Droid 2's alleged woes good news to Droid lover

Is Droid 2 the next iPhone 4?

Date published: 9/4/2010

IT'S LIKE stomach flu.

There's this gnawing pain in your stomach.

Then comes the nausea.

You were on the cutting edge six months ago, all smug and self -satisfied with your new, cutting-edge phone. But now your once-sexy cell phone seems old and tired because the next model has come out and made yours obsolete while you still have 18 months left on your contract.

I felt the nausea when I started testing the new Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid 2. The original Droid is my current work phone, and I was madly in love with it back in the spring. Then the absolutely great Droid X came out this summer, and it made me feel ill with its huge screen, easy typing and amazing call quality.

Now here's the Droid 2, which has a much better, wider, easier-to-type-on slide-out keyboard than the original--and a faster processor. It also has a cool button on the keyboard for voice commands.

All three run on the Google Android system, which I love.

Then came news that made me feel much, much better. There have been reports from respected tech news and review Web sites that the Droid 2 is having signal reception problems and is dropping calls.

Drop, drop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is. For those of you under 80, that paraphrases an old Alka-Seltzer jingle.

Please don't ask me to explain what Alka-Seltzer is--or what a jingle is.

I haven't experienced the droppage problem myself in two weeks of testing the Droid 2 in the Fredericksburg area. And the Droid has worked fine in places where I experienced dropped calls with the iPhone 4. But the mere idea that someone out there somewhere is gnashing his teeth and cursing over a problem with the Droid 2 makes me feel much better about my Droid.

The Droid 2's alleged connectivity problem has been compared to iPhone 4's antenna-gate. That's probably taking things a bit far.

Melanie Ortel, a spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless, said the reports have been based on rumors, and "We've not had any complaints--none at all."

Even at the advanced age of six months, my original Droid still looks cool. And the fact that it's one of few phones currently updated to Froyo, Android's cool new 2.2 mobile platform, also makes me feel better because it stayed on the cutting edge.

So what if it's harder to type on the original Droid's keyboard? At least it isn't making a fizzing sound.

Michael Zitz: 540/846-5163
Email: mikez@freelancestar.com

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