A Great Utility Phone, March 30, 2010

I got the Motorola Android about 2 weeks ago, and I'm very happy with it.

I came from a BB storm that was fairly dependable, but sluggish and basically good for emails and phone calls. I had hoped the iPhone was coming to Verizon but since it didn't, I checked out the Droid, and I think I got a fair amount of the things that I wanted from an iPhone, and some things that aren't currently available on an iPhone.

I'm not saying it is better than an iPhone, or even as polished. But it definitely works for me.

I now have a phone that runs lots of useful apps (most of which cost nothing), integrates well with Google services, and is something I'd be unhappy to leave at home.

I use Gmail for my primary email account (and forward other email to my Gmail account), and checking, navigating, searching, categorizing, etc. my email from my phone is convenient and easy.

Google Voice integrates very well with this phone, even if you just want to use it to transcribe your voice mail and send the text to your email. I rarely have to sit and listen to dozens of voice mails anymore, just read through them and play the audio only when necessary (yay!).

Maps for navigation is outstanding, at least as long as you have a connection. I've used it several times on trips and gotten great results. While streaming music through Pandora, the turn by turn navigation would pop in and give the next set of directions, then go immediately back to the music :)

Voice recognition is usually amazingly good. I downloaded an app that made voice input available anywhere, but I understand that the upcoming 2.1 OS update is supposed to take care of this anyway.

Using the browser (I actually use the third party Dolphin browser, with multi touch support), is something I do many times a day. It is fast and quite usable - on my old phone I avoided using the browser except in rare circumstances.

Video is beautiful and performance makes viewing vids in hi def a feasible choice - I usually do this unless I'm somewhere with a weak signal (and that happens pretty rarely in my area luckily).

Recorded video looks and sounds pretty darn good for a smart phone, in my opinion. The camera interface is pretty basic, but I'm hoping for an update soon to take better advantage of the hardware.

I sometimes use the physical keyboard, but I find the on-screen keyboard more convenient usually, in landscape mode that is. In portrait mode I just can't hit the little on-screen keys reliably enough.

Apps - this is the one thing I missed the most on my old phone, and there are enough available for the Droid to soothe my iPhone envy. The ones like Shazam, barcode scanners, keyrings, that sort of thing that my iPhone bearing friends constantly showed off - there are versions of many of those apps for the Droid. With a nice bookreader app, a few games, fast browser etc. , I'm much less impatient waiting for the Dentist and such these days.

I mostly listen to Pandora for music, so I can't specifically speak to the complaints about the music player - it really does seem pretty basic though. I haven't really looked for a third party app for that yet, which is the first thing I would do if I started playing a lot of purchased music.

Battery - yeah, if I use the phone heavily without charging I will find myself low on power before the day is done. Usually it isn't a problem because when I'm at my desk or in my car I just plug in. But at some point I might consider an extended life battery or maybe just a backup.

Another point in favor of this phone is that my wife, who is kind of impatient with technology and really insisted that she just wanted to stay with her basic phone, is pretty hooked on her Droid too (I got her one at the same time that I got mine).

Bottom line is, if in a year Verizon gets the iPhone I'll actually have a decision to make - that is pretty surprising for me considering how badly I'd been hoping for that to happen.