The Droid

All folks,

I found out that Amazon.com offers Droid for $49.99 but it still requires voice and data plan, not data-only plan. Is that possible to order that and contact Verizon to change to messaging plan?

Thanks,
Sword7
 
Sword7 said:
All folks,

I found out that Amazon.com offers Droid for $49.99 but it still requires voice and data plan, not data-only plan. Is that possible to order that and contact Verizon to change to messaging plan?

Thanks,
Sword7
Click to expand...

I wondered about that, too. That low price *may* only be good if you're using a plan at least as expensive as what you signed up with. Make sure you don't see any such restriction in the language and that you won't get stuck with a $35 or $36 activation charge if you can't get the change made.

Anyone have any luck getting a Droid for $49.99 and switching over to the data plan? Let us know!

As for the Nexus One, I've wondered how easily people can type on it, though I like how powerful the Nexus is. I didn't like the iPhone's virtual keyboard. I'm a touch typist and I don't like having to slow down so much as I did for the iPhone (which I took back).
 
I would suggest not to get that...

I am not saying 'no'.

Several reason...

1. contract, that plan you choose purpose for offer low price to get Droid
2. Verizon offer 100 dollar rebate; but no contract require to quailty.
3. Verizon isn't responbile for any damage or not working who order Amazon.com or another than Verizon.
4. You can use other like VoIP software from Vongue (spell?) software if they offer for Android.
5. Most last thing, DROID IS RULES!
 
GadgetQueen said:
I wondered about that, too. That low price *may* only be good if you're using a plan at least as expensive as what you signed up with. Make sure you don't see any such restriction in the language and that you won't get stuck with a $35 or $36 activation charge if you can't get the change made.

Anyone have any luck getting a Droid for $49.99 and switching over to the data plan? Let us know!

As for the Nexus One, I've wondered how easily people can type on it, though I like how powerful the Nexus is. I didn't like the iPhone's virtual keyboard. I'm a touch typist and I don't like having to slow down so much as I did for the iPhone (which I took back).
Click to expand...

I came across a thread on this exact topic a few days ago on one of those android/droid devoted forums. Someone posted a question about this amazon thing and was wondering what the catch was. The gist of it is that you *might* be entering in to two separate contracts; one with Amazon for 180 days for the hardware (droid) and one with Verizon for the 2 year contract.

The Amazon part requires you to be on a data plan for at least 6 months (you're "forced" to sign up at Amazon with one of their voice and data plans, however, you can change to the Unlimited Messaging w/ web, email, etc. plan.). If you are not on the plan for at least six months, then they will charge you for the non-contract price of the droid phone (minus the upfront $49.99 you paid for it).

The Verizon part is pretty simple: you break the two year contract, you owe the ETF (early termination fee), which I think is $350 (!!), but they might pro-rate somewhat for how long you've already been with them up to that point.

The important thing is to read the fine print, but Amazon is great to deal with compared to WireFly or some other 3rd party Verizon authorized vendors. That said, if I were you, I'd play it safe and just deal with Verizon all the way, meaning, I'd order the droid online (btw, use the code "webonly50" to get the droid for $149.99). I've heard great things about their customer service and how they do bend backwards to make you happy if you're reasonable. Yes, they are somewhat pricey compared to their competitors (Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile), but you get what you pay for. Their 3G network is second to none in the continental United States, depending on where you live.

Regarding the Nexus One, well, I for one, was really looking forward to it coming to Verizon (T-Mobile has terrible 3G coverage in my area so their version of the N1 is out for me) later this month. Despite it's somewhat ugly and "manly" looks, Motorola really did a great job with this phone, hardware-wise. I just read about HTC (chinese manufacturer of Google's N1 phone) and how they used cheap plastic parts, especially on the touchscreen. I won't go into details, but so many users have been returning their N1 because the touchscreen has been acting crazy. The worst part of this is that since Google has been selling their N1 phones online (not available at a T-Mobile store or online at their website), the support for these phones are severely lacking. Some N1 owners who returned their phones due to malfunctions, have been without them for quite some time. Terrible suport. Google has great thing going but they are pretty stubborn about selling it on their own website themselves. Oh yeah, their 3G antenna is another thing.. seems like when you cup the phone on the bottom, you're effectively blocking the signal reception, dropping you down to EDGE speeds (T-Mobile) which is pitifully slow, It remains to be seen if Google ordred HTC to modify the hardware somewhat before they release them to Verizon. I'll keep an eye on this on one of the Nexus One forums.

There are other Android phones coming out that is worth keeping your eyes on... the HTC Supersonice and Incredible. Like I said, I'm just leery of HTC now, given all their problems with their phone hardware (Chinese mfg).

