Travis' Mini-Reviews: Motorola Droid X and Samsung Vibrant

Ok, so I just got back from a T-Mobile and a Verizon store to play with the 2 newest members of the Android Army, and I have to say: Meh.


First up, the Droid X. You can find this big fella for $200 with a 2 year contract. The 4.3 inch screen looks great, and despite the bigger than the EVO body, it looks pretty good and is pretty ergonomic. That being said, I wanted to throw the thing across the store. The UI is yet another failed attempt by Motorola to "improve" Android, but so far only HTC's SenseUI has worked for me. I will say it's better than MotoBlur, it looks far less infantile and doesn't force Facebook and Twitter on me. It packs 7 home panels, which is cool, and has 3 big icons along the bottom (dialer, apps, and contacts). But as you slide to different panels, these 3 icons change to randomly shaped dots to represent which panel you're on. It's good to know which panel you're on, but the change looks dumb and lags the phone a little. Now, like the EVO, a keyboard on a 4.3" screen is great, and coming preloaded with Swype is cool, but I couldn't type on it. It's not like I didn't know how, but the screen was garbage. Everything I did required at least one re-press. Unresponsive is hardly the word to describe it, and it was a beyond frustrating experience. Hopefully it was just that model that was bad, and I will be testing another one most likely tomorrow. Oh, and we found out recently that Motorola was gracious enough to install security that will completely brick the X if you attempt to hack it. Fantastic work at effectively closing good ol' open source Android, Moto. You sure this phone wasn't meant for AT&T?



Now, the one device that made me (mostly) happy today, the Samsung Vibrant. At first, I thought that was the dumbest name for a phone ever. Well, behind the :) (No really, that's it's name). But the name is perfect. The screen, sitting at an even 4 inches, is beautiful. Samsung's SUPER AMOLED technology is on par with an iPhone 4's screen, but of course bigger. The phone comes preloaded with Avatar (Cameron's epic, not M. Night's fail), which is perfect for how amazing that screen is. The phone's design is very nice, thin but seemingly sturdy. My main problem, again, was the UI. Samsung's tweaks are somehow worse than MotoBlur to me. It didn't feel like Android to me. You still get your multiple, customizable panels, but the 4 static icons on the bottom (not changeable) mixed with a totally different app tray simply scream "iPhone knockoff!). Instead of your normal vertical column of apps, you have panels of apps in a 4x4 grid. Just like the iPhone. And the icons themselves are squares with rounded edges with small logos, like the iPhone. While Samsung did figure out that iPhones do sell well, it ruined the Android experience that I love. Careful with the "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude, Samsung. You may have a recall on your hands.

And 2 quick notes. In the Verizon store, some woman was using one of the live demos to yell at someone else over the phone. Um, bad place to do that. And I popped into an AT&T store to go hands on with the iPhone 4 too. no review on that now, but I did manage to make it drop 4 bars of 3G and 2 bars (or waves?) of WiFi with the Grip of Death. Fun stuff, and we'll see what Apple says about it tomorrow!