Did Droid X Mark the Spot?

Not quite.

A couple days ago (when I could actually walk), I purchased a Droid X as I was eligible for an upgrade and discount pricing. I’m not going to do real review on it just yet. I haven’t yet settled into normal use of the phone and I’d like to do that first so I can better judge how this phone responds to my needs and expectations. First impression is that I do like it but it does have some quirks and inadequacies.

The biggest pro is that the antenna picks up a cell signal a lot better where I live. Since moving into the apartment with my BlackBerry, the service has been somewhat unreliable with it going between 0/5-3/5 bars, and always fluctuating between 1 and 2. This is where I have experienced my first dropped call- on my end- on Verizon’s network. With the Droid X, I have noticed better reception, and I have not lost signal.

My biggest complaint is accessing contacts in general. First, it pulls in contacts from all your social networking accounts and I can’t delete them. So I end up with this funny feeling of carrying a contact list containing people like David Blue, Sean Bugg, or President Obama because I follow them on Twitter not because I know them personally. Second, with such a huge as contact list, it would be nice that there would be an autofill option for the phone dialer where I can just start typing in a contact name and it would fetch the number for me but there isn’t. Lastly, I can’t always control the contact names. For example, Roy’s contact name is not his real name but his twitter handle and I can’t get that overridden so that comes up as “Roy.”

Before I bought the phone, I scoped out some review sites. I also check out what people were saying about it on twitter.

A lot of people were complaining about the size. They don't get much sympathy for me. Did they not realize this when they bought the device?

There were also a lot of complaints about the battery life. Even with my more-than usual fiddling with it, I'm at 12 hours with.... hmmm... 50% charge left which is what I would expect for a smart phone quite honestly. I haven't had a multi-day phone since my E-815 which was just a run-of-the-mill flip phone.

Another complaint was the UI which I would agree, isn't the best. I have trashed most of the widgets but some are useful. It's definitely not as polished as HTC's or as easy to use as the iPhone but I still find it a couple steps up from my BlackBerry, so I can blind myself to that criticism just a little bit. :P

I've got to take another dose of pain pills now. I’ll probably post some more thoughts next week.

<<--See also: "Considering Giving it Up to the Cloud"