Moto Droid X

[Uncle Fester]

So I call yesterday and talk to the store manager of the Local Corporate store, he says they have 25 DX coming in and only 5 presold.

I get up get dressed and head over to be waiting when they open.
My buddy had no idea wtf was going on when he got there this morning to pay his bill. He calls me at 845 and says there is atleast 30 people waiting for them to open. Im like FUUUUUUUUUUUCK MEEEEE.

I tell him the new droid x is released today. Hes like oh fuck really? So I get there and figure fuck it maybe they got more than I was told. Talking with a couple people and the sales people come out right as they are to open and say they have 25 droid x phones and to make it fair they are going to pass out tickets to everybody. You put your name on it and they will draw out 25 names.

About half the people got pissed and left leaving what I thought was less than 20 people. So they go about drawing tickets and at 23 Im like wtf? I just counted heads there is only 22 people. I guess 4 people had went inside to pay their bill. And was trying to get the droid x.

So when they draw name number 25 Im like fuck it. And I turn to leave and my buddy is like holy shit they drew my name but I was on the phone. I wanted to punch him in the balls so fucking bad. He was talking to me about taking out our four wheelers this weekend, I think, I was so pissed I just walked away and left.

So I think hell Best Buy said they would have around 50. So I jet over there and go talk to the wireless guys. They are like yeah yeah we have some in stock. The guy goes to get one comes back like 5 minutes later and says "sorry it look like we only got 5 in and 4 are presold and 1 is being held for a employee." Im like what? Held for a employee? Im a customer you dont hold product when a customer asks for it. Hes like sorry I tired but they wont let me sell it. Thats when I get REAL loud. And "say ya know man that is messed up your holding a product for a employee when a customer is asking for it."

The store manager comes over and asks the problem is. I tell him Im being denied a items because your holding it for a employee. He tries to calm the situation but Im pissed at this point. He tells me give me a few to go figure this out and goes into the magic back room. Comes back out a few minutes later and tells me he is sorry but the wireless dude was incorrect all 5 phones where preorders and paid for.

He tells me he can have me one tomorrow by 11 if I want. I tell him no thanks I can order off the verizon site myself. But if he wants to toss in some accessories I might consider it, seeing as how they advertised to have them in stock and ready for sale but only had the preorders. He said he couldnt do that. SO i walked out the door. Caome home and ordered one off verizons site and baring any bullshit order fuck up it should be here tomorrow.

[Jorus]

You aren't going to give it a month to see what bugs the users flesh out?

Brave man.

[Mulch]

he has been crowing about a new phone for a few weeks

i told him to wait for this one

ideally, yes, wait for the .1 version to handle the initial bug wave

but android is pretty solid os... it seems to be a hardware buff of regular droid, so i dont imagine there will be any major problems

of course, no one can predict these things

[Roxie]

You do know if you wait a day or so, they will have more.

This whole handing out tickets is a lame ass way of trying to generate buzz.

"OMG They sold out" some idiot yells in the phone to the local news outlet, some marketing drone is laughing as the media runs stories about the phone selling out as soon as the store opens.

[Mulch]

in the last few years before the interwebs took off, ticketmaster was still an outlet thing

if you wanted tickets, you got up early on the weekend or spent the night camped out in front of the record store/mall/wherever the ticketmaster outlet was

this hurt biznesses to have people camped out, so they started the bracelet method to discourage camping

about a half hour before the onsale, bracelets with numbers on them were passed out randomly to everyone

after everyone had a bracelet, a random bracelet was drawn and the next sequential number after the bracelet went 1st

so i imagine the tickets are just another way to avoid people camping out

[Roxie]

Last year there was a game for the xbox that was all the rage. My son drove by the Gamespot when they opened and saw a line around the building. One of his friends was in the line and reported they sold out 10 minutes after the doors opened.

My son returned the next day, there where no lines. He got his game, the manager was telling him they were told only to sell a handful of games on the release date. He had a back room that was full of games.


People can't get their useless trinkets on the day they expected, it makes news and free buzz.

[Uncle Fester]

You do know if you wait a day or so, they will have more.Well duh. But why chance not getting another one?
Instead of waiting for the dummy at the store to "program" my phone Ill just open the box call the number and be done with it. I will have more time to play with it that way heh.

This whole handing out tickets is a lame ass way of trying to generate buzz.

"OMG They sold out" some idiot yells in the phone to the local news outlet, some marketing drone is laughing as the media runs stories about the phone selling out as soon as the store opens.
really? no shit?

Sorry to be a ass, Im aware of marketing ploys like this. I just talked to my buddy that got one, he said after I left about 20 more people came to get the phone. One guy expressed his displeasure and mentioned he was calling the local tv station. The manager laughed and said ok but why? These people here are getting the phone. We never promised to be able to supply all of Branson with the phone.

