This is Not the Droid You Are Looking For

Last summer I bought my first smart phone. All my friends ragged on me for getting such a small one until I dunked it in a glass of ice water and then used it. The Droid's claim to fame was that it was nearly indestructible-- water resistant, sand resistant, a screen made of Gorilla[tm] Glass, etc.

It ended up having a few problems. Occasionally calls were scrambled, sounding like a demented modem or FAX machine rather than voices.

It would sometimes slow down to the point of uselessness when running an app (especially Facebook, but others as well), requiring a reboot (a nearly two minute process, sometimes requiring battery removal).

The camera was so so at best, especially with bright lights or at night. Video was 640x480 with no zoom. These problems I knew about beforehand, but they were still more annoying in real life than they sounded in reviews.

Other people had the same problems. A few had hacked their phones and installed newer versions of the Android OS resulting in much better behaved phones, at the cost of a voided warranty.

The call scrambling and slowdowns got worse with time. When I realized I was rebooting the phone several times every day I took it back to T-Mobile.

It turns out that a one year warranty only obligates them to replace the phone for free-- not pay for shipping. And the provider couldn't simply swap phones; Motorola had to do the replacing. For a $20 shipping and handling fee fee.

(I could have gotten the extended warranty at $8 a month (30% of the phone cost over the time to pay it off). That would cover the $20 shipping. It seemed excessive. In retrospect it was a steal, because the phone was over-priced near junk.)

The local T-Mobile store offered to cover the $20 fee.

And of course the replacement was a refurb, not a new phone.

I took the replacement back two days later. It was worse than the original. I had to wonder if it was even refurbed, or simply shipped straight from another dissatisfied customer's local store to me.

T-Mobile covered the shipping again. I really appreciate T-Mobile.

The third phone was the best of the lot in terms of the problems so far, but...

The camera was worse in low light conditions.

Getting wet meant the mic or speaker didn't work properly for a few hours.

The back no longer stayed latched, which (a) is annoying and (b) means the camera is no longer water proof of dust proof.

The third phone had showed up just before the one year warranty expired, and I discovered the back fit problem several days after that.

I spent several hours backing up, reloading, re-installing apps, re-syncing with each phone. And of course each transition lost some contacts despite my following instructions to the letter. At least the photos hung around.

Motorola only released one OS update, a few months after the Droid came out. This update was necessary for many apps (including many social media apps), but was less reliable than the original! After that their answer was, "buy a new phone". The old model was a year old, I had owned mine for six months, and their answer to a fairly pricey phone's problems is, "buy a new phone"?

At this point, I'm probably going to hack the phone and install a new OS. It's out of warranty so I have little to lose. It's almost paid for. Almost.

If I'm not happy with the new OS, my only option is to get a new phone.

I can guarantee you it will not be a Motorola.

I still haven't decided if I want to ebay this one or just take it out and shoot it. If I shoot it, I will ship the pieces to Moto's VP of marketing. Maybe I'll ship them an extra cartridge as well. "In case you need to shoot your own phone. Unless you have an iPhone. I hear those work quite well."

I remember when Motorola was the communication device standard. Now they're a second rate Evil Empire in my book. At least Darth Vader's hardware and software seemed to work.