Droid Bionic on Verizon

I finally have grudgingly given in to having an Android based phone. Here I will post my experiences.

Bought Saturday, October 8th, 2011.

I am going to adding updates to this posting probably daily for a few days as I fiddle with and use the phone, to share the experience and observations with others. This will not be an especially well structured posting, more a bunch of notes initially. Later I may post a separate article that is more structured based on these notes. Hopefully others find this useful however.

System Information:

Version: 5.5.886.XT875.Verizon.en.US

Model: Droid Bionic

Android Version: 2.3.4

Baseband version: CDMA_N_03.1C.50R Itedc_u_05.15.00

Webtop version:

WT-1.3.0-105_DBN-1

Kernel: 2.6.35.7-g790a33c hpn683@il93lnxdroid29 #1

Build Number: 5.5.1_84_DBN-55

ERI version: 5

PRL version: 15061

Battery:

Charged it fully, unplugged Monday October 10th at 8:25 am.

15% warning at 11:45 am.

5% warning at 12:29 pm.

Phone forced shutdown at 12:55 pm.

At this point plugged in to charge. after fully charged standard battery, then swapped and began charging extended battery (2760 mAh).

Not using battery mangement yet, just default.

Have bluetooth enabled. Used it for speaker phone twice during that time for about 2-3 minutes at a time.

had wifi running but not being used.

Had both 3g and 4g enabled. Drove between North Spokane and Cheney, with signal dropping to as low as 1 bar and no 4g the closer to Cheney.

Installed and uninstalled a few apps. read a number of the EULA and privacy policies (disturbing).

Sent and received a dozen text messages via SMS.

Read some gmail email.

Viewed and made some changes to calendar.

Added some accounts for twitter, facebook, linkedin, yahoo, and a few others.

was NOT using gthe bluetooth external keyboard during this time (used it Sunday for testing, it worked fine).

Was not watching or listening to multimedia (video, audio streams, etc.).

So far only used 60.34 MB according to the "My Data Usage" applet on the desktop.

Did not use the camera (pic or video mode).

Weird, under Apps > Settings > Privacy Settings.

The only options are:

Backup and Restore:

* Back up my data - back up appliucation data, WiFi-passwords, and other settings to Google servers

* Automatic Restore - If I reinstall an application, restore backed up settings or other data.

Personal Data:

* Factory Data reset - Erases all data on phone.

Doesn't really have that much to do with privacy (at least not directly), very odd categorization.

I miss the multi-windows, and swipe away features of WebOS on the Pre.

I REALLY miss a physical keyboard. I try to avoid using my phone while driving, but it does happen. With a physical keyboard I could do it mostly by touch, rarely having to look at the screen at all (a few typos, but manageable). With the on screen keyboard however, I can't do it by touch at all, and even when fully paying attention (can't do it while driving at all), have nearly as many typos as I had when touch typing with one hand on the Palm Pre! I assume this will improve with use as far as when viewed, but I doubt the touch typing will ever work out. Anyone had any luck learning to just touch type their on-screen keyboards?

Awful lot of adware for the free apps, much worse than WebOS (especially with Preware catalog used). Is there an Android equivalent to Preware's more open source catalog?

Location and Security Settings

I made certain the following unchecked:

Google Location Services

Standalone GPS services

VZW location services.

Share picture location. I had UNCHECKED this on Sunday, but when viewing again Monday, it was re-enabled (maybe an app install re-enabled it?).

Set up screen lock PIN.

Enabled Tactile feedback (was unchecked, thought it was enabled previously, could be wrong).

Security lock time, set to 1 minute, was at default of 20 minutes.

Allow Bluetooth bypass (not checked).

did not yet change:

Set up restriction lock

Sim card lock

Data encryption

Visible passwords (kept unchecked)

Select device administrators

Use securre credentials

install from SD card.

Set password

Clear storage

Mangae trusted certificates.

Will look into those later.

More to come....

About Android and Open Source apps and issues:

http://www.infoworld.com/t/mobile-apps/study-70-percent-iphone-and-android-open-source-apps-violate-licenses-892
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/OpenLogic-open-source-mobile-app-study/
http://osliving.com/sourced/open-source/10-essential-free-and-open-source-android-apps/
http://opensourceandroidapps.com/
http://www.aopensource.com/ Android Open Source
http://gcn.com/articles/2011/06/09/google-android-not-so-open-source-after-all.aspx
http://developer.android.com/index.html Latest Android developer information
http://www.slideshare.net/OpenLogic/open-source-in-android-apps-tips-for-becoming-a-good-open-source-citizen
http://f-droid.org/ Android Free and Open Source Repository
http://dottech.org/android/23906/android-root-required-adaway-is-an-open-source-app-for-blocking-ads-on-your-android-device/
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/is-android-open/
http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f23/alternative-android-markets-25777/
http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f23/alternative-android-markets-25777/index2.html
http://www.android-markets-info.com/android-markets-list
http://applanet.net/
http://androvation.com/

UPDATE: After several years of use, my summary is: terrible phone. Had t replace it 3-4 times, and never-ending software and hardware problems.