As for Best Buy...cant blame me for trying for a free charger and case right?



Also Mulch I said I was going to get a Droid Incredible and you over heard the conversation with Imaya, and told me to hold out for the Droid X. I have had three chances to get the htc phone and decided to take your advise. Now the past week my crackberry has been the biggest pos and I cant figure it out. I reverted back to the official OS from Verizon and it still drains my battery after a 15 minute phone call. I cant use it to stream my music like I was able without draining the battery super fast. I was going to hold out till the ne2 time frame but I cant figure out how to fix this. My phone will just die after sitting unplugged fromt he charger or pc for about 2 hours. That is not acceptable. Its not a battery issue either, I talked the people at Verizon into giving me a new battery last week and it still goes dead after about 2 hours unplugged.

[Uncle Fester]

Also Roxie not sure if I made this clear.
I will have mine in the morning/afternoon.
Around the same time they will get more in.
But instead of having to deal with a store I just have to call a 800 number and be done with it.

[Mulch]

not totally related... i got a replacement battery for my droid on amazon for like $12

charged it and now i have a spare in my bag if i have a long day and cant get near a charger

give it a month or so and check for replacement batteries, REALLY cheap (make sure it is for X tho)

[Govi]

I have noticed that in my BB Storm, some applications suck battery bigtime. Leaving Google Maps open, for example, is an invitation to low battery in a few hours. I've never had your extreme of that problem, though, so you may have something else sucking juice even more than does Google Maps.

[Uncle Fester]

I have noticed that in my BB Storm, some applications suck battery bigtime. Leaving Google Maps open, for example, is an invitation to low battery in a few hours. I've never had your extreme of that problem, though, so you may have something else sucking juice even more than does Google Maps.
Im thining its google maps, but the last install I only installed a different theme and slider lock. Two hours latter dead battery. I was told give it a day for the os to settle and see what happens then. Same thing so I removed slider lock and I gained like 20 minutes of battery.

Dont get me wrong I love my storm. But I dont like the new storm 2, I thought I would but the one I played with for a couple days in Feb sucked balls. The only thing it has that I wanted was the ability to connect via wifi. Otherwise its the same as my phone.

And Mulch Ill have to check in a month or so for a spare battery. Hopefully things will work out and Ill be offline for a couple days will need a extra battery during that time.

[Mulch]

dont sign up for the additional $20 a month mobile hotspot thing from verizon

you dont need it, tethering is free (pdanet), and im sure you can root your phone and apply "vanilla" froyo (android os 2.2) which has mobile tethering and mobile wi fi native, you will just lose verizon specific features if you go that route (i suspect, not enough known about the phone and hardware to be sure)

[Govi]

I keep only 6 applications open and running on my Storm when it's in my purse: Visual Voicemail, Phone, Browser, BB Messenger, Home, & Messages. So, after a day of in and out of my purse checking email, it's still got 50% battery, and that after about 20 minutes phone use via my Bluetooth headset.

[HEX BLACKTHORNE]

dont sign up for the additional $20 a month mobile hotspot thing from verizon

you dont need it, tethering is free (pdanet), and im sure you can root your phone and apply "vanilla" froyo (android os 2.2) which has mobile tethering and mobile wi fi native, you will just lose verizon specific features if you go that route (i suspect, not enough known about the phone and hardware to be sure)

DROID X SELF DESTRUCTS IF YOU TRY TO MOD (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/07/14/droid-x-actually-self-destructs-if-you-try-to-mod-it/)

[Mulch]

ick, not good

not too late to send it back and get an incredible, fester?

[Govi]

DROID X SELF DESTRUCTS IF YOU TRY TO MOD (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/07/14/droid-x-actually-self-destructs-if-you-try-to-mod-it/)

It seems to me that sooner or later, one of the authorized OS updates will fail to behave properly in all phones and cause the eFuse to brick the phones. These things are never absolutely reliable. So, one day soon, properly obedient Droids will turn to bricks and the companies involved will have a s***storm with which to deal.

[Uncle Fester]

ick, not good

not too late to send it back and get an incredible, fester?
god damn it.
See I have been leary of Motorola for a couple years, but the reviews of the OG Droid and the statements of the DX made me second guess myself.

Its too late to cancel the order just tried.
Guess Ill be fucked for a while till froyo gets pushed.
I also hope for the day some twit at moto gets pissed pushes a update that bricks all phones and they have to replace them all.

eta: Just got off the phone with a supervisor that called me back.I can use the droid x till the incredible ships...which is aug 3...FML.
I dunno what to do now. :chair:

[Phoenix Psaltery]

Yeah, as I recall Verizon has a 30 day return on all its phones. Seems like that's what I saw on their website last time I logged in, anyhow.

