The Droid – 24 Hours In
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So I’ve had my Droid for about 24 hours.
Since I’ve been otherwise occupied with the unavoidable consequences of occasionally having a life, I have had much interaction with it, other than it very occasionally ringing. I can live with that.
This morning it was time to tackle one of the most important functions: transferring multimedia files. Being brave (and incredibly stupid) I figured I’d have a go with my choice of operating system: linux. The small amount I’ve read indicates that the phone plays well with Mac and Windows, but who cares? The forums don’t even mention linux, except for requests (I’m used to that).
I plugged the phone into a spare USB port, it asked me if I wanted to mount it (the storage card), I said yes, and POOF – there it was, popping up on my computer screen (Xubuntu 9.10 64 bit). I copied over a boatload of music files (the internal player plays a bunch more formats than I thought but my interest is in MP3 and OGG). It will not play DRM files (not that I have any).
Wow, a device that is plug and play with linux – did you ever think you’d see such a thing? :)
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The vibrating I felt is part of the feedback system (I turned it off). In the meantime, the Exchange sync finished populating my Business Calendar (regular calendar is a Google function) and Contacts, so I feel like a whole person now :)
Contacts brought over my groups from Exchange and allowed me to set up Favorites. This mimics the quick dial on my Treo.
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Thus far, the phone works great, sms and email are fine, and it transfers and plays music.
Overall, it’s a bit too foo-foo for me but I’ll deal with it. It’s still better than a Crackberry or iPhone (and I don’t require Steve Jobs’ permission to install and play files). It’s much faster and larger than my Treo, which is largely what I was looking for in the first place.
I still haven’t given it any Gmail info.
More later.
7 Comments
Justin Case
November 18th, 2009
at 5:16pm
Cost of ownership is way too high!!!
leftystrat
November 19th, 2009
at 4:19pm
Not at all – work pays for it :)
Eric
November 20th, 2009
at 7:06am
I haven’t heard too much about this phone and probably won’t be getting it however I will be able to upgrade to a new phone for my new every two next year. We’ll see what happens. I will probably be buying the LG enV 3 actually.
Shannon VanWagner
November 20th, 2009
at 11:41am
Coming from the Crackberry, with it’s inadequate browser experience ( and yes I tried Opera on there too), my new droid is nothing short of FANTASTIC!
With position aware (vertical or landscape) browser, full page display and double-tap to zoom(like Opera), and phone-number-dial and address-to-google maps “tap” for action functionality, the browser in the Droid is one of many strong points of this awesome phone. But there are so many more…
For instance:
>Tap the Microphone beside the Google, say something like “mason game store seattle” and the magical google page with accurate search results appears – you can then dial the phone number by simply tapping it, or you can click the address and it will appear on google maps.
>When looking at map results, if you tap navigate – you will hear turn by turn driving directions from your current position to the destination. I tested this out in Seattle and it worked great.
>If you’re like me, you don’t want your regular Google mail to mix with your work email on your company-provided Droid. So I setup a separate google mail account, just for this purpose – I then forward that gmail to my original gmail and I also have my original gmail configured to send through my “droid” gmail account. So now I have a combined inbox on the phone, work email (exchange), and a special gmail account that I can use to email separately.
>The music application and device compatibility with LInux. As for your statement about storage devices “just working” with Linux – actually there are many cellphone devices that work just fine with Linux. But I agree, some are not as easy as the Droid – like the Verizon Dare for instance – the DRM is a PITA for this device. Also, the speaker on this Droid is Amazing – you can actually listen to music from the speaker and it sounds good.
>The applications available for this device. While there are not as many applications as the iphone, there are plenty available (and a number for free). I already have some neat little apps like foggy-screen, ak-47, compass, pandora, piano play, pinball, funny jokes, color flashlight, bonsai blast, fishing, and the list goes on. And as the Android platform continues to emerge (at a very fast pace) to the market, the apps available will continue to grow.
The only functionality I’m anxiously awaiting is the ability to easily tether my Droid to my Ubuntu GNU/Linux 9.10. Previously I was able to do this with the Crackberry using an application called berry4all by Thibaut Colar.
This device is more like a mini-computer than a cell phone.
And to top it all off, this device is based on Linux and Open Source. So not only am I supporting the right cause by using it, but also – the software for this device will never die and will continuously become even better than ever.
Verizon Droid – this is the device of the year!
Shannon VanWagner
humans enabled
leftystrat
November 20th, 2009
at 11:48am
Shannon: thanks for the additions and opinions. I’m liking the phone.
Also subscribing to your rss feed. Nice blog!
Bitpop
November 23rd, 2009
at 10:31am
‘Droid does interest me, but as a WinMo user, I’m hanging in there for WinMo7. The question is, how long will I be hanging? Will we all be flying around in sky cars by the time it lands?
leftystrat
November 23rd, 2009
at 10:32am
I just read that (Sprint?) will not be using WinMo anymore. Might be a wider announcement, I’m not sure. If you like WinMo, stick with it. Droid offers a ton of options for the non-MS fans.