5 replies to this topic

[ratman6161]

Hi all. My new Droid 3 will be arriving via Fedex today. In case you are wondering why, it is simple. I do not pay more than $50 for a phone - ever. I bought me original droid which I am still using when it had been out for 6 or eight months and now I'm going to the droid 3 at a $100 online discount and $50 more for renewing my contract - for a grand total of $49.99 for the upgrade.

That said, I'm surprised there seems to be so little discussion of this phone. Yes, I know its kind of yesterday's news but when I got my original Droid there was such an active community around it and there continues to be activity. I am even able to run the latest Cyanogen 7.1 on it. Yet with the Droid 3 nothing. But here are a few questions:

1. Did anyone else get an extended battery? These are pretty cheap on Amazon with some of them going up to 3500 Mah, but they are big and fat and require a different cover. I like having an extra battery in the pocket of my snowmobile suit in case I ever get stranded out in the woods somewhere and am debating weather to get an extra regular batter or the big fat extended batter for this purpose. Anyone have any insignt on how well these batteries work outdoors in the cold given that most of the time would be standby time?

2. Looks like when the Droid 3 was released it came with Android 2.3.4. For those of you that have one, has it been updated since then? Has anyone just recieved a new one recently and if so did the new one still come with 2.3.4?

3. Read through the rooting instructions on this forum and also here:

Please Login HERE or Register HERE to see this link!

Does it matter what version of Android the phone has on it at the time?

4. Any hope of Cyanogen showing up for the Droid 3? Since its new, I'll probably run it stock for a while and see how I like it, but sooner or later the urge to "fix" it will be too strong.

Thanks. I'm looking forward to playing with my new (to me) toy this afternoon!

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[ratman6161]

Hello....Hello..Hello...echo...echo....Is anybody out there? Is this forum dead Jim?

[moosc]

Yea pretty much been dead since droid2. Its razr nexus rezound time

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Xparent Cyan Tapatalk

[ratman6161]

OK, well if anyone is interested, now that I actually have my phone Ill answer my own questions

1. Still don't know about battery life of regular vs extended battery. I'll know more after using it for a while.

2. For anyone like me getting one of the final batches of droid 3's, it still comes with 2.3.4 or at least mine did.

3. Rooting worked and was very easy using the instructions I linked to above

4. There are builds of Cyanogen 7.2 and 9.0 available through ROM Manager but both are Alphas. I'm going to stick with the stock Motorola installation until such time as there is a stable build of 9.0. Actually I find what it comes with out of the box is really quite good and I may just stick with it. The future will be decided by weather or not Motorola ever comes out with an Android 4 update. If they do, I may just stick with them. If not, I'll wait for a stable Cyanogen 9.

It's really too bad that there is so little interest in this phone because I am really, really pleased with it. Other than the lack of 4g (which is no big deal for me) and the slightly lower clock speed (1 ghz dual core vs 1.2 Ghz dual core) I think it stacks up pretty favorably against Verizon's flagship phones. Comming off of a Droid 1, this phone seems like a real speed deamon and allows me to stick with my "never pay more than $50 for a phone" philosophy.

Edit: The Cyanogen builds on ROM manager seem a bit strange. The version numbers have -RC0 in them indicating they are release candidates but the fine print underneath lables it as "Alpha". I always thought it went Alpha=>Beta=>RC=>Final So I would not expect to see "Alpha" and "RC0" referencing the same ROM. Any ideas out there?

Edited by ratman6161, 24 January 2012 - 05:47 AM.

[Hashcode]

Hello ratman6161,

Glad to hear you're enjoying the Droid 3. I personally agree with you. It's an awesome phone and is still the best hard keyboard phone available for Verizon (if LTE isn't a deal breaker). And has been for the last 7-8 months. No small feat in today's smartphone world.

The issue is the lack of developers. While I work on the CM ports, there aren't many others doing much. And to see what they are doing, you might need to visit a bunch of different websites and their related dev forums. This forum just doesn't get the traffic to be all that useful.

Regarding the ROMs in ROM Manager:

Unlike other developers, I don't label something as a "Beta" till all of the main features of the phone are usable. So for ICS/CM9 that currently means the camera -- and that's what I'm working on right now.

Don't be fooled by "Alpha" in their name. Both CM7 and CM9 are very usable (for many as a daily driver) and I forgot to upgrade the CM7 to beta when the camera was fixed.

The "RC0" thing is something that is automatically created during the CM build, and it reflects the current version of the CM software.

To clarify: For the Droid 3 version of ICS/CM9 it's Alpha #5.
For CyanogenMod, they're showing a buildable CM9 version of 9.0.0-RC0

You can visit my blog for more information and/or follow me on twitter (@hashcode0f) to see status updates for ICS and other projects:

Please Login HERE or Register HERE to see this link!

[ratman6161]

Hashcode, on 27 January 2012 - 04:48 PM, said:

Hello ratman6161,

Glad to hear you're enjoying the Droid 3. I personally agree with you. It's an awesome phone and is still the best hard keyboard phone available for Verizon (if LTE isn't a deal breaker). And has been for the last 7-8 months. No small feat in today's smartphone world......
You can visit my blog for more information and/or follow me on twitter (@hashcode0f) to see status updates for ICS and other projects:

Please Login HERE or Register HERE to see this link!

Thanks for the info. I have found your site and will be keeping an eye on it. For now I think I'm going to stick with the stock ROM and look at going with CM9 down the road somewhere. FYI though I only paid $50 for my Droid 3, I should have waited. Got one for my wife today to upgrade her OG Droid and hers was FREE and even included some free accessories (with a two year contract renewal of course). Anyway, anyone who loved the original like I did will really love the droid 3, as you said if the lack of LTE is not an issue - and it isn't for me. $50 for two phones of this quality is just amazing.