Whatever you do, read the fine print and ask questions! There are restocking fees ($35) and activation fees ($35, too) so if you are taking this lightly, then returning it, it will set you back, especially through a 3rd party vendor. That's why it isn't that expensive when you order it online at Verizonwireless.com.... they do waive the activation fee and ship it to you overnight for free, in addition to what other discounts you could get ($50). Also, see if your workplace or bank/credit union has an agreement with Verizon to offer employees/customers discounts. My wife works for the state of Tennesee, and we are getting our monthly bill discounted at 17 percent. Every little bit helps.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best at answering them. I've spent the last 3 weeks trying various phones and from various carriers as well as spent a lot of time on various forums learning new things every day.
 
deafmarathoner said:
I came across a thread on this exact topic a few days ago on one of those android/droid devoted forums. Someone posted a question about this amazon thing and was wondering what the catch was. The gist of it is that you *might* be entering in to two separate contracts; one with Amazon for 180 days for the hardware (droid) and one with Verizon for the 2 year contract.

The Amazon part requires you to be on a data plan for at least 6 months (you're "forced" to sign up at Amazon with one of their voice and data plans, however, you can change to the Unlimited Messaging w/ web, email, etc. plan.). If you are not on the plan for at least six months, then they will charge you for the non-contract price of the droid phone (minus the upfront $49.99 you paid for it).

The Verizon part is pretty simple: you break the two year contract, you owe the ETF (early termination fee), which I think is $350 (!!), but they might pro-rate somewhat for how long you've already been with them up to that point.

The important thing is to read the fine print, but Amazon is great to deal with compared to WireFly or some other 3rd party Verizon authorized vendors. That said, if I were you, I'd play it safe and just deal with Verizon all the way, meaning, I'd order the droid online (btw, use the code "webonly50" to get the droid for $149.99). I've heard great things about their customer service and how they do bend backwards to make you happy if you're reasonable. Yes, they are somewhat pricey compared to their competitors (Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile), but you get what you pay for. Their 3G network is second to none in the continental United States, depending on where you live.

Regarding the Nexus One, well, I for one, was really looking forward to it coming to Verizon (T-Mobile has terrible 3G coverage in my area so their version of the N1 is out for me) later this month. Despite it's somewhat ugly and "manly" looks, Motorola really did a great job with this phone, hardware-wise. I just read about HTC (chinese manufacturer of Google's N1 phone) and how they used cheap plastic parts, especially on the touchscreen. I won't go into details, but so many users have been returning their N1 because the touchscreen has been acting crazy. The worst part of this is that since Google has been selling their N1 phones online (not available at a T-Mobile store or online at their website), the support for these phones are severely lacking. Some N1 owners who returned their phones due to malfunctions, have been without them for quite some time. Terrible suport. Google has great thing going but they are pretty stubborn about selling it on their own website themselves. Oh yeah, their 3G antenna is another thing.. seems like when you cup the phone on the bottom, you're effectively blocking the signal reception, dropping you down to EDGE speeds (T-Mobile) which is pitifully slow, It remains to be seen if Google ordred HTC to modify the hardware somewhat before they release them to Verizon. I'll keep an eye on this on one of the Nexus One forums.

There are other Android phones coming out that is worth keeping your eyes on... the HTC Supersonice and Incredible. Like I said, I'm just leery of HTC now, given all their problems with their phone hardware (Chinese mfg).

Whatever you do, read the fine print and ask questions! There are restocking fees ($35) and activation fees ($35, too) so if you are taking this lightly, then returning it, it will set you back, especially through a 3rd party vendor. That's why it isn't that expensive when you order it online at Verizonwireless.com.... they do waive the activation fee and ship it to you overnight for free, in addition to what other discounts you could get ($50). Also, see if your workplace or bank/credit union has an agreement with Verizon to offer employees/customers discounts. My wife works for the state of Tennesee, and we are getting our monthly bill discounted at 17 percent. Every little bit helps.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best at answering them. I've spent the last 3 weeks trying various phones and from various carriers as well as spent a lot of time on various forums learning new things every day.
Click to expand...

Amazing POST!!!! I agreed with u mostly what u said on it.. I will get Droid on May because my iphone will be expired contract. I hopefully I can get expired by this week or next week..if i want it because it should be reduced price for ETF. I will be forward to see DROID!! I had playing this Droid on Verizon store and i am loving it :)
 
fullmetal03 said:
Amazing POST!!!! I agreed with u mostly what u said on it.. I will get Droid on May because my iphone will be expired contract. I hopefully I can get expired by this week or next week..if i want it because it should be reduced price for ETF. I will be forward to see DROID!! I had playing this Droid on Verizon store and i am loving it :)
Click to expand...

