About a week ago I purchase my new Motorola Droid running the Android OS 2.01. The phone came with a two prong wall outlet which allows you to connect the short USB cable to the phone for charging, and a 16GB microSD card. I am disappointed I didn’t receive an owner’s manual, but I was able to download one easily enough. I’ll try to remember to post it on Box.net plug-in on the right.
I went through the standard phone activation with the Verizonwireless rep. I made a few test calls to verify the phone was working, now I needed to connect to my Gmail account.
Setting up Gmail was easy. All my contacts from Gmail were downloaded to my phone, and that’s when I realized my contacts in Thunderbird didn’t match what I had in my contacts list on Gmail. Using my Droid, I modified a few settings, but this was a little slow. I need more practice with the keyboard. Using a PC I modified my contacts to include birthdays, multiple phone numbers, home / work addresses, multiple e-mails, and pictures. Within a few minutes, all the information was downloaded to my Droid.
Setting up Facebook and Twitter was pretty simple too. I can check the post from my friends, post updates (I did several of them this weekend) and upload photos. I normally don’t text too much, but the Messaging app makes it easy to read and track a conversation.
I was amazed of the number of apps in the Market place. Several of my friends gave me a few “must have” apps. I’ve installed so far:
- 3banana
- Advanced Task Killer
- AIM
- Airplane Mode Wi-Fi Tool (Easy way to turn off all signals or enable Wi-Fi only)
- Android Lightsaber (Several different Light Sabers to choose from, all sound the same)
- BatteryTime (Nice app to tell you your battery status, also places the notification in the task bar)
- Compass (Incase I ever get lost, can also use it for Cub Scouts Belt Loop)
- Daily Dilbert
- Dolphin Browser (Installed so I can use pinch to zoom)
- Explorer (File manager for your OS)
- Get Fuzzy
- Google Buzz (I have a Buzz account with a few friends)
- GPS Tracker (have not used it yet)
- Key Ring (scan in your supermarket or store bar codes from the key rings. Works well, but I need to adjust the brightness – check the website and video)
- Light Racer 3D Basic (Because I always liked Tron)
- My Tracks (Just installed and have not had time to try it out)
- My Verizon
- Noble Fart (Plan on having some fun on game night with my friends)
- Star Trek Sounds (Save a sound file or two as ring tones.)
- Star Wars Sounds (Save a sound file or two as ring tones.)
- Tip Calculator
- Twidroid
- Where (Neat app that help you find local things based on your location)
- WikiMobile
- WordPress
- WorldWideTime (Just to see if it matched what I see when I have multiple time zones in Linux)
- XkcdViewer
- The only issue to date I have with the Droid was the charger. For some reason, the plug and the USB cable died on Sunday, six days after my purchase from Amazonwireless.com. I called Verizonwiereless and spoke with Technical Support. We determined that I should go to the local store and have a technician check the phone and charger. Within 5 minutes they diagnosed the problem was with the charger and gave me a new store brand charger – no questions asked. The new charger is one piece with a long cord.
This is the coolest phone I’ve ever had. I bought a holster at the Verizonwireless store last week, and plan on getting an adapter for my I-Go car charger.
ratedmaxpower 