The Droid Pro
By Motorola For Verizon Wireless
The Droid Pro is Motorola’s latest attempt to create a phone aimed specifically at the business professional. At first glance, the Pro could easily be mistaken as a new BlackBerry model with a larger than normal screen. Its QWERTY keyboard is strikingly similar to the ones present on BlackBerry phones, but one look at the operating system on the phone and you’ll instantly realize that the phone is running Android and not BlackBerry OS.
The Pro’s design is very functional. With the phone, you get the best of both worlds: a professional looking keyboard that makes writing emails and messages easy and an interactive touch screen that makes browsing the web simple and faster than using a track pad. The keyboard has grooved buttons which makes typing accurate even for people with larger fingers. It includes four shortcut keys at the bottom of its screen that make it easy to access settings/additional options, revert to your home page, go back a screen, and perform a search either of the web or your phone. There is a customizable shortcut button on the side of the phone which by default it will lead you to your calendar. It even has a 3.5mm headphone jack so you can use it with the headphones you probably already have and an easily accessible volume rocker on the side of the phone.
The Droid Pro’s size is only slightly taller than that of a BlackBerry. Most of this added size comes from the 3.1 inch diagonal screen. While this difference is barely noticeable when the phone is in your pocket, when you start using the phone you begin to realize that size does matter. The larger screen is sharp and allows you to read comfortably as well as see more information at once on one screen. The phone allows you to have seven customizable home screens that you can navigate with a swipe across the screen of the phone. Here you can put widgets and shortcuts for almost anything making it quick to get information. The screen is responsive and there is little to no lag between your touches and the actions on the phone. Also, because the touch screen supports pinch-to-zoom, if you come across anything on the web that you can’t read, a simple pinch of your fingers will resize the image to make it larger or smaller.
Browsing the internet was great on the phone. Interacting with the touch screen made the process more fun and the Android Browser definitely made it faster. With the browser you can bookmark and open multiple windows and then navigate them all easily. It was extremely easy to read text online and you can either manually zoom in or give two quick taps on a section of writing to automatically resize the page to optimize it for reading. This was great for reading articles or directions off the phone.
When it comes to email, the BlackBerry still has the Droid beat. When I linked the phone to my Microsoft Outlook account, the phone did very well with receiving messages at around the same time as I got them in my inbox. I did encounter a problem though when I linked with my Yahoo and Gmail accounts. It would usually take 7-10 minutes more in order to receive the messages on my phone after they arrived in my inbox. It was highly inconvenient when sending several messages back and forth to have them be received on my phone at such a slow rate.
I also encountered minor difficulties with making phone calls with the phone. While the calls came out clear, there were points in the conversation when the voice of the person I was talking to would cut out. I’m not quite sure what caused this, but it would usually only happen for a fraction of a second. Usually I could still follow the conversation, but occasionally I did have to ask the person I was talking to to repeat themselves. They did not encounter any problems on the receiving end however.
Since the Pro is a global phone, it has the capability to not only work as a phone in the US, but also in Europe and other areas that use a different network setup. However, a major feature that the Pro has that many other Verizon phones don’t is that it supports a SIM card. This means that if you frequently travel to different countries, then you can easily purchase a second phone plan in the areas you frequent and then swap SIM cards whenever you need to without racking up massive fees with Verizon.
What is great about the Pro is that it can be used as a wireless hotspot if you sign up for the service with Verizon. This lets you use your work computer wherever you go. While it does run down the battery, it may be worth it to temporarily sacrifice your phone in order to get a few hours of internet access on your computer.
Using the Pro was great. The only drawbacks ended up being the email and the call quality. The email can be fixed by downloading a different email app, but you may have to live with the inconsistency with calls. The Droid with its touch screen was very fun to use without losing its business appearance. While there are still a few wrinkles to iron out with the phone itself, it is a great first step for Android into the business world.
One response to “Motorola Droid Pro for Verizon”
cool!