My life, my friends, my way...

Two weeks ago I couldn’t have been more excited about getting a new phone. I was going to purchase my first Blackberry! I have been wanting a new touchscreen phone for a while, and I did a lot of research for the Storm 2. The day of the launch, I went to the store to play with the model they had on display, and honestly I really wasn’t that impressed. The screen was still pretty iffy, and I wasn’t feeling that great about it. At the time, there wasn’t much information on the Droid. It was pretty hush-hush until it’s release, except of course for the iDon’t commercial.

Since I wasn’t absolutely thrilled about the new Blackberry, I decided to wait to see what the Droid had in store, and in a few words: I am damn glad I did. The Droid surpasses the Storm 2, along with many of the other smart phones that are out. Here are a few of my favorite things about the new Droid.

First and foremost, the turn by turn voice GPS is amazing. Oh and what else is cool about it? Oh yea, it’s free. Other phones have you paying 100$ for the same feature, but Google threw it in for free, and it really does function very well, and I can easily compare it to many of the stand-a-lone GPS units out there.

Along those same lines, the Android Market has plenty of cool apps out there, and most of them you can get for free. I think this is a big plus to the Android phones. Android is completely open source. Anyone can download source code and submit corrections, and new features to Google for review. There are many brilliant programmers in the open source movement, and I am really think Android will be able to do even cooler things in the future. There aren’t that many cool games in the app store at the moment, but I think they will come around for Android 2.0 pretty soon. Even with the lack of games, the productivity apps are pretty cool, and you can have some pretty cool hacks for the phone. I really enjoy in SNES emulator at the moment.

Next in line, the screen is pretty amazing. It is twice the resolution of the iPhone, and it looks pretty sharp when viewing movies, and websites. They did a pretty good job with the browser as well. It will have Flash 10 support later in the year, which a lot of phones won’t have. I think it is as close as you can get to having a full on browser. I haven’t had anything render incorrectly yet. But right now Flash isn’t supported. Yuck. Soon though!

It also has a 5MP camera, which is really awesome. The software for the camera is pretty lame though. It really doesn’t take advantage of what it can do, but it can take some really sweet pictures and video. Like I said before, Android is open source, hopefully someone will utilize the camera a little better in the future.

Integration is amazing. The Droid uses you Google account to sync just about anything and everything you have. You have all the social apps you can think of, along with every email you have (including Microsoft Exchange for us corporate email users). The big kicker…they are all active synced. You are constantly getting your emails and messages in real time, and if it isn’t available as a push, you can get the info with the click of one button. I have yet to see a phone so tightly integrated with everything you could want. You can record a video (videos look great by the way) and upload it to your You Tube account with one click. This is what Google does, and it will only continue to get better.

The one thing that I have always hated about Verizon is that they put all of their useless crap on a phone. They lock it down so you have to use their apps, and charge you for things you don’t need. This phone came with absolutely no Verizon clutter on it. Everything is open to use, and it is legal to do so. Thanks God for no Verizon Navigator. Google and Motorola really came together with Verizon to deliver a spot on phone. They seem to be taking a big step with this phone, and I am happy to see them do so.

Music is easily added to the phone, and I haven’t had a problem playing any songs that I have on the phone. The music player is very basic, and a lot of people complain about how it looks. I don’t see anything wrong with it. The interface is simple, and easy to use. It has album artwork, and easily organizers your music. What else do you need? It plays all my songs, and is simple, so I won’t complain because it doesn’t look like iTunes. I do freaking love iTunes though…

Now, for a few things I think that they could work on for future releases of the Droid…

-Like I said before, the camera software isn’t that great. It just doesn’t utilize the camera as it should. This needs to be fixed.
-I love the addition of a keyboard. It really comes in handy for emulators, and other apps. The design could have been a lot better though. The keys are pretty close together, and it is a very thin, flat keyboard. The G1 had a spaced out keyboard, and it would have been cool to have the same thing for the Droid. I can get use to it though, plus the onscreen keyboards are great in portrait and landscape modes.
- The battery life hasn’t been that great so far. Given I have been playing with it every second of the day, it seems like it should last a little longer. I guess I will have to invest in a car charger.
- Tethering will be available at the beginning of the year, but it will be 15$ a month. Yuck. I think it should be free as well, but with Android being open source, you never know what will happen.

There are probably many other things that I could go on about, but I think this covers most of the basics of the phone. If anyone wants to know more, just ask. I will gladly tell you about it! :)

Overall, this is a really great phone, and I am excited to have it for the next few years. I am very excited for Google and the Android community, as they are going to be serious competitors in the mobile field. Verizon has the best call quality, and 3G network, and with them stepping away from tying this phone down, it really is a great deal, and an excellent phone. If they could tweak the few things wrong, this would be the best thing out there.

Now I know, a lot of you will scream praises to the iPhone, and say it no where near compares to it. The fact of the matter is…it does. In some aspects, the integration is way better than the iPhone, and to the true geeks, and computer guys out there, this will be better. OPEN SOURCE! The iPhone was a great innovation, and they have been very far ahead of the game. The OS is great, and Apple has created a fan base that won’t turn away from them. I believe the next generation iPhone needs to match everything the Droid does, and I am sure it will, and I am sure it will surpass many expectations. But…the Droid proves the iPhone isn’t the only great phone out there. It is definitely the best phone for Verizon, and I can’t wait to see what is in store for the new Android users.