It’s finally semi-official. My Verizon PR rep let me know this morning that the Droid Eris would definitely be getting an update to 2.0. She had nothing for me to point to as official word, but now Eric Zeman on Information Week is reporting that same information. I let you go to the link for the details on that.

This is really good news to the folks who like the Eris. It does, however, highlight a negative of Sense, the delay in getting the latest Android. I think it is worth the wait though.

Filed in categories: Android related

Tagged: Android, eclair, eris, verizon

Droid Eris Will Get Android 2.0 or 2.1 in Q1 2010 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 4, 2009 at 3:14 pm.

The Droid Eris is the first Android phone with the Sense UI I have been able to play with. I was suspicious about the add-on (see previous post) but was pleasantly surprised.

What’s in the box:

• Phone
• USB Cable
• Power Adapter

I love the fact that the prongs in the power adapter fold into the unit. This is a really good design, and it is a shame the Droid did not do the same. Obviously not a make or break feature, but well thought out.

Connections

HTC loves their oddly shaped mini-USB port. Luckily a normal cable will fit, though the HTC cable won’t fit into a standard mini-USB port. It also comes with a headphone jack. Again, I am happy to see this becoming the norm.

Styling

To be fair, I am an HTC fan. I remember the jealousy I experienced when a colleague first showed off his HTC Touch phone. The styling on this phone is reminiscent of that. It feels solid, and had the rubberized finish of other HTC phones. I was never crazy about the G1′s design, but this is a step up.

Here is a stack with the G1 at the base, and the Droid and Eris on top.

It may not seem that slimmer in this picture, but it is. Add into it the soft curves and the Eris feels a lot smaller than the droid.

Controls

I like the inclusion of the Call and End Call buttons on the phone. I never was a huge fan of the trackball on my G1, but the one on the Eris seems to work better to me.

I really miss a dedicated camera button. This is the first Android phone I have used without one. When you launch the camera, pushing the trackball serves as the shutter. Not as smooth as the shutter button on my G1 and he Droid, and you lose the functionality of a long press on the shutter to open the camera in the first place.

Phone Quality

I sometimes forget these are phones, with all the bells and whistles. Both this Droid Eris, and the Droid phone haa great call quality. I would give the edge to the Motorola Droid, but not by much.

Operating System

The Eris ships with Android 1.5, but adds the Sense UI. I really like the Sense UI, and consider this close to a wash versus Android 2.0. I am also sure they are working to update the Sense UI for Android 2.0. As I mentioned in the previous post, this is the cost of the custom UIs, you are probably going to see a slight delay on the latest and greatest OS.

Speed

The Eris has the same processor speed as the G1, but with more memory and the UI, it feels noticeably faster than my G1.

Keyboard

This phone does not come with a physical keyboard. I expected this to be a big deal, I have grown to like the keyboard on my G1, and never enjoyed using the virtual keyboard on my wife’s iPod Touch. I was wrong. This keyboard is intelligently designed, and a joy to use. The key is to use a light touch. The screen is very responsive, and the harder you press the wider your contact is. Here is a comparison:

Droid Eris:

Droid:

I really like the fact that the Eris keyboard has a button to close it (the bottom-left) and the quick access to settings (the gear icon next to it).

Conclusions

I highly recommend you look at the other postings in this series, but I really liked this phone. It is not an easy call between it and the Droid. I still feel comfortable with my comparison of the Droid Eris vs. Droid. Depending on your preferences, one of these two phones may be a clear winner. I still keep going back and forth, but my deep set geek traits leans slightly to the Motorola Droid. But last week it was to the Eris, so who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Filed in categories: Android related, Reviews

Tagged: Android, eris, HTC, verizon

HTC Droid Eris Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 16, 2009 at 6:52 am.

One of the key differences with the Doid Eris is the UI that HTC has developed for their Android phones. The Sense UI provides a smoother interface to the stock Android interface. I am seeing this trend in a lot of phones. Motorola has the Blur, Samsung the Cube, and I am sure there will be more to follow.

Here I want to focus on what the Sense UI brings to the party. I’ll break it down to:

• UI Enhancements
• Widgets
• Core Extensions
• Extra Applications

I have mixed emotions on the current supplemental UI trend. On the one hand, anything that makes the phone more accessible has got to be a good thing, on the other hand, I am afraid that it fragments the market. Someone using an HTC phone may not take to the Motorola version as quickly. Of course, that is probably exactly why the handset manufacturers are embracing this trend.

