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DROID X by Motorola Review

by Brian Groce on November 27, 2010

The DROID X by Motorola is clearly a sports car among the current smart phones on the market. Lets take a quick tour.

Platform

The DROID X currently runs the Android 2.1 platform which is very well done & continually improving.

Touchscreen

I’ve always been a little wary of touchscreen phones for two reasons.

1) I have big hands and fat fingers which make it a little difficult to be accurate when typing. Much to my surprise, with the generous 4.3-in. screen, this hasn’t been too bad. And once I got the hang of the Predictive Text (Swype) feature it has really been pretty easy to use.

2) It drives me crazy when anyone touches a TV or computer screen. To remedy this pet peeve I highly recommend carrying around a micro fiber cloth to clean off the oil on the screen.

Voice Quality

The voice quality of the DROID X is decent but I’d personally recommend getting a Bluetooth® headset to go along with it.

Battery Life

As with most portable electronics, battery life is a major concern. Having used the DROID X with Twitter, Gmail & Facebook constantly running in the background with the default screen brightness, the 480 minutes of continuous use is a little generous if you’re looking for active use. To help improve battery life I highly recommend an app such as the free Advanced Task Killer.

Still Camera

The still camera is 8 MP and has a very decent auto focus feature. Compared to other phones on the market right now I really don’t know what else you can ask for.

Video Camera

The video camera is an amazing HD 720p (1280x720p resolution) camera with 3 built in microphones. Having shot a few test videos with it I’d personally rather use this instead of toting around something like a Flip. The only other things I could really want would be 1080p with an external mic option, but this is a phone so I really have no complaints.

Apps, apps & more apps

Packing 24 GB of storage out of the box with the possibility of expanding to 40 GB you should have plenty of room for any of the numerous apps available in the Android Market in addition to the pre-installed applications.

Of the pre-installed applications, Google Maps™ Navigation is an excellent GPS application which will get you where you need to go. You can actually speak your destination to it, using the excellent speech to text feature of the Android platform, and be on your way. And if your destination is on Google’s Street View, it will show up on the screen when you arrive.

For social media I highly recommend choosing a Twitter app & the Facebook app. For Twitter there are numerous app options, so give a few a whirl and see what you like. My personal favorite is Seesmic. And if you use WordPress I highly recommend installing the WordPress app.

For games there are also numerous options. Everyone will want to install Angry Birds and then take a look through the other game options in the Android Market. There are plenty of excellent free games to keep you busy.

Bottom Line

I highly recommend the DROID X. Of the smart phones currently on the market, the DROID X does just about anything you can throw at it. But I would probably buy a second battery to go along with it.

Technical Specifications

Network: Verizon 3G
Platform: Android 2.1
Battery: Up to 480 minutes continuous, up to 220 hours standby, 1540 mAh Li Ion
Memory: up 8 GB on board, 16 GB removable microSD pre-installed (supports up to 32 GB microSD)
Display Size: 4.3-in.; WVGA (480 x 854)
Weight: 155 grams
Size (H x W x D): 65.5 x 127.5 x 9.9 mm
Camera: 8 MP, Digital Zoom, Flash, Auto Focus, Cropping, Rotating, Geo Tagging
Video Camera: HD 720p quality (1280x720p resolution) up to 24 fps capture; up to 30 fps playback, 3 microphone technology
Media: Android Media Player, Video & Audio (AAC, H.263, H.264, MP3, MPEG-4, WAV, eAAC+, WMA v10, MIDI, AAC+)
WIFI: 802.11 n
3G Mobile Hotspot: Be a mobile hot spot for up to 5 other devices
Connector Type: Micro USB, HDMI® Micro Connector Cable
Data Transmission Rate: USB 2.0 (High Speed)
Other: Bluetooth®, SMS, MMS, Predictive Text (Swype), Speakerphone

Preinstalled Applications

Google Apps
- Gmail™
- Google Calendar™
- Google Contact Sync™
- Google Latitude™
- Google Maps Street View
- Google Maps™
- Google Maps™ Navigation
- Google Quick Search Box™
- Google Talk™
- Google™ Search By Voice
- Youtube™
Email: Corporate Sync, Google Mail, Push Email, WebKit
Web Browser: Android HTML Webkit, Adobe® Flash® Player
Other: Calculator, Calendar, Clock, Wallpaper, Ringtones (AAC, AAC+, eAAC, eAAC+, MP3, OGG)

Disclosure: The DROID X by Motorola was provided for review by Verizon Wireless.

