Commando Waterproof Droid review

I couldn't resist , so I got one. and I'm really starting to feel like the kid you sent out ahead to catch the cobwebs over the trail


Verizon G'z One* commando

In short, it works, but the jury is still out. The only droid I could compare it to is my daughter's Galaxy and hers is faster, has a bigger screen, and seems more intuitive. The speaker phone is supposed to be louder, but I'm not impressed. The normal speaker sometimes sounds tinny and garbled. At other times its really clear. 

I plugged in some head phones, but they did not work (perhaps they need to have the plug with the mic included) And the gorilla glass is more like baby monkey glass as I've managed to scratch it a bit already. I've also been making a lot of booty calls when I assumed the screen was locked.

The camera pictures look good, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get it to zoom.


The text of some, but not all, apps zoom. The ones that don't are a bit of a challenge to read for me old eyes.

As far as water resistance, it worked great Saturday during a very nasty thunderstorm. I was able to go on line to weather.com and found out that it was raining reeeeeally hard. I had just a bit of trouble getting that page to come up though because the torrential rain hitting the touch screen kept sending me to other sites. :?
Its still working though!

Like I said, the jury has not convicted yet as many, if not all of my qualms could be attributed to user error. I'm going to give it a bit more time, but if I was going to do it again, I think I'd have waited for Version_2. Oh well, that's what happens when you line up outside the Verizon store at 2 am.

Which Galaxy does your daughter have? seems i have more comparing to do now.....

looked at this thing too, and felt underwhelmed, all that hype, and bleh..... but have felt that way about almost all the consumeristic crap "smartphones" the major carriers have put out lately. 

Jury's in and after 8 months it lives and functions pretty dang well. 



NOTE: no flashy blue light thingys nor technology from the surface of the sun was involved in the taking of this picture.

Most, if not all of my qualms have be allayed and I'm pretty tickled with it. There were a couple of software updates and it seemed to work a bit smoother after them. The sound actually seems better, but not much louder. Plus I think there are fewer idiot user errors. No more scratches, the headset works great if you use the proper headset, and no booty calls if you turn off the screen (which locks the phone)

In terms of use, forget facebook, twitter and all the rest of the connectedness (connectedmess). The ability to add and availability of apps are the lick!  Google earth, fishing buddy (a fishing log) and tides sure are nice to have at hand.  In fact, I just found an app that deals with one of the primary concerns that I had with the phone (no, the app won't make it float*).  I wanted a burp feature so you don't have to blow the speakers and mic out after it's been wet (dunked).  After wading through all the rude noise apps, a short market search pulled up this lil jewel :

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ninesixapps.speakercleaner&feature=search_result

Seems to work pretty dang good! Just hope it does not blow my speakers out! Wish I could do that for my LHR-80






*Which is why people are always asking me why I have a little crab pot float hanging out of my pocket

FT thanks for the review and up date. I was going to buy one of those but ended up with a Droid Charge instead. I got the insurance because I had to dive for my last one to retrieve it from the bottom of the river.

I've been playing around with various setting on my Commando to improve battery life since I got it in September. 
It was killing the batter in less then a day with light use.  Had a ton of crap running on it that did not need to be set to the "ON" setting. 

After fiddling with it and cleaning up the junk "running" apps and such I get 1.5 days out of it if I never make a call, text or browsed a damn thing on it.  A good solid day if I use it lightly.  Then one random occurrence I get 3 days, 10 hours and 45 mins of battery life before I throw it on the charger and it was still above 30%.  I made 2 phone calls, 6 or so texts, and browsed for maybe 20 minutes with that charge.  Go figure?  Nothing changed or done differently with the phone between it and any other days, or my location.  Phone just sitting next to me.


Also, I don't understand why the other companies don't offer a more rigid, waterproofed phone similar to the Commando.   It shouldn't be that hard to do with all the nano technology that is out there.   

I've been playing around with various setting on my Commando to improve battery life since I got it in September. 
It was killing the batter in less then a day with light use.  Had a ton of crap running on it that did not need to be set to the "ON" setting. 

After fiddling with it and cleaning up the junk "running" apps and such I get 1.5 days out of it if I never make a call, text or browsed a damn thing on it.  A good solid day if I use it lightly.  Then one random occurrence I get 3 days, 10 hours and 45 mins of battery life before I throw it on the charger and it was still above 30%.  I made 2 phone calls, 6 or so texts, and browsed for maybe 20 minutes with that charge.  Go figure?  Nothing changed or done differently with the phone between it and any other days, or my location.  Phone just sitting next to me.


Also, I don't understand why the other companies don't offer a more rigid, waterproofed phone similar to the Commando.   It shouldn't be that hard to do with all the nano technology that is out there.   

one that floats

Thanks for the update.  I've been a fan (for the most part) of Droid pones since they first came out.  I'm also a fan of having my phone on the water......

I might have to drop my Thunderbolt in the mud and take a look at these.

I've had a Casio Commando G'Zone for about 6 months.  Got it because though I am careful, my various interests can be hard on a phone.  I fried one corporate Blackberry when I slipped into the water shore fishing on Maui.  Love the G'Zone.  I put a small kevlar loop through the leash attachment point and clip a small float to it when I fish. 

Battery life was an issue until I turned off location services and killed a number of pre-loaded resident apps that ran in the background.  Current phones are loaded up with a lot of crap.  If I need GPS I turn it on and set the GPSTracker (see separate thread) ping timing to 3-10 minutes depending on how fast I'll be moving.  One thing to understand about the droid OS is that memory residence does not slow down performance nor burn battery life, it is mostly antenna usage and CPU usage.  You want applications in resident memory as it takes juice to load them, and it takes longer to launch if not resident.  So App killers have the wrong approach.  With minimal connectivity I can get 2 days out of a full charge. 

I was new to Droidland having been tethered to a corporate Blackberry.  I found some essential FREE droid apps:
K-9 for email
Firefox - 'nough said - though I am a minimal web surfer on my phone.
RealCalc as a calculator
Desk Cradle - but you need to buy the cradle
ColorNote - a memopad
Stopwatch & Timer
WatchDog - lets you know if some app has become a resource hog - read the literature to understand how Droid apps interact with the OS.
GPS Tracker
Astro - file manager

At first I was not impressed with the G'zGear apps, but as I travel I've found the Tides, Sun/Moon, and the Compass useful.

The camera is okay, horrible in low light, and it DOES NOT zoom despite the apparent option.

The camera sux in my opinion.  Fine for snapping basic pictures, but anything with speed or movement involved and it's game over.
The shutter speed is as slow as my old Sony Mavica floppy drive digital camera. 

I like the option of hanging my Gzone up in the shower and listening to Comedy 24/7 from IHeart Radio while getting clean and shiney. 

and it DOES NOT zoom despite the apparent option.

You have to lower the pic size from 5M, then the "zoom" slider works. The more you lower it, the greater the "zoom".  3M gives you 1 to 1.26 ; 1M gives you 1.0 to 2.0. 



That's at 1M   Insayn's right, the camera sux. But if it's what you have at hand "a picture" is better than "no picture"

I stumbled onto it by accident just piddling with it. (I gotta get a job)

1M pixel is about 1024x1024.  5M is 2592x1944.  A 2.0 zoom at 1M gets the "effective resolution" to about 4M.

You're better off taking the shot at 5M pixels with no zoom and cropping.