Got my Droid X as promised yesterday and spent some time setting it up. Similar to the original Droid and other smart phones, it's like setting up a new PC. Here's my first impressions review...

The first thing I noticed is that the Droid X is a honkin' big ol' slab o' phone. It's quite a bit larger than the original Droid, and may not be as comfortable to use as an actual phone for some users.

But with the larger size comes an amazing, large, bright, and sharp 4.3 inch 480 x 854 touch screen display. You can cram a lot of icons and widgets on there, and if that's not enough the "home" screen now has seven panels as opposed to the original Droid's three. A nice little navigation tool pops up when swiping between panels so you can access them directly.

And even though it's larger it feels a little lighter than the original Droid. (Indeed, the specs say 5.5oz for the Droid X v. 6oz for the original Droid.) The Droid X is a little slimmer, too, because it doesn't have the pullout physical keyboard found on the original Droid. This wasn't a big deal for me, because I rarely used it and generally prefer the "virtual" on-screen keyboards.

The home screen always shows icons for phone, application menu, and contacts at the bottom, making them readily accessible. The menu, home, back and search buttons are now physical buttons at the bottom of the screen. This is a nice improvement in one way, because the original Droid's touchscreen buttons were very sensitive and I found myself frequently touching them by accident and losing my place. But, they're a little stiff and hard to push on the Droid X (to reduce accidental use, I guess), so it takes some getting used to.

The next thing I noticed is that it's fast. A LOT faster than the original Droid. According to various reports, the Droid X has a 1GHz CPU v. the 550GHz CPU in the original. Motorola doesn't specify how much dedicated RAM it has, but it comes with 8GB of storage on board plus a 16GB microSD card, expandable up to 32GB for a total of 40GB. It comes with Android 2.1, and Verizon promises to push out 2.2 "later in the summer" for both the Droid X and the original Droid. The Android 2.2 OS is supposed to deliver even better performance, so I'm looking forward to that.

One reason I got the Droid X (v. waiting for a Droid 2 or looking at one of the HTC variants) was the 3G wifi hotpsot feature, which isn't available on the original Droid. So naturally that was one of the first things I tried. It works like a champ and couldn't be easier to setup. It feels a little sluggish on the notebook PC but definitely usable in a pinch when there's no wifi available. It also supports multiple connections (up to 5) and doesn't require USB "tethering." It's similar to but not quite as snappy as Verizon Mobile Broadband. Regardless, we will be discontinuing the mobile broadband account and using the Droid X hotspot instead.

The downside is that we had one of the original, lawsuit enforced "unlimited" mobile broadband accounts, and the wifi hotspot feature is limited to 2GB per month with a five cents per MB overage charge. The upside to the downside, though, is that the mobile broadband account is $60 per month versus $20 per month for the wifi hotspot feature. Plus, you can drop and add it as needed with no penalty (at least that's my understanding), so you can add it when you're going on vacation or a road trip, for example, and drop it when you get back. And if all else fails, mobile broadband subscriptions are also available by the day or week.

As for networking and connectivity, the Droid X has 3G, wifi, and Bluetooth similar to the original. The wifi seems significantly faster, though. You can download and install most apps in seconds over wifi. Bluetooth works just as seamlessly with our car's audio/nav/phone system as before.

The updated Webkit browser works a little differently on the bigger Droid X screen. The original Droid takes liberties with page layouts and wraps some things to be able to show larger text. The Droid X browser renders the page as designed, which makes standard 1X text a little on the smaller, bifocals required side. It's easy enough to "pinch zoom," though, so this isn't a big deal. UPDATE: There's a setting to change the default font size, so disregard this paragraph.

One major disappointment is the email client. The original Droid used the stock Android email client. The Droid X has what appears to be a Motorola designed universal messaging client that integrates your email, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace (?), Yahoo, Skype, etc. etc. accounts into a universal inbox. You don't have to set all that up, though, and you can work in individual email accounts/inboxes under the main "messaging" application.

So I set up my email accounts, and email just doesn't work like I expected. For example, when you delete a spam email on the phone, it doesn't delete it from the server so you get it again when you get back to the mothership and download your email for real. And, when you download your mail for real back at the mothership the phone doesn't clean up the inbox the next time you sync. All that stuff just sits on your phone until you delete it. It does at least have an automatic delete that you can set up to run weekly, monthly, etc.

The stock Android email app (which the original Droid uses) works how you would expect and has settings to control how it interacts with mail servers. The Droid X email app doesn't, and there doesn't appear to be a way to just use the stock Android app out of the box.

There is a simple solution, though. Install the free, open source K9 Mail app. It's based on the original Android mail app, with some extra bells and whistles. Works great, just how I and probably most people expect. It's fast, too.