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Ten Social Media Reads, Vol 3

by Brian Groce on September 22, 2010

in Brian's Work,Watershed Studio

Here at Watershed Studio we’re always scouring our RSS and Twitter feeds to see what’s going on in the world of technology and social media. Here’s Volume 3 in nice, easy to digest, posts. Enjoy.

Facebook to Change How You Process Friend Requests by Jennifer Van Grove
Foursquare Launching New Must-Have Button for Websites by Marshall Kirkpatrick
Get rid of Those Annoying Farmville Requests with new Social Network About “What Matters to You” by Lauren Dugan
How to gracefully promote yourself online by Andrea Bartz and Brenna Ehrlich, Special to CNN
Is Twitter for Business Even Worth the Trouble by Jay Baer
Six Reasons Why I’m Not On Facebook, By Wired UK’s Editor by David Rowan, Wired UK
SocialSmack Gives You Props for Talking Smack About Brands by Ben Parr
The Cross-Generation Workforce by Andy McLoughlin, Forbes
The New Twitter Is an Attack on All Desktop Apps by Jennifer Van Grove
To Schedule Tweets Or Not by Chris Brogan

If you have any social media reads that you’d like to suggest, please contact us or Tweet us @watershedstudio.

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Dilbert: Social Media Marketing Manager

by Brian Groce on September 14, 2010

in Brian's Work,Watershed Studio

Dilbert never ceases to amaze me at how spot-on the strip is.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve talked to people who work in “the real world” and they say things like:

“We have a company website…but it’s blocked during business hours.”
“We have a Facebook Fan Page/Group/Etc…but we don’t have access to Facebook.”
“We have a Twitter account…but we can’t access Twitter at work.”
“No, I don’t read business related blogs…that’s against company policy.”

And the list could go on and on.

In this day and age the companies who are embracing the technological changes are going to be the ones to prevail. The rest will eventually be left behind and forgotten about. That is what we believe. That is what we adhere to. And that is what we preach at our Indy Media School classes.

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Who I Block On Twitter

by Brian Groce on August 27, 2010

in Blue Shotgun,Brian's Blogs

One thing that really annoys me on Twitter is when spammy people quickly follow & unfollow me (hit & run “followers”). Thanks to TwUnfollow.com it’s easy to keep track of this. And in order to save you some headaches I’m going to list all of the people I’ve caught doing this. Call it mean. Call it juvenile. But I’m sick & tired of a handful of fools ruining Twitter for everyone else. Police the tweets and the world will be a better place.

Here we go…

NateFowler
Mzs_Goof_Troop
sboselya
MichelleBerezan
lottsoftraffic
BusMatchMkr
No1_webmarketer
SEOFollowers
homebizmom2
iGrOOps
ByBox
adriana_a1ka
dimetr83
RandySchrum
OlivierVasquez
ritika111
StefyBau
nathankievman
onlineNBA
imobi_sports
quotes4_u
thinkreferrals
HappyToadMedia
shaileshtr
investorgeye
RoadrunnerNames
ictnewz
JeremyBuck
mytimematters

Last updated: Saturday, September 7, 2010

Note: these are not linked as we don’t want to encourage this behavior or give them any link love.

Comment on this post at: Blue Shotgun

Ten Social Media Reads, Vol 2

by Brian Groce on August 25, 2010

in Brian's Work,Watershed Studio

Here at Watershed Studio we’re always scouring our RSS and Twitter feeds to see what’s going on in the world of technology and social media. Here’s volume 2 in nice, easy to digest, posts. Enjoy.

