Awesome! How is the hardware? Moto software was never that good, but I was in awe of their hardware engineers while I worked there. - Ashwin Nanjappa

Yeah, how's the hardware? And is the Droid running 2.0? - Kiran Jonnalagadda

Kiran: From the Droid leaks on the Internet, it looks like yes, Droid will be the launch phone for Android 2.0. - Ashwin Nanjappa

Suddenly my Hero looks obsolete. I hope HTC and Google have learnt a thing or two from Apple and will put out software updates for all older Android phones. HTC already seems a bit fidgety over it. - Kiran Jonnalagadda

Kiran: HTC Hero will be getting an update to 2.0 :-) http://twitter.com/htc... - Ashwin Nanjappa

@ashwin h/w is fast and beautiful display. very responsive UI. feels slightly heavy, but no biggie. the qwerty keyboard takes a little getting used to, but now cannot live without it. - Thaths

@kiran: Yes. it is running Android 2.0 (aka Eclair). I used the GPS navigation thing a lot. Very convenient and re-routing is done in less than a few seconds. Voice search and layers is great. The satellite view and street view interfaces, I found less useful. The fact that all these maps were downloaded real-time over 3G without any noticable lags, I found amazing. - Thaths

@kiran: the problem with the HTC handsets was how little ROM they had. To really get the benefit of Eclair, you have to have better hardware. Wait till the new year to see what other GSM hardware comes out. I am sure you will find a Droid-like handset in GSM flavor. - Thaths

Can I open and edit spreadsheets and MS word docs? - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF) from fftogo

Thaths: Droid has 2x the display pixels of the iPhone. That is *very* impressive, considering the extra demands that this will place on the graphics hardware. - Ashwin Nanjappa

How's the camera/flash/video recording? - Rodfather

@MVB: You can preview Word and Excel docs from Gmail.apk. No editing in any of the apps I have installed. If there is a need for it, I am sure someone will write such an app. - Thaths

@Rodfather: Camera and flash are perfectly acceptable for casual photography. The camera is ~5 megapixels, iirc. Have not tried video recording as it is not my thing. - Thaths

Well, that's better than nothing, but a drawback for me. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF) from fftogo

MVB, Documents To Go should do the job. http://www.dataviz.com/product... - Rodfather

True, Rodfather. I remember it worked well enough on my Palm T5. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)

Thaths - how long did it you to get used to the keyboard? It seems to be the one real negative in the Droid reviews so far. Still, very excited by this phone - waiting for Moto to release the GSM version now! - Balaji Dutt

Thaths, I have the Hero, which is HTC's top-of-the-line handset. They haven't even announced anything better coming up. If even this isn't good enough for Android 2.0, that's very poor planning. But I guess we'll have to wait and see what comes next. - Kiran Jonnalagadda

The HTC Dragon(Passion) is rumored which may come with the Snapdragon processor. - Rodfather

Rodfather - I really wonder about putting a 1 Ghz processor on a cellphone. Sure the OS may fly, but I'm guessing the average phone battery won't last more than couple of hours with that processor running at full-tilt... - Balaji Dutt

@Balaji: The keyboard takes a week or so get used to. Also, you don't HAVE to use the physical keyboard. If you are comfortable with the on screen keyboard with haptic feedback, you never have to slide the physical keyboard open. Based on threads I have read, the world seems to be split evenly between the 'must haves' and the 'mehs' wrt to the physical keyboard. - Thaths

@kiran: I don't know much about the Hero. But judging from the tweet that someone pointed to earlier, if it runs Android 2.0 (Eclair), it should be good. - Thaths

Thaths, does Android 2.0 have a face proximity sensor? That has got to be my single biggest annoyance with the Hero. - Kiran Jonnalagadda

Balaji, I'm sure the same was said about processors used in phones today. As long as the idle power drain is fine. - Rodfather

@Kiran: Android 2.0 is the OS. The face proximity sensing is a feature of the hardware (the actual sensor) and the software (responding to what the sensor senses). I don't know if the Hero has the hardware sensor. The Droid (and the G1) has it. - Thaths

Thaths: Good to know. I currently carry a phone with a physical keyboard and one with a on-screen keyboard with feedback and I have to say, I prefer the physical keyboard. I've used physical keyboard with funky layouts before, so I'm not too worried about that bit :) - Balaji Dutt

Rodfather - well yes, but networked smart phones like the iPhone or Android family aren't really idling for very long. Even excluding background tasks, these phones tend to be busy all the time connecting to the Web, being used for gaming etc. That makes me wonder about the usability of having a huge processor tied to not very good battery technology. - Balaji Dutt