The Glade 4.0

First full day with my Motorola Droid. Remember when I said my Curve was the best phone I had ever owned?

This is, hands down, the most wonderful piece of telephone equipment I have ever had the pleasure of owning. And its easily in the top of the list as far as electronics overall.

Call quality: *****. Its easily as clear or clearer than my Curve, which prior to this was the best handset in terms of voice quality.

Ease of use: **** It took a bit of getting used to, navigating the menus and such but for the most part, its fairly intuitive and the learning curve wasn't as steep as I thought it would be.

Messaging and Email: **** Easy to set up, integrated all of my contacts from google mail, texting is easy, still working out the kinks on the 3rd party IM app for AIM, YIM, and MSN. Just cause I haven't played with them too much.

Internet Experience: ***** Lightyears beyond my Curve, which was one of the downfalls of the BBerry platform I believe. Its fast, has WiFi, and can browse full pages easily. Yes, no pinch to zoom, but that doesn't bother me. For that, you can get the Dolphin Browser that provides support for pinch and other things.

Media: **** The speaker is loud, and clear and plays selections from pandora like any speakerphone. Visually, the screen is huge, and clear, and absolutely wonderful.

Apps: There's more than a plethora of apps out there for anything you would want to do. A couple of nifty ones I got are Google Sky (uses gps and accelerometer info to put an image of the night sky up, and tell you what you're looking at.), Tricorder, (takes all the data that your phone takes in, wifi, db, accelerometer, compass heading, and all that jazz, and presents it to you in a ST:TNG format), Pandora, and SIPDroid (A SIP Telephony Client) I forgot to mention Google Goggles, (take a picture of something and it scans it for an internet search. For example, I took a pic of my seahawks hat, and the search cane back with "www.seahawks.com" and other stuff. Pretty nifty).

Accessories: ***** I'm a self admitted gadget whore. The Droid has a couple of accessories that fed my need for cool toys. The Home Multimedia station is a plug in dock for the phone, When you plug it in, it goes into "multimedia mode" and displays a clock and some buttons. Alarm clock, radio, night light, and a couple of others. The Car Dock doesn't have charging functionality, but when the droid is put into the car dock, it becomes a turn by turn GPS nav device. In a word. Awesome. Not related to the Droid specifically, I purchased as well a Jawbone Icon bluetooth headset. I had one of the firstgen Jawbones, and I liked it. It was always just a tad too quiet for me though. This Icon is louder, smaller, and clearer. No flashing lights on it, just black, understated and unobtrusive.

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Holy shitsnacks!

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

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Its a bit of a battery whore. Course, that could be because I played with it *constantly* yesterday. But, I figured having a dock for work would be a good thing.

So I bought a second dock for work. And its cheerfully sitting in it, charging and mooching company unsecured wifi and playing Pandora at me. Before I got this, I never had used Pandora before. I have to say, its pretty neat.

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Holy shitsnacks!

For my iPhone I have a charger at home, one in the car and another at work.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Yeh. Same here. I was a little bugged that the Droid uses a different connection end than my Curve... but eh. It has a mini-usb that's smaller than the mini-usb that the curve used.

Interestingly, its the same connection that the new Jawbone bluetooth uses. So win win there.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yeah. I love my Droid. My only gripe is the lack of Bluetooth voice-dialing. Everything else is fantastic. I'll post some apps you gotta get later.

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The Dude abides.

Never used voice dial on any of my devices. I spose its cause I don't really have to as NV isn't a Nazi state that prohibits cell phone use in cars.

Granted, I don't think its a good idea to text and drive, or not pay attention to the road and such. But I don't think it needs to be mandated by the government.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Ummmm dude... last year; they passed the regulation against talking on a handset while driving in a car. If you want to talk while driving you are supposed to either have a passenger or a headset...

You have just been unhassled at this time.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

http://handsfreeinfo.com/nevada-cell-ph ... egislation

No, they didn't.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I gladly stand corrected.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

He said as he chucked his bluetooth device out the window, free of the spectre of law enforcement!

