Motorola Droid X: The Next Generation of Does

When we reviewed the Incredible, it also ran on Android 2.1 but with a few tweaks courtesy of the HTC Sense experience. Of course, Motorola doesn't use HTC's custom user interface, so the phones look a bit different on the software side. For example, the Droid X doesn't have the Leap home screen for easy access to your various home screens. Instead, the Droid X offers seven customizable home screens that are accessible by sliding your finger across the screen. To jump directly to a specific home screen, simply slide your finger and select the desired home screen from the bottom display bar that appears. For easy navigation, you can also view icons for six of the applications you've most recently used on the Droid X by pressing and holding the Home button.

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In addition to the standard widgets that accompany all Android devices, the Droid X comes with 15 Motorola Widgets. These widgets include Airplane mode toggle, Contact quick tasks, Photo Slideshow, Social Networking, Social Status, Sticky Note, and more. You can resize some of these widgets, just as you would resize a window on your desktop computer. For example, if you want a larger calendar widget or a bigger Facebook stream widget, you can resize them to your liking.

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One of the things Motorola touts about the Droid X is the ability to keep up with your life by streaming all posts, pics, tweets, and status updates from various social networking tools to a consolidated view on your phone. With this consolidation, the Droid X will also pull contact information from sources such as Facebook and put this information in the phone's address book. When you're in the address book, you'll see the combined view or you can choose to show only a subset of your contacts, such as those from Facebook or from a specific email account. In a similar manner, there's a messages widget which pulls all of your texts, emails, and messages and puts them on your home screen.

Touch keyboard users will tell you the keyboard can't be too small or you'll quickly become frustrated while trying to type. The Droid X's touch keyboard is adequate in size and is enhanced by the Swype text-entry method which lets you type words by dragging your finger from one letter to the next without lifting it from the screen. Swype is particularly useful for texting and composing messages. It's not as well suited for typing URLs, passwords, or proper names. Like other Android 2.1 devices, the Droid X offers a voice-enabled keyboard for dictating text input as well.

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The Droid X comes with many standard preinstalled Android applications including Gmail, Maps, Android Market, Talk, and YouTube. It also has many Motorola and Verizon specific apps such as NFL Mobile, Skype mobile, V CAST Video, NFS Shift, and more.