 | I had quite a few folks from Twitter and LinkedIn ask me to blog about my Droid adventures, so I thought I’d post some initial thoughts after a week of use.I am not missing my Treo 680 at all, plus the Droid is half the thickness and a lot easier to carry around. I’m also greatly appreciating not dropping calls on Verizon Wireless like I was very often on AT&T Wireless (sorry, but it’s true – I do not live in the wilderness and was sick of dropping calls at my desk). But that’s just the beginning.It is clear that the Droid has immediately taken a lot of Palm users like me. One of the best comments in the Motorola Support Forums is this one:I’m sure you’ve noticed, but this is not a Palm. It isn’t an iPhone or a Blackberry either. Learn to use your the device the way it is and you will be a lot happier then just reminiscing about what your previous phone did. That is so true. In the first few minutes you are a bit disoriented, but that passed for me pretty much as soon as I committed to move. As with any Google phone, it’s Gmail based, but the email for me is the least of my needs right this sec. My first need was to resync my contacts and calendar. By exporting a CSV, I quickly had Outlook 2007 on my Windows 7 laptop uploaded to Google contacts under my Gmail account. In a matter of minutes after that, Google syncs with the Droid over the air. No wires. No conduit. Same process to get calendar synced, CSV out of Outlook uploaded to Google Calendar (and there is a simple sync utility on the PC, so the calendar stays synced between all three places).When you do go to a wire, there’s more fun. I plugged it into my USB port using the standard cable to charge it, and it’s recognized as a removable drive when you mount it by tapping on the screen. I happened to have Windows Media Player on at the time, and it also got recognized as a music device and synced up with my music (something my Palm was pretty idoitic at, and I’m not an iPod user so I had never seen that work).And then there’s fun with apps. The phone is pretty easily used, as is the text messaging app. There are some cool choices when you get a call or a message; if you have other contact methods, depending on where you tap you can choose how to respond. For instance, one tap will call someone texting you. The calendar works the way a calendar should. The ringtones work pretty well, you can assign a general default and then a specific tone to an individual. (It did freak out on me once playing with ringtones and the volume went confused, but a soft reset later I can’t reproduce what happened. One nice feature the Treo had was it would ring with one tone for callers in your address book, and another for callers not in your book, which was handy, several folks have suggested that enhancement.) I haven’t done much with the camera and nothing with video yet.Bluetooth seems to work very well, I’ve been able to move a call into and out of Bluetooth without incident, something the Treo lost its mind trying to do. Plus when you leave Bluetooth on, it doesn’t drain the battery the way the Treo did. I did hook the Wi-Fi up quickly to see that it works, too.To extend the thing, there’s a button that puts you right into the Android[ ] market. Find an app you like and press download. I grabbed a stock quoter and Twitter Ride right away, both of which are pretty solid and fast. Twitter Ride has already download an update automatically. I didn’t have many Palm apps but expect I’ll find more on Android.I’ve heard anecdotally quite a few people moving from Blackberry devices also, but I don’t have much of a reference there. I am getting questions from iPhone users. One of our iPhoners on staff grabbed the thing, went right to Google Maps, and said wow. There’s a pretty huge difference in screen resolution. For folks not previously GPS enabled, the Droid goes to where you are immediately in Google Maps, something I could use a lot when traveling. The Droid doesn’t have the pinch-and-stretch motion, but it does have the directional finger flick and that works great for scrolling, much better than the dreaded Blackberry ball.Folks are also asking about both the onscreen keyboard and the physical keyboard. I’m getting used to the onscreen one. In portrait it’s a bit touchy for large fingers, but in landscape its very manageable. (Is it “nail friendly”? Dunno. Haven’t let my dog try it yet.) The physical keyboard is pretty solid, takes a bit of getting used to with thumb positions though. I haven’t tried the directional pad.So, I’m an Android noob and I haven’t exercised a lot of the features of the Droid yet, but the first week has given me a sufficient rush to be happy with it so far. I’m sure I’ll find more things to like in the coming weeks.PS … I also have too much fun with Verizon’s ringback tone service, so if you call me and hear random music, I did pick all that stuff out, and there’s only one Metallica tune of the eight I have in there right now. My daughter gets Avenged Sevenfold when she calls.Topics covered in this article
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