P2

[Jorus]

dont sign up for the additional $20 a month mobile hotspot thing from verizon

you dont need it, tethering is free (pdanet), and im sure you can roo

DROID X SELF DESTRUCTS IF YOU TRY TO MOD (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/07/14/droid-x-actually-self-destructs-if-you-try-to-mod-it/)

Possible according to the folks at /. The standard droid came with this too but not enabled. Give it a week for details.

[Uncle Fester]

Possible according to the folks at /. The standard droid came with this too but not enabled. Give it a week for details.
Its there.
I did see they are pushing a update to all phones once activated.
Its to fix a hole Moto found after they were produced.
Lets hope its a rogue fix to this.
Maybe the android community succeeded like the wow community.:thewave:

[Mulch]

go with the incredible

i know you like to tinker, and you can tinker with the incredible

the og droid is awesome, but i had no idea motorola was going to parlay so much success right into fail

sorry

the incredible has similar specs and reviews (and some like htcsense way better)

[Mulch]

a thing to remember, fester

im still on 2.1 on the og droid and i love it, its not as fast as i want (although 2.2 is supposed to speed up things by up to 6 times) when multitasking, but it is faster than what i need (except it takes forever to get to the camera even with the shortcut of holding the take picture physical button)

what really makes the phone great is the android operating system. it is open sourced and that is one of the main draws as a long term stable solution. it is also a brilliant operating system. it can be improved, but it is very intuative

i suggested droid because the hardware looked superior and the og droid is a solid, awesome piece of tech

but that fuse is a fatal flaw

the droid x was only slightly better than the incredible, so go with the incredible

it is still TWICE as fast and much larger (in terms of speed, and memory/storage) with better cameras than what i have, and mine rocks hard

the incredible would be my choice knowing what i know. androids brilliance is open source. that fuse sounds like a deal breaker (wonder if you can resell the phone later), as eventually you are going to want to do something that android does but your carrier doesnt want to you to do (tether, google talk, wi fi hot spot), and you will want to load a clean kernal to do that

i would stick with a moddable android version as a 1st step to buying a phone, and then base it on hardware. htc incredible wins hands down at that point, and droid x has a fatal flaw... although it might be very useful from a security perspective, just set off the fuse on a stolen phone.

[Uncle Fester]

Got it this morning around 10ish...been playing with it ever since.

Having issues getting my music synced up as I hate windows media player...any sugestions?

[Mulch]

on the website, motorola has a sync tool (or did for og droid)

use that, but i think you will need to manually sync it

[Cherish]

I thought this was so funny. My friend's wife was supposed to order him the Droid X for his birthday. He said she thought she would be slick, not order it, but pick it up at the store. We all know how that went, she couldn't get one and now can't order one until next week. He told her he doesn't want the damn phone anymore and to just give him the $300 instead, because ironically enough, it only costs $299 to initiate a dissolution of marriage online without a lawyer. I don't think he is too happy with me either because I can't stop laughing.

[Mulch]

so fester, aside from the fuse thing, how is the phone?

[Uncle Fester]

so fester, aside from the fuse thing, how is the phone?
First impression...holy fuck how the hell do I operate this thing..


Now about 8 hours later...holy fuck how did I break that....


Give me a few days of playing around and Ill try to write a decent legible review. But so far I like it.

[Mulch]

if its like OG droid, the learning curve is perfect... very intuitive

[Mulch]

i have a sneaking suspicion

that you are going to keep the droid x because it is such a bad ass device

i judge that from your silence

i understand, 1 minute with the og android and both :kita: and i (at different times) immediately clicked with it

i just want you to know i understand, it clicks, and all of a sudden, it is THE ONE

i still LOVE MY DROID

my OG DROID

and i am sure there is TONS TO LOVE about the droid x, ffs i recommended it to you without question

the tech guy, Leo Laporte (http://techguylabs.com/radio/pmwiki.php) said he shelved his iPhone 4 a few minutes after getting his droid x. he was done with iPhone 4, droid x was better

the fuse thing is major.... trust me on this... you may not want tethering now, you may not want to be a wi fi hotspot now, you may not want to run custom droid roms now, but you may want to later

remember this important detail

android is an OPERATING SYSTEM

you should look at your phone purchase like a computer purchase at this point

both the droid x and the new htc have about double the specs on my og droid across the board

everything you can do is determined by the company who builds the phone since they make hardware, and simply use the exact same operating system with their particular tweaks

htc vs moto is pretty much even in a hardware only class... they each hold their own at everything well

htc has 2 distinct advantages (audio/visual qualities aside)

hts sense, which people seem to ABSOLUTELY LOVE vs motos thing (a hidden media manager download that is utterly basic is motos main utility)

htcs apparent lack of a fuse

you may not want the flash, the 3+Xs speed, the (free) tethering, the (free) wi fi hotspotness, the software upgrades of 2.2.

