Motorola Droid 4 (Android and Qwerty)

Bump! I have one of these, in the UK, currently working on T-Mobile, though it's a bit of a faff. If you're not into rooting phones then stay away.

Basically the Droid 4 is sold as a "world phone" though the current Verizon CDMA Gingerbread ROM has the GSM/3G functionality disabled in firmware. There are leaks of the in development ICS ROMs all over the internet and these work just fine.

Here's the full process I had to go through, from unboxing:

Edit: I'm no-longer maintaining this post.. see my thread on XDA for the most recent instructions.

The phone has been reviewed in enough places, but I'd just add two more impressions over the top of those reviews:

  • The screen really isn't that bad. Sure it's not as pretty as a Super AMOLED, but it's fine.. maybe a bit speckly if you look at it really close, but this is part of the trade off for the excellent battery life
  • No £ or € sign on the keyboard, and it is in a US layout.
 
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So is this likely to 'officially' make it to the UK? Or is it always going to have to be a grey import and faffed with?
 
Probably always going to be a grey import, but when the official ICS firmware is released, the faffing should go away. Just do an OTA update and you're good to go.

It's worth it though.. the keyboard really is fantastic. It even beats the Nokia E90 keyboard!
 
It's really not that bad. The real faff was for me, scraping together all that info from multiple threads on XDA Developers. What I've written above is basically an idiots guide.

Anyone who can overclock a modern PC correctly (and if not, why are you here?) should be able to do this without problems.

Or just wait for the official ICS firmware to ship.
 
The main issue is getting one here... Won't I be slapped with huge import taxes via ebay or the like?
 
I paid £328 for the phone and £35 in customs, from a buy it now seller called Devices Now.

Total £363. Not bad compared to contractless phone prices in the UK.
 
I paid £328 for the phone and £35 in customs, from a buy it now seller called Devices Now.

Total £363. Not bad compared to contractless phone prices in the UK.

I'm just out of my Bold 9900 contract, could sell for around £200... £163 to change to a Droid 4. That's very, very tempting. I'm going to have me a proper read up on it.

Why on earth Moto changed their order of buttons for the DROID I will never know; having the back button at the bottom nearest the keyboard is by far and away the best setup; it's easy to reach for going back when web browsing in landscape mode. Silly.
 
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If there is an official ICS UK firmware for it, will it not play ball with the US keyboard?

There is no official UK firmware at all. Ultimately this phone is exclusive to the Verizon network in the states. It's just Verizon have generously decided to allow it to function on GSM networks too. US is the only keyboard layout and the only firmware option, other than CyanogenMod or AOKP.

Custom ROMs are also a bit of a problem as the phone has a locked bootloader that will only allow official kernels to load. How you do it is install a program called SafeStrap that loads just after the kernel, before /bin/init (master process on Linux systems, responsible for starting everything else) and lets you have the kernel boot a different /bin/init from another partition. This means you'll get the CM9 or AOKP framework, software and apps but you have to use the stock kernel which probably doesn't support overclocking. Edit: Someone has made a loadable module for it to allow overclocking. Not tried it myself.

So far I have not managed to get data working on either CM9 or AOKP but apparently I just need to change one setting in build.prop. I will investigate more tonight as the vendor bloat in the stock ROM is pretty bad.

I am still happy with the phone though. Yes it was a faff to set up, yes I nearly bricked my pants when I thought I'd bricked the phone but in reality I'd just flattened the battery while in the middle of installing CyanogenMod and it was the battery preventing boot! Yes the vendor bloat is annoying...

...but then a text message arrives, and you tap out a reply on that wonderful 5 row keyboard, and all these problems just go away... If you're a fan of QWERTYphones it is totally worth it.

Once I get AOKP running I'll update this thread with further instructions.

It's also worth noting that when the official ICS firmware is released, most of these problems should go away. Should just be able to flash via an official OTA update, skip the Verizon activation process, insert your SIM and away you go.
 
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Ok, I now have AOKP running. Here is how to do it. These instructions also apply to CyanogenMod 9 if you prefer that rom.

