I recently upgraded to the Motorola R2D2 limited edition Droid from Verizon. My previous phone, a Blackberry Curve, had been a good phone and email device for some time, but the big seller for me getting a new phone was really the mobile hot spot.
At first glance the R2D2 Droid is fun, its backing is designed to look like the useful and lovable droid from Star Wars and some Star Wars trinkets can be found preinstalled on the phone, such as a video clip of “the Best of R2” and a silly goggle app that lets me see into the Battle of Hoth.
Battery life sucks, but it’s to be expected and not that inconvenient as in my daily routine I leave the power cord charger in my office and then keep the USB and power cord adapter in my laptop bag, so I’m always able to charge it. Since the primary reason for acquiring this phone was the mobile hot spot, the phone and laptop are always with me.
The Droid’s mobile hotspot actually provides a pretty fast connection. When I asked Verizon’s tech support about it they had told me that the connection would be around 400-700kbs when on a 3G network, similar to a slower DSL line. The real test for me was playing online games with it, which worked perfectly as my connection was solid, though the latency fluctuated between 200-300ms, which while not under the super fast 100ms, isn’t bad.
Of course the Droid’s mobile hotspot will drain the battery in less than an hour if not plugged in, so if you’re going to use the feature – plug it in. My routine has consisted of me using the USB cable to keep it plugged and charging via my laptop and then just plugging my laptop into the wall. Fortunately for me, every coffee shop and café I work from has public outlets I can use.
Other features that have really impressed me are its abilities to actually work like a computer in that I can FTP/SFTP (AndFTP) and SSH (ConnectBot) into my work’s servers as well as I can even VNC (AndroidVNC) into our cloud which utilizes a public key to access. While not the most ideal situation it’s great to be able to have this type of access via a phone when needed.
I would highly recommend this phone to anyone in an IT related field or looking to get a smart phone.