I have had my new phone for 2 whole days now and I am feel like I have a good feel for it.  So I will share my first impressions of the phone.  I am sure over time some of these will change, but for now, here’s how I like it. (I LOVE it).

Keyboard:
One of the main reasons I wanted the Droid vs other Android phones on the market was because the Droid has a physical keyboard.  After using my enV 2 for two years I had fallen in love with the physical qwerty keyboard and considered it a must in my next phone.  However, as I have started to use the Droid with earnest, I find that I actually prefer the on-screen landscape keyboard for multiple reasons.

First, the physical keyboard is off-center on the device and causes my thumb and wrist on my right hand to cramp and hurt when I attempt to type more than one or two words. Second, the on-screen keyboard has predictive input and corrects my spelling errors.  Neither of these options are available when using the physical keyboard.  Third, the on-screen keyboard has haptic feedback and larger keys than the physical keyboard, which makes it easier for me to type quickly. And lastly, it is quicker and more convenient to simply use the on-screen keyboard.

I am honestly very surprised that I like the on-screen keyboard as much as I do, but for now, I think I will use it the most.

Homepage Screenshot

Launcher/Home:
Having a fellow geek for a husband, who is never happy with the status quo, means I often find out about options for our technology that “typical” users never see.  The Droid is no exception, and Matt quickly found out that you can change the launcher app (aka home screen) on the Droid.  While the original home screen was fun and useful, the Home++ home screen works a lot better for me.

It allows for up to 7 home screens instead of the standard 3, minimizes often used apps such as the phone and browser into smaller buttons that are constant at the bottom of your home screens, and allows you to hide the status bar at the top of the screen to provide more usable space.

Apps:
Like the iPhone, the Droid comes preloaded with an “app store”, the Android Market Place, where you can download thousands of applications. There is pretty much an app for anything you could possibly want to do on your phone and a large percentage of those handy-dandy apps are free.  The Market Place is also quite easy to use and installing applications is amazingly simple.  The Droid even sends you a friendly notification to let you know your download has completed, your app is installed, and allows you to open it up immediately.

I have used it to install multiple twitter apps, a flickr app, a ping.fm app, and a weather app and to update existing apps on the phone.  I am sure as I continue to use the phone and delve deeper into the market place, I will find even more useful apps.

Photo take with the Droid. Click to view full-size and see the blurriness

Camera:
The Droid  comes equipped with a 5 megapixel camera that offers auto-focus and a flash. However, whether due to user error or software bugs, I have not been able to take many pictures I am happy with.  They tend to come out blurry like the camera or subject has moved when the photo was snapped.

I am hoping after some further testing and searching online, I will be able to alleviate this problem.

Email, Contacts, & Calendar:
The Droid synchronizes with Google Contacts, Gmail, and Calendar nearly seamlessly. Your Google contacts are automatically pulled to your phone when you log-in to your Google account and you can manage them both from your phone or desktop computer. The Droid also allows you to merge your Facebook contact data in with this information.  You can choose to add all your Facebook contacts, or do what I did and only add information for contacts already present in your Google contacts list.

The Gmail app has push email so as soon as emails arrive at the Google server they are sent to your phone.  This can be both great and a pain depending on how many emails you get and how interested in seeing them you are.

The Calendar app is quite useful and probably one of my favorite features.  You can view all of your Google calendars and it even imports the colors you have assigned each calendar.  You can choose to view your events in agenda, day, week, or month format and the add event feature is quite comprehensive. I generally do a good job of remembering Matt’s and my schedule from week to week, but it is great to be able to have my calendar with me at all times.

Maps:
The Droid has a native Google Maps app that is amazing.  Not only can you do the typical maps stuff, but it provides GPS-based turn-by-turn voice navigation.  Matt and I tested it out and it is amazingly accurate and can even handle rerouting you if you make a wrong turn.  The voice it uses is a little synthetic, but otherwise it is fabulous.  I had hoped to get a GPS unit for my car this year as I tend to get lost, but the Droid’s Google maps app has totally fulfilled that wish!

Phone Calls:
So far I have done a lot more “playing” with my new phone than actually making phone calls, but what I have seen so far has been good.  There are multiple options for making phone calls, including a dial pad, contacts list, and home screen shortcuts.  The call quality is also great, though part of that may be due to the carrier not the phone itself.  I am also impressed with the speakerphone.  It is loud and clear and the person on the other end can actually understand what I am saying.  With a car dock, this could be a great hands-free setup to use when driving.

Display:
I love the display on the Droid.  It is bright, large, and responds well to touch.  My only complaint so far is fingerprints. I am sure this is a problem with all touch-screen phones, but I feel the need to compulsively clean my phone to remove all the fingerprints.  It is especially noticeable when using the phone in the sunlight.  The glare off the fingerprints can make the screen hard to read.  This is, however, a small price to pay to have such a capable computer at my finger tips (pun intended) virtually everywhere I go.

Facebook:
I would guess one of the most commonly used apps on most smart phones is Facebook.  However, the app on the Droid falls really really short of useful in my opinion.  The notification feature rarely works and almost never refreshes with out a forced refresh and even then it is flaky at best.  Also the news feed only refreshes in 30 minute intervals at the fastest.  In a world where people are carrying around smart phones and updating their status constantly 30 minutes is just not going to cut it.

The app does allow you to take and upload photos directly to your Facebook wall but you can use the camera interface for the same thing.  Or if you prefer you can use a service like ping.fm that allows you to add your photos to multiple sites at once.

I have been so dissatisfied with the Facebook app that I have stopped using it entirely and simply put a bookmark to the Facebook mobile-touch site on my home screen.  While it doesn’t give me nifty system notifications when someone does something exciting on Facebook, it is highly usable and is always up-to-date.

All in all I am highly pleased with my new phone.  It is capable of far more than I have described so far, and I am sure as I continue to use it, I will find more and more reasons to love it.

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Simply dial 1-800-goog-411, state your location, state the name or category of the business you are looking for, select the business you want from a list, and Google will connect you. It is entirely voice activated and does a pretty decent job with voice recognition. I used it for the first time yesterday to get the information for a local bowling alley while I was at a crowded mall and didn’t have any troubles.

As I said, this service has been available for sometime now, but after using it yesterday, I think it definitely worth a mention.

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