 2 Global (horizontal sliding hardware keyboard), the Droid Pro (nonsliding portrait keyboard like a blackberry, and a smaller screen), the Samsung Fascinate (part of the well-received Galaxy S line that straddles all US carriers), and then a handful of Android phones that nobody ever talks about, which makes me think maybe they suck or are so-called "feature phones", a category of lesser smartphones with lower specs across the board. By the way, if you need a Verizon phone that will work in Europe and most of the rest of the world, the Droid 2 Global and the Droid Pro both have SIM card slots in them alongside the CDMA tech for use on GSM networks abroad. So that's handy for some people.

If you can wait for the 4G phones to come out, I recommend waiting. Normally you just want to go ahead and buy, because there will always be something better just around the corner and you'll never get something if you keep waiting. But 4G is a major change and seems like a good reason to wait for some dust to settle. I think mid summer will be the ideal time to choose a new Verizon phone because I bet we have an iPhone 5 by then, not that you're looking for that, and because all of the first wave of Verizon 4G LTE phones should all be out by then, with people having kicked the tires for you. Should be a clearer picture by then or perhaps even a bit earlier. There are a couple of more industry conferences coming up in the next couple of months where more phones are sure to be announced, so that's another possible reason to wait. I say get one of this first wave of hotdog phones and then hunker down for a couple of years, not paying any attention to the new phone du jour.

Blackberry is way behind the curve these days in terms of a modern smartphone OS. If you're buying for the future and want a fully functional web-enabled smartphone OS that performs well, I wouldn't recommend it. The web is an inconvenient chore for my Blackberry friends. They'd rather fire up the laptop. Meanwhile my Android friends now often leave the laptop off and just look thinks up quickly on the phone. Maybe Blackberry will still rally and catch up, but they haven't yet, so say the gadget nerd blogs. If your focus is really just calls and emails though, Blackberry is fine for loads of people.

If you want to read about Windows Phone 7, keyword search at one of the gadget blogs, like Engadget Mobile or one of the others. They've got all sorts of roundups and reviews of all the operating systems and pros and cons. Android has the momentum and most of the love and a hell of a lot more apps right now, but promising noises have been made about WP7 by the nerderati. I don't trust them not to screw things up myself, so my jury is still way out on them, and it's still early for them, but like I say, promising noises. I'd skip them this cycle and check back in once their Bambi legs have strengthened.
posted by Askr at 6:38 PM on January 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

Whatever your contenders are, go to a store and try them out for quite a while. I prefer the iPhone, but it took me a few hours of use in the store to make up my mind. At the time, the G1 and the Pre had just come out and they weren't much competition.

In any case, of Droids, I think the Incredible is the best one. It's a pretty sweet phone. Based on all the stories going around recently, stick with HTC phones; they will have the best likelihood of getting official OS upgrades.

I use the camera on my 3GS for most of my photography these days. I'm not printing stuff out, so I don't need a huge resolution. My wife has a P&S for anything "important".
posted by reddot at 7:33 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

>> Rumor has it that the Thunderbolt will be released in March

Today's rumor is Thunderbolt launching 14th Feb.
posted by K.P. at 7:12 AM on January 20, 2011

The Mrs. and I switched from dumbphones on at&t to smartphones on verizon about a month ago. I picked up a Droid X for me and a Droid 2 for her.

This sounds silly but it really has changed the way I interact with the internet. I don't sit down to use our home comp every night anymore, and I seem to surf less at work. Everything I want is right there and quickly available, sometimes more so becuase the app is right there and it pulls the info I need. A simple slide to the right for my twitter feed and a slight to the left for fb. Notifications of emails to my gmail and ancient hotmail account.

The selection of apps is astounding. Barcode scanners, a magnetometer, trip trackers (gps+altitude), unit converters. I've been listening to my uncle's morning radio show live halfway across the country while on my way to work in California.

The day of the Tucson memorial I noticed an tweet from Obama with a link to watch the service on whitehouse.gov. I watched it live during my evening commute. Amazing.

I don't know much about 3G/4G, but I haven't had any issues with the 3G coverage as it is.
posted by Big_B at 8:23 AM on January 20, 2011

I have the Incredible. It's a little flaky, and it's useless without a $70 add-on extended-life battery, but otherwise it's a fine phone with a nice camera.
posted by Camofrog at 7:15 PM on January 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Another data point backing the Incredible. Battery life was spotty at first, but turning off stuff you don't use (GPS when not driving somewhere new, Wi-Fi) and being careful what you let "background sync" (e.g., only have the Facebook app connect when you open it, rather than burn battery updating your News Feed every five minutes when you check it twice a day) can make a real difference. (It's possible the upgrade to Android 2.2 helped, as well as no longer being in weak signal territory underground or in a tall concrete building most of the day, as I was when I first got it.) Now I use about 2.5-3% of my battery per hour if idle, and obviously more if using apps/data... not fantastic but rarely do I not get through the day.

Waiting for 4G might be a good move, BUT I'd be surprised if they keep the $30 unlimited data plan going on the new system. Don't you think they'll raise the price and/or bring in tiers? I do. So even if the phone isn't more, your plan might be.

HTC's Sense seems to be a really popular interface, and with good reason. I've never used a stock Android phone (or Blur or anything like that), but Sense is great. And when I occasionally read Android reviews and forums, I realize that a lot of the awesome features I take for granted as part of "Android" are really Sense features.

Plus, HTC is great about updating to the newest OS version. And having upgrades to the newest version for at least a little while is definitely something that I would expect when I buy a phone. They haven't (to my knowledge) confirmed that the Incredible will get 2.3, but since it's such a popular/high-profile phone, and since HTC seems to actually be committed to its customers thus far--unlike, say, Samsung--I'm thinking we'll be OK. Hopefully they won't make me eat my words on this...

Anyway, as you can tell, I'm a fan. If you want to buy now, or soon, I'd go with the Incredible.
posted by SuperNova at 12:49 AM on January 21, 2011 [2 favorites]