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Holy shitsnacks!

Nah, I like my bluetooth, it is easier and more convenient. And I like my voice dialing too.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I didn't mind my Jawbone G1. However, the G3 I have now is perfect. Clarity is awesome, volume is more than sufficient, and it weighs next to nothing. Its also simple and quick to put on, so I don't have to look like a pretentious jackass and wear the thing all the time because its so fiddly to take on and off

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Holy shitsnacks!

Ugh...I just entered the real of the Bluedouche myself...I had a lengthy business trip to drive and a conference call to make along the way, so I figured better safe (and douche-y) than distracted and dead.

It's not a bad little device, and it does certainly make talking on the phone more pleasurable (not pleasurable, mind you; the pleasure here is relative). I just hate the way it looks.

It's only douche-y if you stroll around in public (not driving) wearing one, even when not using your phone.

Used to be when you saw someone talking quietly while walking toward you, well you knew their elevator didn't reach the penthouse. In some ways you still do, but you can't be sure of it anymore.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I prefer using them for all calls, car or not, because the iPhone's glass can get pretty warm (no ventilation, sweaty ear) if you have a call any longer than, say, 5 minutes. Also don't have to wipe down the screen after a call.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Okay, so some apps I'll recommend:

Advanced Task Killer Free - this is a must for maintaining battery life. Too many apps don't shut down when you go to the Home screen. This will let you do that.
ASTRO - a file manager so that you can see things on your SD card without having to plug into a PC.
BatteryLife - Have a home screen widget to give a better indicator of your battery life. This is just the one I use but there are a few other good ones that are also free. It will even list the temperature.
AudioManager - A home screen widget that lets you easily manage all volume levels (ringer, voice, media, etc) in one place.
DroidLight - Use the LED camera flash as a flashlight.
United States Constitution - Because everybody should have it on their phone.

Things I use that are cool:
Barcode Scanner - Use the camera to scan the bar code and search the internet for a better price.
Bible - A bible app that requires an internet connection but will let you view Bible passages from just about every translation out there. Also comes with different daily reading plans.
Facebook - Now you can has Facebook from your phone!
Free Dictionary.Org - Its not OED or even Merriam Webster. But it works when you're reading on the can and need to look a word up.
Gensoid/NESoid/SNESoid Lite - fee emulators for the Droid. The pay version lets you load a saved state.
Jewellust - A Bejeweled type game for $3. My wife loves it.
Flixter Movies - Used it just this weekend to look up movie times in an area we rarely go to in Tucson. Was great.
Robo Defense - There's a free version also. GREAT tower defense game. Super addictive.
Meebo IM - log in with almost any messenger account
Weatherbug - The weather. Nuff said.

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The Dude abides.

Where's My Droid is awesome (works on any android phone)

not sure about the Droid (never used one), but on the G1 the SMS interface sucked. I used "HandCent" as a free app, i made texting much less painful.

I've got a Droid as well, and it's the bomb. Some must have apps include:

SportsTap: if you follow any, available for iPhone as well
Where: has a variety of nifty things, including restaurants, etc
I use the Weather Channel instead of Weatherbug. Old habits die hard I guess.
Shazam: what was that song/musician? Oh, let me search that for you.
I have the advanced and plain task killer (free versions), I usually use the regular one.
Bubble: it's a level. Useful for hanging pictures or whatever.
Astro: must have app to manage files
ConnectBot: useful if you do any SSH connections
Ringdroid: lets you create your own ringtones
Unit converter: How many rods in a hectare, anyway? Now you will know.

I usually charge my phone every day. Then again, I use it a lot. Checking work email? Easy peasy. 3 gmail accounts? Done and done.

I just noticed that on the commercials for this that Lucasfilms has a copyright on "Droid". I wonder how much they are collecting in royalties on this?

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Probably more than Philip K. Dick's daughter will ever collect for Google naming their phone the Nexus One.

Found a nifty app called doubletwist that lets me sync my itunes music to my droid

Playing with it now.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Can I have your Droid, Arafys?

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti