Give Me the Goods

So you have checked out the packaging and now you have your hands on the product. What you are now holding is perhaps familiar to you if you have ever used a full touch screen phone before. The phone measures in at 4.45"L x 2.19"W x .51"Thick and weighs approx 4.23 oz. As a comparison the current touch screen phone I have the Samsung Eternity is slightly thicker and a little bit heavier. The Eris Capacitive Touch screen measures 3.2-inch @ 320 x 480 HVGA Resolution. A feature of this touch screen phone that I was not as familiar with was the trackball mounted just below the button panel on the bottom of the phone. The navigation reminded me of using a Black Berry and after a short while became an indispensable way to interact with the phone. Main interaction is done through you guessed it; the touch screen. I am used to touch screen phones as I have one I use daily. There are quirks that I have had to adjust to on my personal phone. I was expecting to experience some of those same quirks and approached my first use of the Droid Eris with this in mind. I was very impressed with how responsive and precise the touch screen of the Eris proved to be. As with most similar type phones the Eris is able to sense what direction you are viewing the screen and adjust say the QWERTY touch keyboard to landscape or portrait orientation. I think it is fair to note at this point one of the only issues I ran into while using the Eris. As I am used to a touch screen phone I have well trained fingers and am able to text using the keyboard rather quickly. On a few occasions I was actually able to out type the ability of the phone to process my keystrokes. As the Droid Eris uses a very clever predictive text program I consider it a compliment from HTC and Google that I was able to stump the program. The layout of the physical buttons on the phone is standard. Directly below the touch screen are 4 buttons. These buttons are the Home key, the Menu key, the Return or Back key and the Search key.

Turning the phone over reveals the 5.0MP camera (the Droid Eris does not have a flash). This takes me to my second issue with the Eris. While the phone rocks for texting and surfing the internet at lightening speeds as well as being one of the most personalizable phones I have ever used it is not a power house in the camera arena. The camera had trouble with med to low light settings as well as color balancing image captures. Subject matter was often under exposed and off color in these settings. An update while I was reviewing the phone did provide some enhancements to these issues. Keeping with simplicity in design the Eris is of unibody design. To get to the battery and microSD card the entire back cover needs to be removed. Have no fear though as the cover is easy to remove while still providing a secure fit thus avoiding those embarrassing battery drop incidents that other phones plague owners with. At the top of the phone is a 3.5mm headphone jack which will easily accommodate your favorite set of headphones.
 

 

Time for a quick look at the operating system