Ten Things I Absolutely Hate About My Google Droid Phone

January 10th, 2010

by Laura Thieme

Part Two of What I Love/Hate About my Droid Phone.

The reason I got rid of the Treo was its ability to call people mistakenly, and lock at the worst times ever, like when you needed to take that important phone call. I’ve returned to similar if not worse touch screen phone madness with the Google Droid Phone. Here are ten things I hate about my Droid phone, and yes, there might be more than ten things…

1) Answering a call, yes, while driving, is extremely dangerous - you better use your bluetooth, cancer-likely causing device when driving, because trying to answer the Droid while driving is hazardous to everyone around you, including you. They re-set the software so that you no longer have to drag a lock, semi-circle, across the screen. But you still have to drag a lock across the screen. Try doing this with your fingers while driving, and when it doesn’t work on the first or second time, try doing this safely. You simply can’t.

2) Voice Activated Search sucks. To be safer, I’ve finally learned how to use the Google Voice Dialer, or the Car Home mode, which includes Voice Search. They suck. They really suck. You are still driving, touching the screen, trying to speak into the phone who you are trying to reach. It is so off sometimes, then you end up pressing no - or try to get the screen to go away - and then back to home screen, back to voice dialer, or contacts, etc. That’s a lot you shouldn’t be doing while driving your car.

3) It does not seem like Bluetooth works with Voice Activation. With my LG, I could simply hit the Bluetooth button on my earpiece, and it would automatically go into voice command mode. Nothing happens here other than “beep”. So, if they could get the Google Droid phone to automatically sync with Voice Activation on the click of the Bluetooth button, that would be great. If they could improve the accuracy of Voice Search or Voice Activated Commands, that would be even better.

4) Navigation/Maps - I used this for the first time heading up to the SES Chicago 2009 show. My 13-month old daughter was with me. Google sent me into an abandoned area of town, into a section that had a closed exit. It didn’t reconfigure, except to send me back the same way. There was no alternate safe route. It was pretty bad. I was quite nervous getting the heck out of where they sent me. I’ve used it locally without problems. What I don’t like, however, is having to press so many buttons while driving. It seems like this always happens, despite using bluetooth.

5) Dialing someone I didn’t mean to - or someone I just hung up with - happens often

6) Dropping phone calls happens often - I seem to be hitting a button or something that causes the screen to lock; I can hear them, but they can’t hear me. Happens at least once a day, if not on bluetooth. It’s hard to hold this phone and talk and not press something on the screen that you don’t want. The screen is overly sensitive when talking on the phone. Bluetooth helps with this issue, but not everything can be done with bluetooth as mentioned above.

7) The keyboard - I hate it, hate it, hate it - really, no one has the skinny-ass Droid fingers you show in your commercial - really! And no one can type that fast on your keyboard who is human.

8) Autocomplete - don’t put in words I did not ask for - don’t automatically auto-complete me. Let me opt for auto-complete. It corrects my daughter’s name automatically without me selecting it, often.

9) The camera button on the side of the phone where most people hold it to talk - seems that might be affecting the “lock” effect while I’m talking - possibly - see no reason for this button to be here

10) Microphone - a number of people have said that my voice sounds muffled - the speaker is amazing, but the mic not so good.

Posted in Blogging.

 

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