Another issue, that is apparent with both the Droid and the Eris, is the delay in getting the latest Android OS. The Droid ships with Android 2.0 and without Motorola’s Blur interface. I can only assume this is because the Blur is not ready to work with Eclair. The Eris ships with Android 1.5 and the Sense UI, and I have heard they are working on updating the UI to work with 2.0. So if you want to have the latest and greatest, the UI add-ons are going to delay that for you.

UI Enhancements

First and foremost, the Sense UI means that the UI for your Android phone is going to look a little different.

The Icons in the Notification bar are redesigned to be smaller, and also have a different look. Another change is the bottom of the screen. In the Standard Android OS you get a single centered tab that you tap to see the applications tray. With the Sense UI the center button is now the Phone button, used to launch the phone app, and the applications button is moved to the left with a new add button on the right.

The Phone button seems redundant on the Eris. One of the things I like about it is that it has the familiar green call and red hang-up buttons on the phone. You don’t ever need to tap the phone button on the screen. The add button is, well, a nice add. I know folks new to Android can be confused how to add things to the home pages, now it is more obvious. Experienced users can still use the long-press to add an item.

The home page now has Seven pages, rather than the standard three. This comes in really handy with the new widgets that HTC provides. When you go to add an item on a page, you get a number of options:

We’ll cover the new HTC Widgets later. Shortcuts are not actually changed in Sense UI, but it is helpful to look at what you can create. You can add shortcuts to a:

• Bookmark
• Gmail label
• Mail Inbox
• Music Playlist
• Person
• Program

I really like the ability to add a person. You can select how to contact them and create a direct dial to their mobile, home, work or even SMS them.

Other refinements I discussed in the First Looks: Droid Eris including improved media player interface, lock-out screen that lets you quickly control music player and enhanced widgets.

HTC Widgets

I could do a whole series of post on the HTC Widgets. I love the enhanced music widget, the mail widget, and the messaging widget. They take up a lot of real estate on the screen, but make your information quickly accessible. The Photo Frame is an enhancement on the Picture Frame widget in Android. You can tap on the picture to view it from the HTC widget. HTC also has a Photo Album widget that allows you to quickly browse through the pictures in an album by simply flicking up and down on the widget screen.

Core Extensions

These are the features you don’t necessarily see, but enhance the experience nonetheless. A big one is Exchange support. This did not exist in Android before 2.0. I like the implementation in the Sense UI a little better. Your calendar events appear in one unified calendar, no need to check a separate Corporate Calendar application. You can also set a signature for your Exchange, POP and IMAP accounts. You can’t do this in the stock Android 2.0 mail application. You can, of course, download a replacement mail application on the Market that would allow you to do it, but it is nice to have it built-in.

The Sense UI also takes Facebook integration a step farther and adds Flickr integration. You can attach your Facebook friends and Flickr contacts to your contact list. Now as updates occur to these contacts, you get a notice on your phone. Here you can see upcoming birthdays, and a list of updates folks made in Facebook and Flickr:

If I tap on my name I can see a summary of all my Facebook notifications:

If I tap on an individual I see the details of their update:

This has been one of the nicest features of the Sense UI for me. I will really miss this when I am back on the G1.

Extra Applications

HTC also includes some applications with the Sense UI. Two that I especially like are the Voice Recorder and Peep.

The Voice recorder is a very simple recorder for your phone. You can record on your phone, and set the recording as a ringtone, right from the application. Nothing fancy, and there are apps in the Market that do similar things, but a nice add.

Peep is my favorite, though. It is a Twitter client for your Sense UI Android phone. It is the smoothest Twitter client for Android that I have used. It does not have the multi-account features of other clients, but works wonderfully.

It provides simple tools across the bottom to access you Twitter stream, any mentions, direct mentions and favorites. You can choose among photo hosts for picture attachments and URL shorteners. Not an exhaustive list, but can choose from more than one.

Conclusions

I really like this UI. All things being equal, I would choose an Android phone with the Sense UI over one without. Of course all things are not equal. Unfortunately using the Sense UI today means being on Android 1.5. The only other negative I found was that the home page will not rotate to landscape view. Not a huge deal, and I am not sure this will change, some of the widgets would not fit in a landscape view.