Thanks! BTW, once you get the Droid and root it, you'll even love it even more!!! The stock Droid is lacking many more features I currently have right now on my "hacked" and rooted Droid with Bugless Beast 0.7.6. This allows you the pinch-zooming (multitouch) in the web browser, 3D Gallery, and Google maps. Also, you'll able to do turn by turn navigation in Google maps... it works great in "satellite" layer, too! Wild! Another thing with a rooted phone, you can make the Droid an Access Point (like the mifi) and wirelessly tether your netbook, laptop, desktop, or even another wifi-capable phone.

There's a great and large community of small-time non-paid devs who are making new apps everyday. It's fun going to the Android market and trying new apps. Get this... I got Quake3Arena working on this Droid!!! Crazy, but it worked... at around 30 to 40 fps! Using the touchscreen to do freelook was weird but it worked. :)
 
By the way, if you're afraid of rooting your phone, Motorola/Verizon is supposed to release the newer 2.1 Operating System update OTA anytime now. This will allow multitouch, 3D gallery with multitouch, and google maps turn-by-turn 3D navigation. Only thing you won't have is wireless tethering, although you can use PDANet to tether via bluetooth or USB wiring.

Another thing to think about... Motorola is "locking down" the Droid, so you will not be able to root it in the future (devs might unlock it though) unless you're already rooted. In other words, I would not do the OTA 2.1 update until I'm rooted first. It's very easy to do, if you're wondering.

Oh yeah, with a rooted Droid, I'm able to overclock from the stock 550 MHz to a stable 1000 MHz. I've run it at times at 1200 but I'm afraid to fry the cpu and see too many force closeings of apps. 800 MHz is a very good fast and safe speed, but no perceptible increase in cpu temps.
 
deafmarathoner said:
By the way, if you're afraid of rooting your phone, Motorola/Verizon is supposed to release the newer 2.1 Operating System update OTA anytime now. This will allow multitouch, 3D gallery with multitouch, and google maps turn-by-turn 3D navigation. Only thing you won't have is wireless tethering, although you can use PDANet to tether via bluetooth or USB wiring.

Another thing to think about... Motorola is "locking down" the Droid, so you will not be able to root it in the future (devs might unlock it though) unless you're already rooted. In other words, I would not do the OTA 2.1 update until I'm rooted first. It's very easy to do, if you're wondering.

Oh yeah, with a rooted Droid, I'm able to overclock from the stock 550 MHz to a stable 1000 MHz. I've run it at times at 1200 but I'm afraid to fry the cpu and see too many force closeings of apps. 800 MHz is a very good fast and safe speed, but no perceptible increase in cpu temps.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the info you've been providing!

What do you think of the Droid's keyboard? I've heard the buttons are glued on. Do you have any other concerns about the Droid?
 
Your welcome, Gadget Queen!

The Droid's keyboard is serviceable but it's not as good as the BB Bold2 and Bold2's keyboard which I used previously. Guess what? I love the touchscreen so much that I did not miss having a physical keyboard at all and I have never really used the Droid's keyboard unless I'm "hacking" (pressing down the "x" key while booting up to access the recovery menu) or playing Quake3 or an old console game emulator. With the touchscreen, I'm not squinting or looking for keys in the dark as the screen is lighted up for the keys. I find I'm typing as fast on the touchscreen as I did with the BB Bold 9700.

The keyboard is not necessary so that is why I thought about the Nexus One, until I learned about HTC and their cheap parts. It's a bonus to have now, at least to me.

By the way, I just got off the phone with a Verizon customer care rep just now and I could get my phone "call barred" (incoming calls). I know you are hearing impaired and would use the voice phone feature sometimes, but it's available (call barring) if any of you want it, to go along with the data plan only.
 
deafmarathoner said:
By the way, if you're afraid of rooting your phone, Motorola/Verizon is supposed to release the newer 2.1 Operating System update OTA anytime now. This will allow multitouch, 3D gallery with multitouch, and google maps turn-by-turn 3D navigation. Only thing you won't have is wireless tethering, although you can use PDANet to tether via bluetooth or USB wiring.

Another thing to think about... Motorola is "locking down" the Droid, so you will not be able to root it in the future (devs might unlock it though) unless you're already rooted. In other words, I would not do the OTA 2.1 update until I'm rooted first. It's very easy to do, if you're wondering.

Oh yeah, with a rooted Droid, I'm able to overclock from the stock 550 MHz to a stable 1000 MHz. I've run it at times at 1200 but I'm afraid to fry the cpu and see too many force closeings of apps. 800 MHz is a very good fast and safe speed, but no perceptible increase in cpu temps.
Click to expand...