The messaging app also has an alleged "corporate" (i.e. Exchange) client, but users are reporting major problems with it. Apparently it just doesn't work, and somebody (Motorola? Verizon?) needs to fix it for this phone to be the business road warrior tool it has the potential to be. There are apparently third-party apps that solve this problem, too, but they cost. We have Exchange, but only use it for internet mail and archiving, so this doesn't affect me.

One improvement is the camera. It now has a resolution of 8MP, which I seriously don't need but you can set the default to a smaller size. The major improvement for me is that the ringer volume toggle now works as a zoom control for the camera. The original Droid didn't have this obvious feature as far as I can tell.

The new video camcorder can now record 720p HD if you need that. And bonus, there's an HDMI connection so you can hook up your phone to your HD home theater to play back all your cool photos and videos (and music) in HD. I seriously don't need that, either.

And speaking of HDMI, the new charger/docking station has both USB (for charging) and HDMI connectors. A separate HDMI cable connects to your home theater, and you can use your Droid X as your media server as described above, although you'll be limited to 40GB of stuff. There's also a Blockbuster app that lets you download movies to your phone and stream them to your home theater. No Netflix, though.

I don't need any of that stuff, but ended up getting a bundle that included the docking station and an HDMI cable at a $25 discount. I'd rather have a docking station and car charger bundle, but whatever.

My big complaint about the docking station is that you really have to push the phone in hard to get it mounted to the USB and HDMI connections. Then when you want to remove the phone they don't want to let go. It almost feels like you're going to break something trying to wrestle your phone free. (On the other hand, the original Droid docking station doesn't always connect well, and sometimes you find your phone with a dead battery in the morning.)

The other complaint is that the docked alarm clock display doesn't show weather like on the original Droid. There's a "problem loading widget" message that's probably where it's supposed to be. UPDATE: There's a fix for this. Remove the problem widget and add back the docking station weather widget. It will prompt you through setting it up correctly.

The Droid X has a bunch of other cool new features. There's a DLNA compliant network media app that lets you playback music, videos, and photos on your phone from any DLNA compliant device on your network, play content from your phone on your DLNA home theater, control other DLNA players from your phone, and sync media files between your devices. These are incredibly cool features theoretically, but my lame (and abandoned by Microsoft) Windows Media Center and Media Center Extender apparently don't support any of this. I've been in the market for a replacement, which may be a DLNA enabled Blu-ray player with all that stuff that will work with Windows Media Player as the back end server. (Any recommendations appreciated, but must support WMA lossless thus the WMP backend. And no, I'm not converting to FLAC.)

There's also a rudimentary media/file sharing app (apparently Samba) that lets you discover and access shared storage on your network and your phone. So you can browse stuff on your servers or your phone, and copy files to and from your phone. Copying and moving files is incredibly cumbersome, though. There are a bunch of free file manager apps that might make this easier but I haven't tried any.

Note that the Google Maps app that comes installed doesn't seem to have a separate icon for the "Navigate" tool. I downloaded the latest update and it magically appeared. This is one of the coolest features of the Droid. It brings up a screen asking where you want to go, you type or say a destination, and it shows you a map, calculates a route, shows nearby attractions, restaurants, etc. if you want, and launches the GPS navigator all with a couple of taps.

Droid X battery life seems comparable to the original Droid, which is pretty good. Using it as a wifi hotspot, though, drains the battery in short order so you should be plugged in when using it. The battery thoughtfully comes 70% charged out of the box so you can get started right away.

Overall, the Droid X appears designed for the connected Facebook kids, with all kinds of cool multimedia and social media toys. Oh, and it's a pretty good phone, too. I could see the Facebook/Twitter generation using it as their primary voice and online communications tool, their media server, their alarm clock, and more. The only thing missing is an espresso maker.

As a business tool, it has some shortcomings in the email department, but they are easily fixed. You will also want to spend a few minutes getting rid of all the Motorola widgets, toys and shovelware junk splattered haphazardly across the seven home screen panels so you can set up a clean, efficient interface (unless maybe you are one of the aforementioned Facebook/Twitter-ites).

Either way, at the end of the day the Droid X is an awesome smartphone.

Oh, and I also wanted to mention one other thing. I have been thoroughly impressed with Verizon's customer service. I know, that sounds crazy. But it's true.

I called yesterday morning with some billing questions, and the rep patiently helped me figure out exactly what my options were for upgrades, plans, etc. to make sure I was getting the best deal possible. (Note: "new every two" rebates only apply to the primary phone on the account, which we had already taken on the original Droid, and not $10/month addons. But, you still get the instant $100 rebate for qualifying phone upgrades, and thankfully ours qualified.)

When I got my phone, I had trouble activating it (because, as it turns out, I was trying to activate it on a different number than the phone it was upgrading). The support rep was exceedingly patient, knowledgeable, helpful, and polite. She stepped me through the process of activating the phone and swapping the phone numbers to get them both set up how we wanted.

UPDATE: Motorola and Verizon have released a firmware update (to Android 2.1, this is not the Android 2.2 update yet). Get it by going to settings, about, system updates.