but you may want 2.3, but moto will choke you out of the feature you must have with the fuse

as far as i know, htc wont... niether will og droid, neither will any android operating system phone prior

which is why, despite how amazing droid x seems, it is not the best choice long term

when 2.3 or 2.4 or 2.5 or hell, even android 3.0 is released, and you still have your phone, the hardware will be your number one concern

both droid x and htc will pwn with hardware (about twice mine across the board, and i love mine and it works great), but when it comes down to software, with droid x, you will be in the same situation as you would with iphone, a slave to motorolos limitations

go with the htc... use the droid x, love the droid x, learn wtf you are doing on the droid x, but when you get the htc, THAT seems like the keeper (for a 2 year contract,then resell on ebay, it will will still be a badass phone with a bad ass operating system in 2 years)

just my 2 cents and amendment to my initial droid x phone (which has awesome hardware, but the fuse is a crippling limitation when their are alternatives out there)

[Uncle Fester]

Im gonna answer some statements youve made.

Regarding the efuse. Moto has announced that it wont brick the phone.
What it does is make the phone blank screen till you reload the official software.


Currently there is about 50 android hackers burning hte midnight oil to figure this one out.
They want this phone cracked and want it done a week ago.
So I think there will end up being a way to load roms on.


As for tethering...pdnet you told me to get it, even tho I already knew about it from my crackberry. It works via bluetooth and once I get stuff on my notebook the usb tethering will be working.

I am following the cracking of the droid closer that you can imagine.
I joined three of the best android/moto droid forums just to keep track of whats happening.

Now regarding getting the htc...even if I tried to order it today I wont get it till the end of August. Online orders are all but locked down. At the Verizon store the rep told me they are being told ship dates are 4-5 weeks from the order date.

While waiting I played with the htc again. I like it I just dont think its the phone for me. I dunno but when you use a phone like these for a few minutes you can tell the one that your comfortable with. And I wasnt comfortable with the htc.

Im feeling like shit right now so I will finish this later. But trust me Im following the status of the efuse very close. I ont spend 200bucks on a piece of tech and then just piss it away.

[Vengence Opus]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/22/droid-x-can-now-be-counted-among-the-rooted/

It's recently come to our attention that Birdman over at the AllDroid.org forums has rooted the Droid X. By all accounts (which, at the time of this writing, consists of two forum posts that exclaim "it works!") things are going beautifully, so what do you think? Ready to pierce the soft underbelly of your smartphone's OS? Been dying to get a hot session of ADB going? Hit the source link, and remember: if you brick your phone, you only have yourself to blame.

[Govi]

http://www.nsta.org/involved/cse/red_brick_01.jpg

[Uncle Fester]

Ok I read the how-to on the rooting of the Droid-X.
It looks pretty simple, I even think Ill be able to do it.
Im holding out for now tho to see how hard it is to unroot it.

I think the update they pushed might have ninja disabled some of hte security.
I dunno tho.
I glad its been rooted and hope to see the unroot soon.
Ive found a couple themes I really like but need root access to install them.

[Uncle Fester]

I just rooted my droid x.
I used the steps given by birdman only instead I did it all on the phone using better terminal emulator.

Now lets remove the bloatware :P.

[Uncle Fester]

Ok I followed another guide to remove the bloatware installed by moto/verizon.
Pretty simple and straight forward.
Basically you rename the files.
But you have to be careful as to what you rename.
Some files will disable the phone.

So I removed the blockbuster app the amazon mp3 app and some others.
I also changed the photo gallery to the stock android.
Omg that is so much better. Only thing I need to edit my picasa page to remove some photos :P.


Now to the even better news.
Apparently somebody has figured out how to unroot the phone also. (http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-x-hacks/62916-unrooting-droidx.html)
Which is nice.
For any of you that have a droid/android phone that forum is imo a must have bookmark.
Tons of good info.

Oh yeah I just changed the music player to a mod by Eliot Stacker. makes the default player much nicer IMO. And with isyncr I can get rid of the music player apps.

[Uncle Fester]

So I was reading a bit ago on the droid forums about people using blackberry and other phone brands chargers to charge their DX. Then it was mentioned that the best charger is to plug it in to the computer and allow it to use the usb to charge. It technically will use less energy this way.

I had been using my blackberry car charger when I was in my truck to power the mobile dock. I remembered oh yeah I have usb ports on my Pioneer H/U. So I grabbed the usb cable and ran out to see if it would work...and it did. Phone will charge and it allows me to play the music straight off the sd card. Since its like 1045pm here I didnt wanna sit out in my truck very long. But I will plug it in tomorrow again and see how well it does. my only concern is it makes the sd card unavailable so maybe my custom ringtones wont work properly. That can be fixed by coping them to the phone memory so no worries there.