These Are The Droids You're Looking For.... Droid X Gets Reviewed.

With the release of the Droid X into the wild, I was waiting for a hands on review from one of our tech heads. Well Matt was the first to pick one up, and it looks like he's in love.

Check his bullet points:

Pro’s:

- I like the larger display. Really makes it all flow nicely. I like what I’ve seen on the display as well

- 512 MB of internal memory. With the app to kill apps so accessible, it’s really nice

- Complete integration into social apps. Facebook contacts populate your regular ones and add photos, etc. Twitter as well. Means one stop for all messaging

- Really fast. It may have been my regular iPhone 3G but there were lots of delays, slowness, etc. For instance the Facebook app is a screamer

- 8mp camera with natural zoom takes a good quality photo. The videos are sick!

- Apps cover a lot of missed ground. DoubleTwist will sync up my iTunes playlists (minus the old protected DRM songs) to my phone. Means I take my music with me still

- The App store on the phone is very much like the iPhone store. I never used the iTunes store on my PC to shop so it doesn’t affect me

- The slew of Google apps that come along are geeky, fun

- Battery life even on 3G all the time (no ability to turn off) is really good. I used it all day browsing web, apps, store, etc. and took it down to about 20%

- The accessories. The home media dock is slick. HDMI connection to TV, plugging in drops it to Alarm clock mode and modifies the apps directly accessible. The car dock turns it automatically into GPS mode, with Google navigation and music being presented.

- Able to directly upload photos from Camera app to other apps, which I haven’t seen happen in iPhones

- Swype input method is pretty f’ing awesome. And the large virtual keyboard is really nice

Con’s:

- Android isn’t quite as polished right now as the iOS. I expected that, though. It’s still to me a step beyond BB and is only a half-step or so behind the iPhone.

- Some more manual management of apps. Which is somewhat like it is in the iPhone now that there is multi-tasking

- Apps don’t work with all phones because there are different platforms/OS versions. Being a new device I don’t have that problem, though

- No Chase app. Though mobile Chase is a pretty decent website.

Overall I’m very happy. I got into this knowing that it wouldn’t be what I had with the iPhone but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at what it truly is. And the fact that I’ll get the Froyo OS next month (with Flash!) I couldn’t be happier.

It is a learning curve, though.

Via Matt Carstensen

Zero Punctuation takes on Sims 3

I knew before I even saw this that it would be hilarious.  If you’ve never watched Zero Punctuation, you will enjoy it.  And as always it is NSFW.

Yahtzee is a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder. When he isn't talking very fast into a headset mic he also designs freeware adventure games and writes the back page column for PC Gamer, who are too important to mention us. His personal site is www.fullyramblomatic.com.

My 3G iphone Experience

Here’s the thing….

I’ve been waiting for the second gen iphone for well over a year, mainly because I knew that 3G and GPS was a feature that Apple wouldn’t miss out on. So I waited, and waited, and waited. Finally Apple announces that the wait is over on July 11^th, and come get in line for your new 3G iphone. Well I usually have to work on Friday so that wasn’t going to be an option, besides they should have plenty of them when I get off of work right? Uhhh, No.

My wife hears that they might run out of the 16GB version quickly, and offered to go wait in line for me. I said no; don’t go waiting in line with my 2 year old son for a damn phone. The sweet woman goes anyway, and waits 4 hours to get to the front of the line. After hours of waiting and hassles with AT&T about my corporate discount, I finally have the 16GB Jesus phone in my hand.

And I have to say that it is glorious!!!

Obviously the UI is the best part about the iphone , and the ability to access any website with the speed of 3G is nothing short of fantastic. The GPS feature works incredibly well, even though voice turn by turn version is in the works via third party. I can’t tell you how cool it was to travel on the expressway while watching my progress as a blue pulsing dot on the iphone. I wanted to test how good the display is, so I loaded the movie “Transformers” on it and put it through its paces. The display is nothing short of great, if you can get past watching a movie on a small display. Texting and entering in url information takes some getting use to, as I wish Apple gave you the option to text in landscape mode like it does while surfing the internet. That would help with people who don’t have small hands, to be able to hold the device sideways while typing. As good as the 3G is in the iphone, it comes with a price, mainly the battery. If you’re a heavy internet surfer and you’re going to use 3G to do it, get ready to recharge your phone after about 2 ½ to 3 hours. Fortunately Apple gives you the option to turn the 3G off and use the Edge network for simple things, which makes sense. If you need your iphone to hold a charge for a couple of days, I recommend turning off the 3G, and only turn it on when you need the speed.

Overall, I can’t recommend this phone highly enough!!!

Well that’s all I have for now. But I’ll put together another review once I get the ok to connect it to our Exchange servers in my company.