Motorola Droid: Day 1
I finally got a smart phone! This was a pretty big jump for me - I've been out of contract with ATT since 2006 and buying replacement phones on eBay. I jumped in and got the new Motorola Droid, $120 on sale through Overstock, with 2 year contract at Verizon. $70/month ($40 voice plan, $30 data). Pretty standard for PDA/Smartphones, same cost as the iPhone, etc.
I rushed home from work to start playing with it. I unbox it, plug it in, and look for the activation instructions. Step 1: "Wait for your existing phone to stop working. This may take 2-3 days." WOT?? I thought I could dial something to initiate the number porting or something. I turn on the droid anyway - it has a nice little activation screen that dials up Verizon - but it doesn't work. You can't use the phone until you activate it, of course. I read online somewhere that if you click "Activate" and "Back" a few times, the activation app will crash and let you use the device. True story! I was able to connect to wifi and start playing with it immediately.
Things I've installed/configured so far:
- Gmail + Google Calendar
- Facebook
- Pandora Internet Radio
- Shazam Music Identifying App
- Google Voice (SMS and Voicemail)
- ConnectBot SSH Client
- Fring (IM and voice chat)
- gStrings (metronome, tuner, and pitch pipe)
- NES and SNES emulators (pretty worthless with no controller, nice gimmick, though)
Most interesting test so far: Running Pandora to listen to a song by Panic at the Disco, then switching over to Shazam (while Pandora is still playing) and making Shazam identify the song. It worked!
Second interesting thing: Fring can do Google voice chat. It's pretty cool - I was using the phone as a phone, but over wifi.
Overall thoughts: The physical keyboard is very usable. I haven't used many tiny-keyboards, but I can IM and email reasonably well with it, so that's good enough for me. The onscreen keyboard in vertical mode is too small for my fat fingers to use without making errors, but the horizontal one works great. The haptic feedback is REALLY cool (it vibrates when you press buttons).
I need to install a replacement "Home Screen" app - the built-in one doesn't handle the high resolution all that well - the icons are spaced too far apart for my liking (there's room for an entire extra row in there). I suspect I will continue to mess around with configuring the layout as I use it until I find a layout that fits my typical usage best.
Late last night, the activation app worked. Data service now works, but phone calls still do not. I guess I'll wait the 2-3 days needed.
I rushed home from work to start playing with it. I unbox it, plug it in, and look for the activation instructions. Step 1: "Wait for your existing phone to stop working. This may take 2-3 days." WOT?? I thought I could dial something to initiate the number porting or something. I turn on the droid anyway - it has a nice little activation screen that dials up Verizon - but it doesn't work. You can't use the phone until you activate it, of course. I read online somewhere that if you click "Activate" and "Back" a few times, the activation app will crash and let you use the device. True story! I was able to connect to wifi and start playing with it immediately.
Things I've installed/configured so far:
- Gmail + Google Calendar
- Pandora Internet Radio
- Shazam Music Identifying App
- Google Voice (SMS and Voicemail)
- ConnectBot SSH Client
- Fring (IM and voice chat)
- gStrings (metronome, tuner, and pitch pipe)
- NES and SNES emulators (pretty worthless with no controller, nice gimmick, though)
Most interesting test so far: Running Pandora to listen to a song by Panic at the Disco, then switching over to Shazam (while Pandora is still playing) and making Shazam identify the song. It worked!
Second interesting thing: Fring can do Google voice chat. It's pretty cool - I was using the phone as a phone, but over wifi.
Overall thoughts: The physical keyboard is very usable. I haven't used many tiny-keyboards, but I can IM and email reasonably well with it, so that's good enough for me. The onscreen keyboard in vertical mode is too small for my fat fingers to use without making errors, but the horizontal one works great. The haptic feedback is REALLY cool (it vibrates when you press buttons).
I need to install a replacement "Home Screen" app - the built-in one doesn't handle the high resolution all that well - the icons are spaced too far apart for my liking (there's room for an entire extra row in there). I suspect I will continue to mess around with configuring the layout as I use it until I find a layout that fits my typical usage best.
Late last night, the activation app worked. Data service now works, but phone calls still do not. I guess I'll wait the 2-3 days needed.