The Phone Upgrade Dilemma

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While I have thoroughly enjoyed my Droid Eris for the last 13 months, the time has come for me to consider an upgrade. First, the Eris has grown a bit laggy, and HTC will never upgrade past the 2.1 interface. Second, I’m anticipating the day that Slacker actually launches its new on-demand service, and hoping that I can get a phone awesome enough to consolidate Slacker player (my dedicated Slacker G2) and smartphone in one device.

Since I was looking for some upgrade suggestions, I naturally threw out a query on Twitter. “Contemplating phone upgrade on VZ. Preferences: Android (at least 2.2 w/support for updates), physical keyboard, good email sync, not huge.”

James Kendrick (now at ZDNet) came back with a surprising suggestion: the Droid Pro. I’d forgotten this phone existed, but on paper it sure fits the bill. Of course, there’s no knowing if Motorola will upgrade the OS beyond Froyo, and since it’s not one of the company’s showcase phones, I definitely have some concerns about ongoing support. Not to mention, without a hands-on experience, I have to reserve official judgement. Still, I’m intrigued. Anyone out there have thoughts on this one?

9 thoughts on “The Phone Upgrade Dilemma”

  1. Have you tried rooting it and installing a froyo-based ROM, like CyanogenMod 6.1? Given I was out of warranty on my original Droid, I tried this out and have been running Gingerbread for a few weeks. I’m wondering why I waited so long, it was easy and pain-free. It’s definitely given my Droid a new lease on life.

  2. Yeah, you may want to check in with Kevin – running a different ROM may breathe new life into your Eris while you wait for the right phone. A work buddy did that to his relatively ancient Hero and it’s like a brand new (and highly usable) phone.

  3. I got the Droid Pro when my Palm Pre died. I give it a solid “meh”. Random crash/reboots, lots of bloat-ware, GPS seems inaccurate. There’s a weird bug when you’re typing text and use a symbol after a word, it takes the preceeding space away, so you end up typing “I’ll meet you@ 5:30” and that really bothers me. I also have the Droid X which I like a lot better, but I find it hard to type on since I prefer the physical keyboard. If you’re cool w/ onscreen only, check out the X.

  6. Dishing out $150 more for one of the Upcoming phones with a dual processor in it will be worth it in the long run.

    Also look out for the Atrix 4g, looks like it will ship with Gingerbread and will have the sweet laptop/dock-a-mathingy.

  7. I’d stick with HTC or Motorola, since they’re the only vendors that have demonstrated any willingness to upgrade the OS’s on their shipped hardware. Also stick to the current high end phones. Don’t pick an Eris again, same reason.

  8. cyanogenmod is the way to go!

    Currently have a G2 with cyanogenmod and it has breathed life into the G2, even the MyTouch3G I had before the G2.

    Try it…i you dont like it, then go for your change of phone upgrade.

  9. I am in a similar position just with a worse phone, the Env Touch.

    I will definitely be curious to see what you decide on since I am looking for something similar. I am on VZ also and upgrade eligible 2/6. I would prefer a full qwerty though at this point I would settle for a full touchscreen just because my phone is that bad. The iPhone doesn’t interest me so I am looking at the various Android phones since no Win 7 phones yet.

  10. I recommend looking into rooting and ROM upgrades too – I switched my original Droid over to Cyanogenmod a while back, currently on 6.1. Aside from the newer base OS the apps, settings, etc, all have significant improvements. I’m torn about my upgrade eligibility coming up in July since there will be some nice new HW available, but vendors have taken to locking down at least the kernel on many of the newer phones, if not more of the OS, making it harder to upgrade. But there are often ways.

    Right now the Droid Pro is nice if you like that ‘Blackberry’ style candybar layout. Personally if you really must have a physical keyboard I’d consider the Droid 2 Global – more screen real estate and a larger keyboard once you slide it out. But I’m actually looking to dump the physical keyboard when I upgrade. I was a long time Treo user and *hated* touchscreen keyboards, one of the main reasons I didn’t like the iPhone, but I’ve been using the Swype beta on my Droid and it is *sweet*. So much faster than the physical keyboard. Even without Swype the predictive entry in the newer phones is good enough that the stock KB isn’t bad.

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