Motorola Droid 3
Wishlist

Hardware Features

• Water resistance: I always put this in my wishlist and never get what I want. The pocket computer should:

  • At the very least, it should function without damage to make emergency calls outdoors in a rainstorm.
  • Should resist spilled beverages and food, and subsequent cleanup.
  • Should be undamaged after being immersed 2 meters in seawater.
  • Should float, limiting damage and easing finding and retrieving it. The Droid 3 trades thinness for flotation; with a density of 1.7 g/cc it will sink like a stone.
  • Should pass MIL-STD 810F methods 506.4 (wind-driven rain) and 509.4 (salt fog) with a reasonable duration, qualifying it for use on boats.

• Lanyard: Equipment of this type should have an anchor point built into the case for a lanyard or wrist strap. Cameras typically have a stainless steel pin between the case halves, that the wrist strap can be looped around.

In the Verizon System Image

• Notification LED While Charging: On the HTC Dream, both Android-1.5 Cupcake and CyanogenMod-6.2 based on Froyo turn on the notification LED in red, orange or green when it's charging, to indicate how full the battery is. On the Droid 3, the Verizon image based on Android-2.3.4 Gingerbread does not do this -- and it should.

  CyanogenMod-7 and 9 turn on the LED when charging; when the battery reaches 90% they turn it off.

• Tile List Selection: Several apps present the user with a list of thumbnail images each with a short text label. The ones I've found so far are the browser bookmarks, and the gallery (photo viewer). I'm assuming that the presenter widget for these lists is specially crafted for Verizon's image (versus being generic in Gingerbread). The variant for landscape orientation is the most horribly useless design imaginable: a simulation of a circular array of standing slabs, like Stonehenge, wasting most of the space on the screen. Much better is the one for portrait orientation, which gives you (for bookmarks) an array of 8 tiles and a category selection bar. Even Cupcake did better, with about 8 text entries arranged vertically. Please use the tiled layout in portrait orientation!

  CyanogenMod-7 and 9 use the tiled widget in both portrait and landscape orientation, good. You can also tell it to show bookmarks in the old list mode, good.

• When the ambient light decreases, as when you walk from direct sunlight into a building, the screen brightness is not reduced. This is important. CyanogenMod-7 has a checkbox to allow this, plus elaborate controls for the screen brightness. CyanogenMod-9 intrinsically can reduce brightness, and so far it lacks the elaborate controls.

In CyanogenMod-7

Note: The 2011-11-16 image is alpha software and unfinished items are expected. Basically, CyanogenMod-7 has been abandoned and work is proceeding with CyanogenMod-9 based on Android-4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which has its own unfinished items and bugs.

• Bug (in 2011-11-16): Voice Recorder app stops unexpectedly when you press Record; it produces a recorded file of zero bytes. Bug report here.

• Bug (in 2011-11-16): With no SIM in the phone, it cannot make a data connection, and the data type icon in the status bar is a flashing triangle. With an AT&T SIM (GSM) or a Boost Mobile SIM (CDMA (or IDEN?)) in the phone but Verizon service (CDMA), the com.android.phone app crashes at boot time, but the data connection happens, icon says 3G and speed is faster than for 2G. Subsequently, I can make outgoing calls, but no incoming calls. This is all tested with Wi-fi off. This phone is unlocked for international (non-USA GSM) operation. In the unsafe system (stock Verizon), the global mode is CDMA only; the phone software should not be messing with GSM. Bug report here.