Patrick Gensel

The Motorola Droid

I have had the Motorola Droid since 11am today, and so far i like what i am seeing. thats not to say it isn’t without its quirks, but in the grand scheme of things i like the device a lot. i have been a sucker for apple products the past few years, and had an iPhone for a short period of time, but the less than usable AT&T signal in my area pushed me back over to big red where i suffered on a blackberry curve for several months.

Look & Feel

when photos were first realeased of the Droid, i wasn’t super impressed, but there more is saw it, the more i liked the hard edges and somewhat retro feel of the device, and that has be validated with the device actually in my hand, it also doesn’t seem as huge as i anticipated which is great in my opinion. it has geek appeal i will tell you that much!

The Droid's slide out keyboard

the slide out on the keypad feels great, it slides out and locks into place with a reassuring click. the keyboard could use some space, but it is usable none the less, even the onscreen keyboards work better than expected.

Android Software

Coming from a guy who has used a Blackberry, Windows Mobile device, and an iPhone, i must say i like this a lot so far. its not as polished looking as the iphone, but its leaps and bounds ahead of the blackberry device i used in terms of visual appeal, and windows mobile, well we won’t even go there.

one thing i did find quite interesting, though i don’t know how effective it will prove is the gestured unlock. for those of you who don’t know, this form of unlocking your phone lets you set up a pattern you draw based on 9 points. its basically a game of connect the dots. it is a real unique spin on an alternative to a password.

importing my contacts was a cinch, literally all i had to do as a mac user is export my contacts as a vcard in address book, and import them into gmail, then my droid synced with gmail and grabbed all my contacts.

Voice search is nice, but i don’t see using it a lot unless maybe im driving, or just super lazy.

Camera

This phone is packing a 5 mp camera on board, which you would think would be great, and i think it still can be, but i think some software tweaking will be needed to do so. the major thing i saw was on occasion there was a bit of hesitation by the camera before it would capture the image. on the other hand though, i was thoroughly impressed with the video quality for a standard definition video device.

Box shot with Droid

Navigation

Google has really raised the bar with this one. a free turn by turn navigation app that has the major navigation companies shaking in there shoes. it is built on the already solid google maps platform, and even uses street view in some instances. unfortunatly i have not got to test drive this feature yet, but i will be sure to update as soon as i get out on the road tomorrow and test it out. i will say though that i have heard good things.

Android Market

this is like the app store for android, this is where you will go to get all the neat little add on toys you can handle, and if the droid is as well recieve by the public as it has been by the press then we can certainly expect a heap of developers to jump on the android bandwagon for there share of the cash to be made. hopefully this will lead to a larger catalog of apps to imbibe in. that being said, there is still an admirable anount of stuff available, sure its not the apple app store, but there is a lot of very similar stuff, and some different stuff as well. one thing i found intriguing is a free app called barcode scanner which uses the camera to capture and image of any barcode then has it give you a list of prices online for the item. this is great for comparative shopping to make sure your getting the best price.

Conclusion

though im sure i will be updating this over the next day to so as i discover new things about this device, i will conclude by saying that i am very pleased with this device so far, though the platform does have a lot of growing up to do, thats not to say that it isn’t competitive with the other players, because i believe it is, im just saying that this platform has great potential, it just needs to be realized.