AOL Launches SafeSocial…To Screen Your Kid’s Every Friend Posted (Katy Gathright – Social Times)
4 Ways to Make Content Go Viral in Social Media (Kyle Lacy)
How Freelancers Might Use Social Media in the Future (Stephanie Marcus – Mashable)
Make Shareability a Priority (Chris Brogan)
Marketing Your Business through the Use of Podcasts (Gini Dietrich)
100 Ways to Measure Social Media (Pam Dyer)
Social Media Parenting: Raising the Digital Generation (Matt Silverman – Mashable)
12 Ways to Market Your Event With Social Media (Rich Brooks – Social Media Examiner)
Twitter And The Nine-Month Bounce (Erick Schonfeld – Tech Crunch)
Winemakers shun social media grapevine (Leslie Gevirtz – Reuters)

If you have any social media reads that you’d like to suggest, please contact us or Tweet us @watershedstudio.

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Hootsuite Premium Pricing Shocker

by Brian Groce on August 12, 2010

in Brian's Work,Watershed Studio

Yesterday Hootsuite announced their new premium plans…

As I looked at this I was shocked by the top end (the actual top end is not listed here, but is in their Enterprise Services at $1499-$1998 per month). The biggest shocker being their pricing emphasis on “Team Members” (a.k.a. other Hootsuite users who can use one or more of your social network accounts) rather than some sort of true functionality.

I recall just this past week looking through the FAQ’s and reading this & this (emphasis mine):

“There is no cost to use the HootSuite Team Collaboration tools or any part of the social media dashboard at this time. Everything is free – though in the future, we will likely add premium level accounts.”
“The web version of HootSuite as well as HootSuite Lite for iPhone and Android is currently free. HootSuite for iPhone and Android currently costs $2.99. We are investigating pricing plans and exciting new features for paid accounts.“

Fair enough. It’s worded in a way that says, “We do charge for some things & will be charging for other things at some point. Don’t get used to having everything you currently have for free”. You can’t argue with that. It’s pretty clear and from a business perspective understandable.

I have absolutely no problem paying for services. We’re in the business of getting paid for services & we pay for services all of the time if the ROI is there. Just earlier this week in some sort of prophetic thought I was thinking to myself that if Hootsuite charged $5/mo for the service I had at that point in time I’d be happy to pay it.

Beyond the whole Team Members issue (I need this to be expandable to an infinite number of users, even if it costs $4.99/mo for each additional user) their $4.99/mo a plan suites me just fine. But by charging $15 for the first team member for collaboration aspects (the “priority support” isn’t something I can see being used much & in my opinion should be there with any paid account), they’re really doing themselves no favors.

That said, I can see no good reason for most of our clients to bump up to the “Silver” plan solely for the purpose of allowing us access to their account via our account. And a good portion of them would probably be fine with the Basic plan as long as the advertising isn’t too annoying.

So having mulled this over we’ll be moving our internal Twitter collaboration over to CoTweet. Facebook pages updates will take place through our Bronze Hootsuite account or directly via Facebook by other team members. Post updates via RSS will continue to be handled via WordPress & the Facebook app. For clients, we’ll simply log into their accounts when needed. At the end of the day we may not be able to do everything the way we’d like to do it, but we can still do it.

Now it’s your turn. How will the Hootsuite changes affect you, if at all? What other applications & services do you use for your social media management? Let us know and if you’d like you can leave a voice message at 317-565-4250.

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Ten Social Media Reads, Vol 1

by Brian Groce on July 22, 2010

in Brian's Work,Watershed Studio

Here at Watershed Studio we’re always scouring our RSS and Twitter feeds to see what’s going on in the world of technology and social media. Starting today we’ll share some of the top reads we come across in nice, easy to digest, posts. Enjoy.