It's been a while

I let a whole bunch of other projects get in the way of the blogging for quite a while now, as is clearly evident from the dearth of posts here. Over the last several months, I have used my droid heavily and the shine has come off the romance. :) It started shortly after the Froyo update, when the device went from rock solid to flaky. A complete reset seemed to stabilize it a bit, but it has never really been the same, even when brought back to factory defaults.

I can live with a little flakiness in a device, but when I rely on it as my primary means of navigation and entertainment when traveling, a random reboot in the middle of driving to the airport in a strange city is not really as funny as it might sound. Flakiness aside, I am also dealing with a hardware issue - the home button has decided to work... sometimes. Again - not the end of the world, but tedious none the less. I need to make time to get it into the Verizon store to see what the warranty (if any) will do for me.

You might think with these issues, I am no longer happy with the device - not the case. I am occasionally thrilled with it and amazed by it, and alternately ready to throw it out the window, but then, is that so unlike some relationships we might have with some family or friend? For now, I will keep using it and waiting on the contract to expire, or possibly repair my wife's broken screen on her old droid. Till then -

keyboard for the droid

I‘m composing this post using my freedom pro keyboard on my droid. The longer I use the droid, the more I wonder what I did before I had it.

The mark of good tech is how well it integrates into your life and how it can change productivity or pleasure. While I‘m getting used to this keyboard, the overall experience is great. Short texts and even emails are easily done on then phone, but longer typing is just easier on a keyboard. I will say, the voice recognition is pretty good as well though and I used that the other day for the first time while driving. This keyboard is effective and fairly easy to set up, plus being available for under 100$.

Droid X and Froyo

Sometime around 3 this morning I updated to Froyo. Very cool and worth it. I have been stalking the net a bit looking for this update with the improved performance and capabilities and right out of the gate, the screen rotation, system performance, and keyboard jump out as improvements. The upgrade was painless and reasonably quick and all my apps seemed to migrate well though with over 300, it's hard to know for sure. I have to winnow through the stack a bit to see if any died in the upgrade.

My focus now is cleaning up the device from all my testing and sorting out the apps I am using. I have downloaded a few key utilities that make a difference and I will profile that final list here when I am closer to complete.

Update on the Droid

So I got my droid and have been playing with it steadily since. I am more and more impressed with it the longer I use it. It has the capability to be a lightweight laptop replacement and more. A few features have been especially helpful and fun. The Navigation bit is one of my favorites when I travel, as it is the best integrated platform I have experienced. The droid X ties in my music (streaming or local), navigation, and phone calls into one tight experience. It pauses my music for turn by turn alerts, re-routes dynamically as well as all the other standard stuff you would expect out of a nav system.

Beyond the nav, the music and entertainment capabilities are top notch with streaming media options, a nice integrated music player and a boatload of apps to pick from. I am quite happy with Pandora and the built in media player for now as most of the time I stream my tunes. I also have a selection of local (Philly) radio stations and a few others that I occasionally use though again, Pandora usually wins.

The Droid is on its way!

I'm looking forward to the imminent arrival of my new gadget / phone! The Droid has been picked up for delivery and should arrive today or tomorrow latest. More to come, but it's looking good for arrival before I have to leave for Asia.

Droid family

With the upcoming release of the new Motorola Droid, I am even more tempted to make the move. I have to get an official Corporate liable Blackberry, potentially replacing my current device and I have to decide if I am going to carry 2 devices to get a chance to play with the new droid platforms or if I will stick with my single corporate phone as my only device. Ahhh decisions...