The Droid I was looking for

For 4 weeks I got to trial the Verizon/Motorola Droid™ phone. It runs the Google Android 2.0 operating system and is marketed as a competitor to the iPhone, which I have limited experience with. The Droid™ was awesome - I loved the device and it was with a hint of sadness that I had to send it back this week. It isn't just a phone, it is:

- e-mail (including ActiveSync, allowing for Exchange/Outlook integration)

- a 5MP auto-focus camera

- a GPS/Navigation system

- an MP3 player

- just about anything and everything, like a barcode scanner, thanks to downloadable apps

- other things that the link will probably tell you about, if you want to know more of the features.

Here is a photo of the Droid™ to give you an idea of its size:

I know what you all must be thinking: that phone is huge. But keep in mind it is next to an R2-D2 action figure, not a real R2 unit. It has a slide out keyboard in case you don't want to use the touch screen keyboard. I liked both keyboards, but other people at work have said they don't like the real keyboard on it as the keys are all flat. That didn't bother me though. Here's R2 with the keyboard on display.

Here are 2 clones fighting the Droid™. Screen image not simulated.

The display on the Droid™ was great - really clear. It comes with a decent web browser, which renders baconisgreat well.

I downloaded a few apps to see what they were like, but with the phone being a demo unit I didn't get any apps that I had to pay for. One of them that I got was Google Translate. It provided this, very literal, I imagine, translation:

When I saw this app I just had to download it and try it out. Unfortunately, I Zoolander-ed it and could only work out how to turn one way.

Perhaps my second favorite app downloaded was FartDroid. 27 different fart noises, which could be played instantly or set to go off using a timer. When it farted the little animated Droid blew lines out of, well, whatever Droids have.

"Poot" was probably my go-to fart.

This was my favorite app though by a long way: Google SkyMap. When you launch the app it determines your location and then loads the map. When you move the phone around and point it towards different parts of the sky it shows you what the stars or planets that you are looking at are.

Ah, so that bright thing in the sky is the "Sun"? I didn't look at the sun, I actually looked down towards the ground and it showed me the sky on the other side of the planet.

It made seeing the constellations a whole lot easier. For instance, I can pick Orion's belt, but I can't pick the other stars which make up Orion. But SkyMap showed me all of the stars, which was cool. If I were taking shots at night of stars it would be cool to have, then I wouldn't have to actually learn the constellations... I might just learn them in case I don't ever have an Android-based phone on me again...

Liz even enjoyed using it. It saved us from turning the laptop or desktop on a couple of times - it could hook up to the wireless here if we needed to look something up online. All-in-all the Droid™ was fun, easy to use and had heaps of useful features and apps.

Why all the trademark (™) symbols? To quote the Verizon Droid™ website,

"DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license."

That disclaimer appears on the website, TV commercials, print ads... I realize I didn't have to use it, but I did it as an homage to that fact. Or did I have to use it...