I hope I get to try out some of the other UIs, but this one does show the promise of the enhancements.

Update

I forgot to mention another really nice feature of the Sense UI, Scenes. Scenes are alternate looks and arrangements of your 7-screen home.

Each theme has a different wallpaper and set of widgets that apply to the scenario. You can save and name your own layouts. It’s a really nice feature than expands the UI even farther.

Also, the Sense UI supports multi-touch pinch to zoom-out, spread to zoom-in in the browser and picture view.

Filed in categories: Android related

Tagged: Android, eris, HTC, Sense UI

Droid Eris: The Sense UI originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 14, 2009 at 12:49 am.

Tomorrow marks the launch of Verizon’s first two Android phones. I have spent over a week with the Droid, but have only had the Eris for a couple of days. Since Verizon decided to call their first Android phone the Droid, and add that name to all successive Android phones, I will be referring to the Motorola Droid as simply Droid, and the Droid Eris as simply Eris.

I am still wrapping up the full review of the Droid, and want to spend a little more time with the Eris before finishing that review, so I will not have both reviews in time for tomorrow’s launch. Now I doubt you all are on the edge of your seat waiting for my final reviews, but if you are anything like me, you like all the data you can get. So with the caveat that I have not spent much time with the Eris, I want to give you information on which of these two excellent phones are best for you. I will not be declaring a best, because that is just silly, it depends on your specific wants and desires.

So we are going to start with the basics. You like Android, you want to get a new phone, and you are on Verizon, or don’t mind switching.

Why You Should Buy a Droid

You want the biggest, highest resolution screen. The display on the Droid is simply stunning. It is 3.7″ WVGA (480 x 854 pixels).

You want the fastest processor. The Droid comes with a 550 MHz processor versus Eris’ 528 MHz processor. Using Linpack for Android the Droid scores 4.507 Mflops/second versus Eris’ 2.315. But this only rates the floating point computing power. Part of the improvement could be a better interpreter in Eclair. I include results from Benchmark by softweg at the bottom of this post. I was surprised how poorly the Droid scored on graphics performance, though that could be because of the higher resolution screen.

You want an Android 2.0 (Eclair) device. Droid ships with Eclair, but HTC is working on updating the Sense UI for Eclair, and will should release an update. Verizon has announced that an update for the Eris to Eclair is coming in 2010.

You want the most memory. I actually used a widget called Internal Memory Widget. It displays how much memory (i.e. RAM) you are using and how much is available. The Droid shows 261 MB available, and the Eris 159 MB. But the G1 (or at least my G1 on Donut) only has 74 MB, so 159 is a big step up.

You want the most storage. The Droid comes with a 16 GB SD card, while the Eris has only an 8 GB card. But, it’s an SD card, you can upgrade it later if you need to.

You want a physical keyboard. Eris does not have a physical keyboard, but it’s not like any mobile phone’s keyboard is touch-typing ready. This Droid’s seems a step down form the G1 (though that could still be because I have used the G1 for a year).

EDIT (how did I forget this?):
You want turn by turn navigation. Droid has the very cool new turn by turn navigation from google, but whenever HTC upgrades their Sense UI it will should as well.

Why you Should Buy an Eris

Size matters to you. This is the smallest, sleekest Android phone on the market. It seems even smaller because of its tapered corners, but the Droid is not exactly huge.

It is a sexy, sexy phone. Sorry, cannot find a better explanation. I love the lines, I love the rubberized exterior, I love the Sense UI. But, if you like a more industrial design, the Droid is more in your line.

You want the Sense UI. It’s only available on HTC phones, and it is a great interface. But it is built on top of Android, so with every new release of Android you  need to wait for the Sense UI to be updated to the new OS.

You want a better low-light camera. I will definitely test it more, but the Eris phone seems to handle low light much better than the droid, even at the same MP. This really showed up in Shop Savvy. But, this is your phone. You can buy a separate camera.

You love widgets. The Sense UI has 7 screens to the Home view. This compares to 3 for the droid. In addition, there are a number of HTC widgets that are just fabulous, including ones to display contacts, mail and messages.

You want to save $100. The Eris is going to be $99 versus $199 for the Droid. But, this is a 2-year contract, that works out to a little over $4 a month so you don’t want to be penny-wise, pound-foolish.

