Character building
Two bits of bundled software worth having are the Swype keyboard and My Music. The first lets you string together letters by dragging your finger around the keyboard without breaking contact. It features a freakishly clever predictive system to make text entry lightning fast with almost no practice.
Join the letters typing is enabled with Swype
My Music basically links your music library to the net so you can see the lyrics and jump to related on-line content while also incorporating an combined ShoutCast/RDS FM radio and SoundHound. Sound quality is rather good once you have found the ludicrously well-hidden sound modification settings so if you buy a decent pair of earphones the Defy makes a cracking PMP.
Also worth a mention is the DLNA app that lets you not only play but also copy media to and from any compatible server, the Wi-Fi hotspot application and Moto Phone Portal which is a sort of PC Suite-lite that you can use to view your phone's content and send text messages via a web browser over either a USB or Wi-Fi connection. You can also add or remove files but only if you are using Internet Explorer.
Web browsing and the My Music app
In day-to-day use the 200MHz that the TI OMAP3610 CPU (well, probably a 3610, the clever money is now leaning towards it actually being the superior TI OMAP3630 despite what Motorola says) gives away to a 1GHz Snapdragon or Hummingbird chip isn't really noticeable with both the operating system and Motoblur-less UI whistling along smartly.
Next page: Fast talker
COMMENTS
MotoFail
2.1?
"Motorola says it has plans to upgrade the Defy to 2.2 in the admittedly slightly vague sounding "Q2""
"Has plans" my arse.
Until the device prompts you to download the update it's all wind and piss.
Speaking from bitter experience with Android-powered Motorola devices.
Motorola 'updates' again
I'm afraid it's the same old Motorola story again, ship with an ancient version of the OS and promise an update at some unspecified time in the future which never arrives.
I'm a DEXT owner you see, and that's what they did for us.
It's a nice phone to be sure, but as a Motorola owner I'd say only buy it if you're going to be happy with the OS that'll be on it at purchase because their upgrade promises aren't worth the screen pixels that make them up.
Or make it easy for yourself and buy your Android phone from someone else.
I wouldn't hold my breath..
..for an update. Motorola builds excellent hardware, but they are either uncapable or unwilling to support their devices with software upgrades once they've sold them.
My theory is that they believe people will go and buy a new phone if they don't upgrade. Which is actually true - I will buy a new phone, just not from Motorola. Ever again.
Froyo on the Milestone
Yeah, I got bored of waiting and finally installed Cyanogenmod. There's quite f ew hoops to jump through, though, thanks to Motorola being dicks about the boot partition: but RSD lite 4.9 will allow you to install a vulnerable bootloader, followed by OpenRecovery 1.46 (installed from /sdcard/update.zip), which you then use immediately (as a reboot will cause the device to copy back the original bootloader) to install another zip of the cyanogenmod ROM.
prepared to take Motorola at its word???
The only slight disappointment is the absence of Froyo but I'm prepared to take Motorola at its word that an update will arrive before June 30th...
They've been promising to update the Motorola Milestone to 2.2 for several 'quarters' now. After repeatedly failing to deliver in 2010 they now claim 'early Q1 2011' - which we are already a third of the way through... I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for an update on any Motorola phone. If Motorola can't update the Milestone - which is vanilla Android - what hope does the Defy have with MotoBlur on top?
