About 10 days ago, I traded in the old cell phone for a Motorola Droid. Joined the
I would have gotten an iPhone like Peachy did, but after reading a lot on the internet and talking to a bunch of people who have an iPhone concluded that the network was a significant issue. I know a couple people who haven't had a problem, but Peachy didn't have a network in South Carolina. Her cousins have dropped calls (although Rachel seems to think Paul is exaggerating a little). Given that the main justification is that I need to keep track of shuttle launches and hurricanes on the Florida trip, I felt that I ought to stick with Verizon and the Droid seems to the obvious choice for that network.
It is pretty cool alright. It isn't quite a PC in my shirt pocket, but it isn't far off. The basics are there out of the box. GMail, Calendar, navigation, and maps are there. It has pre-loaded apps like FaceBook and twitter. I'm not on FaceBook and I've written about 4 tweets total so I haven't even tried those out.
I can just connect a USB cable to the PC for charging although that is slower than the AC charger. I suspect that is because of the current restrictions on a USB port. The AC charger is rated about 1.75x the maximum USB port. The AC charger is interesting. It has a fairly compact plug and a USB cable. So I can unplug that cable and plug it into the PC.
While charging on the PC, I can backup the SD card and/or download MP3s to the card.
Weather Channel
I added a WeatherChannel app that isn't quite as good the web interface but it will do. It would be nice if it showed the several days of hour by hour as the web version does and provide as much information.
Cherry Radio
Cherry Radio is a streaming radio application. I've found WHYY (NPR) and fox news radio. If I can keep the battery charged, this should provide night time listening. I do need to find a 60s/70s music station too.
MyMaps
MyMaps is the Droid app for interfacing with google maps. MyMaps doesn't work very well. It crashes fairly often and sometimes sits for hours loading a single map. While push pins are showing up, the routes that Skippy put in for our trip are not showing up. Hopefully this will get better by August.
Google Sky Map
Google Sky Map is like google maps but for the heavens. It shows planets, constellations etc. The App seems to work ok but I haven't really been able to test it against my night sky as it has been raining forever here.
My only regret at this point is carrying the thing around. I never found a good way to haul around the old flip phone. This of course is much worse. I need more shirt pockets. Or maybe it's time to go Euro boy and start carrying a pocket book.
That's about all I've tried at this point other than GMail which works but mail is boring, so no review of that. I'll have to post an update at some point on battery life and such.
