Product Review: HTC Eris Droid Smartphone
My reviews are simple. I use the product and see how it works in my world. I upgraded from a basic phone to the Eris. Wow, what a new world. Colors and apps and a camera, oh my. I had great fun downloading free apps until I crashed the system. It took three days. I was downloading apps for my kiddos that wanted system access. I learned to pay attention and be more careful with my downloads. The phone has worked great ever since.
The Droid smartphones are part of Google's answer to the iphone. The Droids have not had the time to catch up with the many apps available to the iphone. They need some time. For now, some features are still in development. I did explore the apps at the Apple store and found a lot that would be very useful, such as an app to find accessible parking spaces. The Droid is still catching up.
There are apps that are not intended for the disability community, but they still help a lot. Apps such as Yelp and Layar are able to share resources nearby. So say you are hungry and you want to see restaurants in the area. You can even see some menus. You can make smart choices instead of driving or walking all over trying to find what you need.
I am very excited for the next system update that should be coming soon. This update will give the Eris the ability to use GoogleMaps. It will also be able to give driving directions and read the phone's location- essentially turning the phone into a GPS. This will be huge for making my travels easier.
The phone itself is pretty sturdy- survived a couple of falls (one of my hazards since I have decreased sensation in my hands- I drop things :)).
It has a touch screen keyboard that can be a little sensitive, making typos or auto-correcting in odd ways. But I think that's part of my learning curve. I want to check if I can decrease the sensitivity for days when my hands are a little shaky. There are also many opportunities for voice recognition. I'll be exploring those more in the future.
The Eris has a decent camera that's easy to use. I enjoy taking pictures out and about (see My Mobile Photos on the sidebar). We use an app called Pixelpipe Pro to send it to Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. My Droid phone also takes great little movies that stream live online with Qik video (again in the sidebar, if you're interested in the movie-quality).
Another handy app is the Google Shopper. It can price compare so I am not driving all over town trying to find the best price for an item. It can take a picture, read barcodes, or respond to voice prompts. It saves a lot of time and effort.
There's the HTC Droid Eris for now. My phone is a fun and powerful gadget. It is definitely making my life easier. I'm sure that I'll figure out new tricks and tips as I use it more. I'll add them to the blog as I figure them out :)
Links: Droid Commercial Pixelpipe Pro (picture uploader) Qik videos Layar Yelp Google Shopper
