The Basement

Ok so this morning, I woke up just a little extra early to go to the Verizon Store to pick up my fancy new Motorola Droid cellphone.  Granted, I am still TOTALLY geeked out about this thing and it is quite amazing.  So far the phone is a joy to use.  It has a nice heft to it, and a great feel.  Everyone wants thinner lighter phones, but I tend to always pat down pockets/jackets looking for mine, so the slight extra weight is GREAT for me, as I have a much easier time finding my phone.

Now in a few here I’ll go and just Bullet list things, but there are a few things i wanna focus on:

The fit and finish of this phone is amazing!  i did not know it is not a spring assisted screen to open the keyboard, and to be honest, i don;t want it to be.  The extra little bit of pressure and the non-snapping open feature makes me feel like the phone is tough, and not going to break if i open it.  Some people say it may not be easy to open one handed, but then again, i don’t seem to have a problem with it.  So i say Kudos to that. The screen is also AMAZING, i was reading text on it all day trying to set this phone up and read random things, and it was so crisp it was amazing.  I looked at the same pages on my iPod touch and it was just that much nicer and easier and comfortable to read.  Also, the little things like the icons are just a nice touch.  The icons not only look nice and clear but they have real nice non-uniform logos.  I like the fact that not everything is square and can be moved around.  And the little battery icon in the top corner, it doesn’t just show you battery status or charging status, but when you do plug it in to charge, i shows the little battery filling form the point of your current charge, so you know that your half full, or almost gone in case your thinking abotu pulling it off the charger to see how much is actually charged.  It’s just a little thing like that that is a nice afterthought to the OS.

Also, i love the widgets.  Sure you can add icons on the desktop for applications, but some also have little widgets, like for facebook, or FML, or Pandora, giving you a little more control outside of having to open the app to use it.  Also, the multiple apps thing.  For instance, on the way in to work, i was using the turn by turn GPS, i had the Pandora radio going in the background just for some new music, and i wanted to take a picture of a funny bumper sticker.  I was able to do al of those, without one application stopping and without much hassle switching between them.  That coupled with the fact that there was virtually no lag between apps was just, well, downright freaking awesome.

Now, those are the major things i wanted to point out, now, I’ll get to the fast stuff

• app store:  just as easy to search through as the apple one IMO, and the quality of many of the apps are great.  I think it is quite mature and i believe it will offer just as many quality apps as the apple store.
• the color, is great on this phone, as is the sound.
• the menus are different, not really any better or worse, just different, but quite easy to get used to, or at least so far.
• I like the trace the dot’s lock ability.
• onscreen keyboard:  just fantastic
• tactile response: granted it’s just an option, but i turned it on and it is sure nice to know when im touching something at times, especially in my pocket.
• car and multimedia adapter:  totally awesome!!  the auto changing screen and stuff, and the menu layout is super intuitive, and just a great great job.

Now for  the things i am displeased with so far

• yahoo mail does not wanna setup, everything else synced fine, even work, but this one just does not want to sync up.  not sure why
• screen is sensitive!!  when typing, it doesn’t quite seem to keep up all the time with my fingers using the onscreen keyboard, or it detects my finger gliding.  I’m sure that will just take some getting used to and be fine after a while
• Visual Voicemail:  i set it up as a test, and immediately took it off.  if yoru connected to Wifi, it turns it off, to get the visual voicemail, and then it doesn;t even turn it back on.  Really?  why can’t they both be on?  I’m utterly baffled by this.
• the hard keyboard:  ok maybe if your a teenager, or a woman, it’s fine, but any of us with normal hands, not only is it a fat finger fiasco but you have to twist your fingers to hit the top row of keys right.  I would rather they ditched the Directional Pad entirtely, extneded the keyboard, and gave me 4 little arrow keys and i used the enter key.  i think that would be a much better solution.
• Car tilt sensor:  ok i love the whole auto landscape and portrait mode when it is turned and int eh docks and stuff.  and mind you , i drive a Jeep, it’s like a truck.  So far, goign down anything but a smooth road, the screen likes to flip back and forth cuz the sensor is movign around, and after abotu the 8th flip the navigation application crashes.  granted it usually starts rigth back up, but i can easily say that i can quickly crash this phone, just by driving.
• emails:  why can;t they just all be in one area, nicely seperated and laid out?  the gmail emails are in one place and everything else is in another.  also, what if i want my conatcts and calendar’s from my Mobile Me account, or i want from both my exchange and my gmail, just color code them differently on the same calendar??  why can’t i do that??  if my MP3 player can do it, i would have thought for sure this awesome phone could.  i say boo on that.
• and on contacts, personally, i don’t like the idea of all my contacts being in my gmail account, or even my exchange account for that matter.  i do like the fact that there is a place on the phone  for contacts, but i would have rather had them taken from my Mobile Me account which is stored on my computer and just sync’s to the cloud. paranoid?  not really, but after something like the Sidekick debacle, i want that level of safety for my contacts.

Well that is all i have so far. more to come in the future i am sure, but that’s my first set of things.  overall, this phone is amazing and i give it a solid 8.  and to be honest, so far i love it way more then my iPod touch, and quite possibly more then the iPhone, but we shall see. As this OS matures, and i find things out both ways, I’ll keep posting more. Hell i even already have the app to post from my phone if i want