You want your Exchange calendar events to appear on the same calendar as the rest. On Eclair, Exchange calendar events show up in the Corporate Calendar app, not the main calendar. Eris places them in a unified calendar, color-coded. But, it’s not always bad to separate your work and personal calendars.

You like a physical Call and End button. I miss the call and end button on the Droid. I am just used to tapping call to bring up my phone and contacts list, and the end button to hang up. But, that is a preference thing, you may not care.

You like your Home button on the left. For some reason the Droid chose to swap the back and home buttons. I found this very annoying, and goes against other Droid phones, and even other phones on the market. But, it’s not like you will be switching phones constantly, you will get used to it.

Conclusion

These are two really strong phones. I thought this was going to break down to choosing a power phone versus choosing a lite version. The Eris really holds its own against the Droid making it a difficult choice. Not really a bad thing.

You should also know that there are rumors that Verizon may release 1 or 2 more Android devices by the end of the year. I have no inside knowledge, no Verizon rep or PR person told me this, but you can see the rumors out there. But, how many times have folks known Apple was releasing a tablet? There is always going to be something better coming out, at some point you need to buy.

Good luck deciding between these two excellent phones. I don’t think you can really go wrong with either.

Filed in categories: Android related

Tagged: benchmarks, droid, eris, verison

Droid Eris vs. Droid originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 6, 2009 at 1:32 am.

Continuing my streak of good luck, I received a Droid Eris to review. This is the second Android phone that Verizon is releasing. Some have referred to it as the Droid Light because it comes with a slower (528 mhz) processor and no keyboard. It is also shipping with Android 1.5 (Cupcake) with the HTC’s Sense UI interface. This puts it one version behind my G1, and 2 behind the Motorola Droid. I assume this is due to the need to update the Sense UI to work with the Android releases.

You can see the details in the press release. It is essentially a thinner HTC Hero.

Let’s start off with my preconceptions. I have spent just over a week with the Motorola Droid at this point. The Eris has a slower processor, older OS, smaller and lower resolution screen and no physical keyboard. I knew this going in. I did not expect this phone to be such a strong alternative to the Motorola Droid.

What the Eris Has

The Sense UI is very nicely implemented. Instead of only a centered tab to open the applications panel, this UI moves that tab to the left, places a large phone button in the middle and a button to add to your home screen on the right. You can still “long-press” to add an item to the screen, but the add button makes that option a little more accessible. I like the Phone button, but with this phone you get physical call begin and end buttons, so it is not really necessary.

HTC has loaded the phone with a number of HTC-designed widgets. Some are entirely new, others are improved versions of the Android widgets. My first impression of them is that they begin to fully realize the potential that the Android widgets have. Here is an example of the Music widget.

Like many widgets, you can choose among multiple styles. I chose the smaller style. Here is a look at the larger style.

There are quite a few widgets including ones for your contacts, calendar and mail. It would not take long to fill up your three home screens, so the Sense UI has seven home screens. You have the center home screen, and three on each “side”.

I was not expecting Exchange support since it was added in 2.0, but it does provide support for Exchange accounts. It was easy to set up my exchange mail account. It allows you to sync your Mail, Contacts and Calendar. There is also the option to sync to your PC (just your contact and calendar) in case your Outlook mail is not on an exchange server, or you cannot access your exchange server. Here is a look of the mail widget displaying my Exchange mail:

This phone also supports Facebook, and Flickr accounts and updates. I really like the Flickr integration, since that seems to be the one area of my life that Google doesn’t own. You are alerted of updates for your contacts. Here you can see both a Flickr and a Facebook update appearing on the same screen.

The music player is improved in both looks and functionality over the stock Android music player. Here is a look at the Music Player:

A really nice touch is what the Eris does when you wakeup the phone while playing a song. You actually get some controls without unlocking:

The Eris comes with a 5MP camera, but no flash like the Motorola Droid. However, in early tests, the Eris’ camera is much better. I had no issue using Shop Savvy with it. I’ll need to do some more in-depth comparisons, but my initial impression is that it is a better low-light camera.

So far this phone has really surprised me. I look forward to putting it through its paces. I would like to get a review up tomorrow (since it is releasing with the Droid) but not sure if I can pull that off. This will be a shorter series than the Motorola Droid series. Right now I am only planning a post on the Sense UI and then the review.

Filed in categories: Miscellaneous

Tagged: Android, eris, verizon

First Looks: Droid Eris originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 5, 2009 at 10:45 am.