Motorola Droid Pro Falls Short Of BlackBerry: Review

A business phone

Also, the Droid Pro felt really hot when I held it up to my ear later in the day. That can’t be good, especially for such a little phone.

But this is a business phone, so let’s get down to business. There is 2GB of internal memory, useful for email, text and applications.

There’s a 2GB microSD so you won’t lack for room for your content. The device is also “global,” meaning it will run in 220 countries for voice and 200 countries for data, courtesy of the GSM and HSPA radios

I easily linked Gmail, social network updates and Exchange accounts through the Motorola messaging widget, similar to the social network stream.

Corporate directory look-up, unified Outlook calendar and sync with Google Calendar was standard, accessible by a button on the right side of the phone – the one normally used for picture-taking.

I didn’t test these, but I understand there is “AuthenTec IPSec multi-headed VPN integration,” remote wipe of both the device and SD card, and complex password support.

The Quickoffice Mobile Suite also comes standard on the device. One tap of this widget surfaced buttons for accessing Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, as well as Adobe PDFs.

I expect most of us corporate road warriors still use some or all of those on-premise apps (sorry, Google), so having them so readily accessible was a bonus.

Keyboard is a major drawback

Here are my main problems with the Droid Pro and why I wouldn’t be able to use it for work or play. The hardware is handsome and fit snugly in the palm of my hand, bracketed by a metal band around the device as if it were a gladiator’s belt.

The small display made it tough to work with after using the 4-inch Super AMOLED screen of the Samsung Fascinate, and was positively dwarfed by the 4.3-inch palettes of the Droid X and Evo 4G.

But the typing experience on that Qwerty keyboard, which goes for the RIM BlackBerry experience, was terrible for me.

Despite the bevels, my average-size fingers kept slipping off the keys. I would try to type a question mark, but would activate the voice search button instead.

Whether typing a business email, a tweet or Facebook status update, I longed for the flat keys on the Droid 2 I used this summer. So I was stuck sucking it up because, unlike the Droid 2, the keyboard appears only in landscape mode.

I thought it was me. But my 11-year-old couldn’t get a handle on the Droid Pro keyboard, either. We were stuck and you will be too unless you can master the keyboard.

At least the BlackBerrys are equipped with trackballs for navigation. Overall, this was not my favorite Android phone. I loved the software, loathed the keyboard.

Want a work phone for messaging, calendar sync and top-shelf security? Go for the BlackBerry Torch, Bold or almost anything else by RIM.