I've seen info on other forums about rooting the Droid. If it's rooted before the update, do you know if it will it be possible to keep the wireless tethering or will that be lost after the update?

Wireless tethering would permit my old HP Ipaq and the iPod touch devices to work, but I don't know if they would work with Bluetooth.
 
Once rooted, you'll always be rooted (although you can unroot if you want to go back to stock Droid) and do wireless tethering, even after doing the 2.1 OTA updating. At least, that is my understanding from reading the forums (Androidforums, Alldroid, Droidforums, etc.). When you root, you are effectively "blocking" the 2.1 OTA update (Motorola/Verizon pushes it to your Droid) unless you manually update it (Settings/About Phone/System Updates on the Droid).
 
deafmarathoner said:
Once rooted, you'll always be rooted (although you can unroot if you want to go back to stock Droid) and do wireless tethering, even after doing the 2.1 OTA updating. At least, that is my understanding from reading the forums (Androidforums, Alldroid, Droidforums, etc.). When you root, you are effectively "blocking" the 2.1 OTA update (Motorola/Verizon pushes it to your Droid) unless you manually update it (Settings/About Phone/System Updates on the Droid).
Click to expand...

Are you saying it won't update or can still update but have to do manual by our finger tip?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0.1; en-us; Droid Build/ESD56) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

Yes, you might have to manually press the update button. Very easy thing to do that even a caveman can do it.
 
deafmarathoner said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0.1; en-us; Droid Build/ESD56) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

Yes, you might have to manually press the update button. Very easy thing to do that even a caveman can do it.
Click to expand...

HEY! Show some respect to caveman! :D
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0.1; en-us; Droid Build/ESD56) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

:)
 
thanks for explain whole root things for droid..i am amazing..so will u post youtube link on this so people can see how to work roots in droid..i see it somewhere explain so clearly that has come with closed caption.. pretty good explain.. :)

I will get droid for SURE! GO GO VERIZON!
 
deafmarathoner said:
Once rooted, you'll always be rooted (although you can unroot if you want to go back to stock Droid) and do wireless tethering, even after doing the 2.1 OTA updating. At least, that is my understanding from reading the forums (Androidforums, Alldroid, Droidforums, etc.). When you root, you are effectively "blocking" the 2.1 OTA update (Motorola/Verizon pushes it to your Droid) unless you manually update it (Settings/About Phone/System Updates on the Droid).
Click to expand...

That's good to know.

I'm still torn! It's really hard for me to justify paying $54.99 just for the data plan compared to Sprint's $29.99 plan. The Samsung Moment has an 800 Mhz processor, I understand, and it can be rooted, too.

The Droid's data plan on Verizon would be $25 more a month than the Samsung Moment's on Sprint. That's a whopping difference.

I had thought it might be worth it if I could get access to voice calls using the data plan by using Skype, MagicJack, etc. After looking at Cricket's pay as you go plan, though, I'm thinking it might be better to just pay $1 for the day when I need to use a mobile phone for voice, and to get a Samsung Moment for $29.99 a month. I think that would make me *happy* while paying $54.99 a month would feel like way too much to spend when I'm spending a lot of time at home anyway.

But people who do find it worthwhile to spend $55 a month for the Droid will have a very powerful phone that can do a lot of neat things. It'll be interesting to see what develops, like whether you'll be able to see captioned videos from YouTube.
 
Well Verizon get rlyy good coverage lol.. that is the reason little expensive plan :P btw If u get voice mail so use google voice it will convert to text for u very well :)

i seen it on youtube and i was very impressive with google!!!! that why i am going to be android fan :D
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0.1; en-us; Droid Build/ESD56) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

Yeah, VZ is expensive but it does come with unlimited sms and mms. That's an add-on for Sprint (mms is not included in the sprint relay plan of $29.99/mo.

Regarding the Moment having a 800 MHz processor, well it's not on the same level of the stock Droid @ 550 MHz. You're comparing apples and oranges as the Droid is using one of the fastest cpu for smartphones (cortex arm7) other than tge snapdragon cpu which is in the nexus one. Btw, the same cpu in the droid is also in the iphone 3gs.

It's already determined that the droid and the nexus one are the only two android phones getting flash 10.1 by adobe. The moment will not get it because it's not fast or powerful enough to run it.
 
deafmarathoner said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0.1; en-us; Droid Build/ESD56) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

Yes, you might have to manually press the update button. Very easy thing to do that even a caveman can do it.
Click to expand...

when will it going release?
 
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