I have been trying to spend some quality time with my latest gadget, the Motorola Droid, for which I gave up my ancient (and cameraless) BlackBerry. Since I am a loyal Verizon customer (loyal because it has the best coverage for where I live and travel) the iPhone has never been an option for me or for my budget, for that matter!
I turned up at my local Verizon store the day the phone went on the market, and was surprised that the store, festooned with ballon and ribbons, was practically deserted. Not that I minded, since I got excellent service with helpful (and money-saving) tips for making the switch to the new phone and plan.
Let me make it clear from the start
that I am a huge fan of this phone, even if my thumbs are reluctant
to let go of their fond memories of the unparalleled ease of using
the BlackBerry keyboard. The Droid, no question about, has been a
letdown for those digits of mine that now have to contend with the
flat pullout keyboard or the onscreen that hogs valuable real estate.
But the loss for the digits has been the gain for the yes, which now
have a veritable treat.
I am not qualified, or even interested in listing the tech specs of this phone and compare them to the competition. That I leave to the pros, like Scobelizer (especially here) and Dave Winer who gives an account of his travels with the Droid. But that won't stop me from weighing in with my opinion!
So, why do I like the Droid? Here is a brief list so far:
- I comes with that crowd of cute people making sure that you can hear me now – that is, it's backed by Verizon.
- The Droid has an amazing screen that makes me feel as if I had my MacBook Pro monitor, albeit shrunk, in front of me.
- I can integrate my Google life, my various email accounts, contacts, and calendar with a flick of the finger.
- The voice quality on the phone is amazing (at least for me) as the screen is.
- The auto-complete feature when I type is not only responsive, but also smart, because it is learning my vocabulary.
- The maps are marvelous!
Of course, I am not a complete droid when it comes the Droid phone, because I do have some issues with it, like battery life. Which sucks. Then again, I was never tempted to watch videos or stream music or compose lists on the trusty old BlackBerry, whose battery has been taking eons to charge lately anyway.
I never used an iPhone, but I wish the Droid had the same kind of zooming feature I hear it has. As it is, on the Droid you have to play with the zooming button that fades in and out of the screen if you wish to see something better, a disadvantage for aging eyes, like mine. [Update: Never mind, you jut have to tap twice on the screen to zoom in or out of a Web page... duh!]
The Scoblizer singles out a poky battery door on the phone that keeps popping off, but my Motorola Droid is wearing a girlish pink plastic sheath, a case (yes, a pun) that shows the practical side effects of falling for fashion trends such as the prevention unhinged appendices....
The Scobelizer also complains about the complexity of the user interface and says that only an engineer can love it. Well, guess what? I am no engineer, in fact, I am your average aging babyboomer and clueless suburbanite (as well as a poet), and I love dragging the screen around every which way and having the option of sticking widgets on three home screens.
As for apps for the Android platform, I don't have much to say yet, as I haven't tried too many. I agree, though, Facebook seem feeble, but Pandora, that one rocks. Twidroid, the paid version, is on my list of apps to try, so I'll have more to say about that later.
In the end, though, all this geek talk about apps and platforms, and who is top dog when it comes to unleashing these gadgets on the gadgetized masses, what matters to me is that I can use the phone as a phone,. As a phone, the Motorola Droid has performed much better than any phone I had before. That the Android platform makes my Google life even more mobile than it was before, is more than nice: it's downright and plain practical!
So then, this one here is one happy Droider, likely to burst into song (apologies to the The Temptations), belting out something like this:
I've got sunshine on a cloudy day, when it's a dead zone for your phone. I got service. Well, I guess, what can you say, I got my Droid....
