Tech Reaction

Well as some might already know, Verizon and Motorola have been talking about an Android 2.1 update for the droid for weeks now, and it’s finally here. Verizon began pushing out the update on March 30th, and I was able to get a hold of the update file and install it on my phone manually. My first impression wasn’t all that great; it didn’t include the fancy launcher that the Nexus One has, it didn’t include the cool 2.1 clock app the Nexus One also has, and some other little things here and there. But overall, I’m satisfied. Droid users finally have multi-touch (in Browser and Gallery) which I think a lot of people were waiting for. Here are some screen shots of what the new update looks like.

Not much changed on the home screen. Although you can see the 2.1 update included a new, clean looking News and Weather widget which I have at the top:

To those of you who were expecting the addition of more home screens, sadly the 2.1 update won’t help you but I do recommend you check out an app called Helix Launcher. It is by far the best launcher on the market, is very fast, and gives you up to 7 home screens. It also lets you stick 4 apps at the bottom of the screen that stay there no matter what screen you are on. Here is what it looks like (The widget at the top for those wondering is called Beautiful Widgets):

The next major change included with the 2.1 update was the new Gallery. It now supports multi-touch (pinch and zoom) and the visuals are much better. Example:

Next up is a mild change to the Music player. Not a huge change but it makes searching for songs/artists/playists much easier. There are now 4 tabs at the top of the screen, which divide into Artists, Albums, Songs, and Playlists.

Another new feature that is a nice addition is the option of Live Wallpapers. While I’m not a huge fan of these, I can see how they can appeal to some people and am glad it was included in the update. Here is a still shot of the Neural Network live wallpaper (the red dots move, and if you click your finger in an open space more dots appear).

Last but not least is Speech to Text. Again not a huge fan of this, but can see it being useful for a lot of people. The speech to text button has been added on the stock keyboard, as shown here (the little microphone):

In the end, for those of you Droid users who haven’t gotten this update, I would strongly recommend updating manually (see here: http://www.droid-life.com/2010/03/31/manual-android-2-1-update-for-motorola-droid/) as the updates included are small but very noticeable.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed it!