I Got A New Phone…

And I think it has anorexia! It’s a Motorola Droid RAZR from Verizon and I seriously think that this phone suffers from anorexia! It’s extremely thin and light compared to my BlackBerry Torch 9800… truth be told: I feel like I’m going to break it just by holding it! This picture might convey a bit more how “thin” that Razr is:

Does It Work Well?

Well, my previous experience(s) with Android phones weren’t that long so I don’t any “bias” toward certain Android phones or versions. In fact, I should note that I’m a BlackBerry fan… despite the fact that they can’t figure a way out of their current tailspin.

Regardless of all this, here’s a quick recap of what I like/dislike so far.

Like: I don’t have much Android experience to compare it “against” but I can tell you one thing: it’s fast!

Like: Response times to switch between apps and/or surf the web is much faster than on the previous Android phones I’ve used in the past.

Like: The screen is *huge* and easy to read. It’s not a “retina display* but it’s still very bright and colorful. Better than the screen on my BlackBerry Torch 9800 (I probably shouldn’t even compare it against that phone… the screen is horrible on my Torch).

Dislike: Battery life is horrible. Why do I say that? Well, I got that phone yesterday afternoon at 1 PM. I fully charged it and then installed Lotus Traveler, installed a few apps from the marketplace and surfed the web a bit to “test-drive” it. I did not put it on the charger overnight so this morning at 8:30 AM the battery reached 0%! I had not even placed a call yet with it!

Not Sure if I Like Or Dislike: It runs Gingerbread (Android 2.3.5)… I thought I was going to get a higher rev, 4.x aka Ice Cream Sandwich, but then again the development kit was only released a few weeks ago. Maybe we’ll get an over-the-air upgrade? I hope so anyway.

Not Sure if I Like Or Dislike: The size of the device overall. It’s bigger than my BlackBerry Torch and it’s bigger than an iPhone. Much bigger! So time will tell if I “get used” to the giant screen and device size.

To wrap this up, here’s a picture to compare side-by-side the two devices:

About Lotus Traveler…

We run Traveler 8.5.2.4 in our environment (not 8.5.3) and I was pretty sure I’d get some widgets on Android [after installing Traveler] that I could display on the device screen… that’s not the case. I will have to ask Lotus if I need to upgrade to 8.5.3 to get that or not (or if it’s just because there aren’t any widgets for my version of Android).

Also an odd coincidence: the Traveler server crashed when I did my activation for the first time… very odd timing.

Conclusion?

Well, I don’t have much to say except… “stay tuned”. I’ll probably blog in a month or two about my experience with that device.

In the meantime: thanks for reading!

Marc