Prerequisites: Rooted, running the latest ICS leak, wireless network

  1. Install Safestrap 2.00A from this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1710948
  2. Download AOKP Milestone 6 from here: http://rombot.droidhive.com/ROMs/maserati/ics-leak-builds/aokp/ or CM9 here
  3. Download GApps 2012-04-29 from: http://rombot.droidhive.com/ROMs/GAPPS/
  4. Place both on your SD card. Internal or external should work, though I have only tested external.
  5. Run the Safestrap app and have it install it's bootloader
  6. Reboot, press Menu when prompted to enter Safestrap
  7. Choose option 1 to toggle to the safe system. This will take some time
  8. Choose Option 8 then 1 to and flash AOKP or CM9
  9. Flash GApps the same way.
  10. Wipe data and cache and reboot
  11. Go through the Verizon activation process, which will hang for 5 minutes then fail
  12. Connect to a wireless network, go through the rest of the usual setup process
  13. Install Build.prop editor: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nathan.jf.build.prop.editor
  14. Use Build.prop editor to change the following and reboot:
    telephony.lteOnCdmaDevice = 0
    ro.mot.phonemode.vzwglobalphone = 1
    ro.telephony.default_network = 3
    ro.telephony.gsm-routes-us-smsc = 0
  15. You should now be able to access Settings -> Wireless & Networks -> More -> Mobile networks and set up the appropriate APNs for your carrier, if the phone does not already have them

To go back to the stock ROM at any time, just reboot into safestrap and choose "toggle safe system"
 
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Ok, some updates.

The current AOKP and CM9 unofficial ports worked for me for a day, then I lost audio on calls, then the phone app started crashing.

Change back that build.prop setting and then voice works but no data. Reflash and a wipe data/cache doesn't cure it. I honestly have no idea what is wrong.

Gone back to the stock ROM and it works fine. Installed Nova Launcher Prime for a more stock Android feel and to hide all the shovelware. I'm happy enough for now and will keep trying the CM9/AOKP ports as they update.

Slight issue with the widget picker though. Motorola never intended theirs to be used with another launcher, and it's barely usable if you do, so need to install 1.2.2beta (or higher) of Nova Launcher and make sure it's in /system/app not /data/app as this will then use his own picker. Hopefully the need to move it will be corrected in the final release of 1.2.2 as I've sent him a bug report :)
 
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Found some more settings to change and now it's working fine on AOKP, and apparently will also work on CM9. I've updated the guide in post #12
 
I paid £328 for the phone and £35 in customs, from a buy it now seller called Devices Now.

Total £363. Not bad compared to contractless phone prices in the UK.

You kidding? That's an EXCELLENT price! Would've been £450 or so over here.

Those of you who've played with it, how's the keyboard? Not looking to upgrade just yet but my Desire Z is getting a bit long in the tooth and it seems like HTC have abandoned as keyboard-surfers.
 
The keyboard is very nice to type on, I do have a few niggles to bring up though.

The only shift key is on the left hand side. Not a problem if you're in the habbit of separately pressing shift followed by your required capital letter, but annoying if you prefer to hold shift while pressing that letter, like you would on a PC.

There is no Fn key, so while the Desire Z has alternate symbols on every single key, the Droid 4 does not, so you need to use the Sym key and a menu to get things like curly brackets. This is only really an issue if you intend on using this phone to administer Unix/Linux/Cisco etc.

For this reason, my GF has swiped my old Desire Z as that is what she does for a living.

The other big niggle with the Droid 4 is the pentile screen, if you look closely at photographs it is obviously speckly. It's fine for more solid graphics and text, and it's bright and clear enough, better than the Desire Z, but it's no Galaxy SIII.
 
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The GS3 uses an RGBG layout, same as most digital camera sensors. This is optimised for the fact that the human eye is more sensitive to green than to red and blue. You can save a little bit of energy (and manufacturing cost/complexity) by not having as many red and blue pixels and most people won't ever notice.

The Droid 4 uses an RGBW layout which is optimised for battery life as it's less energy to light up a single white pixel than to light up R,G&B when you need to display white or grey. You save a lot of energy and manufacturing cost/complexity, but the effect is more noticeable.

In both cases you are using 4 subpixels to display two real pixels, where a traditional LCD would use RGBRGB, 6 sub pixels to two real for this purpose.

The RGBG layout gives you full horizontal resolution when displaying white and green, and half resolution when displaying red and blue, but remember that the human eye is more sensitive to green. The RGBW only gives you full horizonal resolution when displaying white or grey, with all colours being at half resolution. All schemes give full vertical resolution.

Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentile
 
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