Gadgetory

greetings all this is deke Adams with pocketnow.com and today we're going to take a closer look at the software on the droid 3 by Motorola from verizon so sit back relax and enjoy the show now the droid 3 is using a full motoblur configuration it seems to be a slightly modified runs a whole lot faster than standard motoblur does yeah if you hit the home button twice then you can see the multiple screens and this is the mini screens you can have there doesn't seem to be a way you can change those you can swipe back and forth across those screens just like you would in any other launcher you can add widgets to your screens by tapping and holding on the screen the interesting thing here is when you go to move your widgets around you get this plus effect and then a little more latitude to move the items from side to side this is the data usage app from verizon the other model or motorola droid 3 that I just had I configured it to show the data properly but this is a different unit because the other unit had demonstrated some of the keyboard issues and way send me another unit that has a lot less issues with that keyboard it's a while it's not as fast moving as my epic 4g it's still very smooth didn't get stuck any of the spots like the other droid 3 we did the hardware review on the unboxing review on down at the bottom of the device are the phone messaging camera and launcher same default as you would expect any place else can't add more items to this but you can change out items by tapping and holding and then selecting a new item to add to the dock and if we go into the app launcher we can see the default apps that are included on here pretty standard stuff browser blockbuster if you'll notice there's not the let's golf and Nova apps on here anymore I was actually that I lied there all right here I was actually able to uninstall them on the other device and I wanted to show you on this that you can actually get rid of some of that blow where unfortunately you cannot get rid of the verizon V CAST apps they're on there forever but some of these other items slacker is not available to remove it's kind of strange which ones they actually allowed for removal versus others that are not allowed so these when here Nova I could uninstall if I wanted some of these apps i've installed myself like touchdown but for the most part it doesn't have a whole lot of bloatware it doesn't have any bing by default which I appreciate when you click the search button you get the standard search functionality other interesting items to note the menu background here the standard task menu background is white with black text rather than reversed which is normally for two point three point four let's see here 2.3 by far additionally there is a battery and data manager functionality here where we can go in here and see this part of the standard droid configuration you can also go into data saver and or battery mode here by default it goes in night time saver mode which is supposed to turn off the data after a certain time at night and then or not turn off the data but reduce the battery usage get more battery life you can go into performance mode and get better maximum battery saver get even a performance more better power maximum battery saver obviously for more battery savings otherwise things are pretty standard in here or what we would expect if you go into the market however once again you've got kind of a skins look here compared to the rest of the any other gingerbread devices now the previous droid 3 that I had sent out as a review unit looked like the normal gingerbread configuration it had the market exactly how you would expect it to look in fact let's just slide it right over here it's the same unit you can see the market here in this device is different than the market here on this device why there's a difference we haven't been able to determine the software versions in the about iphone are exactly the same these were supposed to be created exactly the same time but something is different between them and I haven't been able to find a way it'll change this one to the default or change this one to the skin version that said the skin version is not unappealing in fact brings up a lot of interesting information when I saw this at first I thought wow maybe Google changed their market app and actually went to look mom my other phones but alas it was just a skin that Motorola has seems to have provided step outside for a moment and we'll take a look at the car dock and then we'll come back in for those of you haven't seen it this is the motorola car dock application which props you when you insert into this doc frame here comes up with a little acceptance piece which you make go away but then you have some apps in here right now it's a night mode but you can customize this with your own apps and add new functionality to this but it gives you options like recent calls and voicemail dial pad navigation bluetooth music voice search the cash and slacker by the defaults and then you've got a couple of other personalization options here you can do by tapping and holding on an option then you can scroll through the list to select something else to launch instead couple of other items of note here rd n la app to allow you to connect to your own servers for content city ID which you have to pay for in order to be able to do city caller ID a it's unfortunate but that's how verizon works gotomeeting is installed by default NFL mobile the slack wrap which already mentioned Nova ends the let's golf apps are both demos or not full versions unsurprisingly Quick Office for office related opening documents from your email the be cast apps obviously VZ navigator which is the same VZ navigator as any other device I've used it on it still requires a subscription in order to be able to take advantage of but unlike another recently reviewed device that we had from verizon this actually includes google maps as well when you tap the mail button you actually get this set up accounts it's kind of a unified account configuration which you can add items like your google account or Twitter or Facebook your text messages can all come into one unified messaging application now on this particular device I don't have many of these set up because I had already set it up on the previous droid 3 and this is the replacement device so just to show you what the clean configuration looks like otherwise it works just like any other messaging app the mobile web browser looks very solid doesn't have any scaling problems with the type of screen that's on here though small text which we're going to see in just a minute that it can get very very tiny and difficult to see here and if you're scrolling up and down quickly it can be a little distracting how the text fades from one spot to the next the droid notification system is rather unique as it stacks up multiple notification items here you can actually tap the minus button to clear individual notifications rather than tapping on them and having them launch what you can do as well you can still hear the Clear button to clear everything if I really like the ability to clear out individual notifications now well the droid 3 does have a mobile hotspot functionality here at least a launcher and an icon on the desktop and it would look like if you connect it as a device to this that you could actually get internet access as soon as you try to connect out it will try to get you to approve the purchase of the tethering app now this may be fixed with other third-party rooted Wi-Fi tethering packages but the default tethering package here on the default android does not give you the functionality to be able to tether devices one of the witches included on the droid configuration is this favorite widget and as you can see here I've added a couple of the default pound contacts here and I have a plus button to add more if I swipe down on this then I get a whole box of favorites that I can choose to dial from immediately and then I can star them are going to edit some of those changes that wraps up our software review of the motorola droid 3 from verizon if you have any questions or comments please leave them below and we'll get back to them in the full review try to cover some of those items as necessary or will respond back in the comments thanks for watching