Monday, July 19, 2010

First thoughts on Droid

So my wife got a Droid. Not because she even wanted one, but because she was tired of messaging on her ancient Motorola Razor. She was going to get a non-droid phone on the cheapo data plan, but she eventually settled on a Droid, mainly for me to tinker with.

Well, my first impressions are not so good. I've been using the iPhone for a few years, and the inconsistency on this phone just baffles me. The first thing I wanted to do was unlock the phone. I couldn't even figure that out, until I saw the sales guy slide his finger over the green button on the screen. There was absolutely no visual cue of how that worked. Then as I started browsing through the pages of icons, it really reminded me of the smartphones I tried before the iPhone was around: inconsistent and clumsy.

I'm not even going to discuss features, because to me they really don't matter as much as the user experience. Bottom line, the user experience has to be good, and Apple has nailed that down. I could go on, but I found a good article that pretty much sums it all up.