The Motorola Droid – My Day-One Review

After spending over a year away from WordPress, I’ve returned to post a review of my new phone.

I purchased the new Motorola Droid phone today for Verizon Wireless.  First, let me say – awesome device.  My previous phone was the Samsung Omnia i910.  I was anxiously awaiting the Omnia II, but it appeared that each rumored release date passed by without a word from Verizon, so I got tired of waiting.  I’m glad I did – the Droid is one of the more-awesome phones I’ve had in my hands.  The one big change is that I have to get used to a Google-centric world when I’ve been living in a Microsoft-centric world for the last 10+ years.

One of the neat features of this phone is the voice-activated searching on the main screen.  You hit the microphone, and say what your looking for, and it will try to find it.  If you say “Call John Smith”, it will bring up John Smith in your phonebook and you just have to hit his number to call him.  If he’s not in the phonebook, it will search on Google for him!  If you say “Directions to Bailey’s Irish Pub”, it will bring up a list of locations, when you select one, it will give you the directions, and you hit one more button to activate the turn-by-turn navigation from your current location.  BTW, the GPS location ability of this phone is really good – after a couple of minutes, it had narrowed my location to within 10 feet!

The Droid has some really neat applications that really make the phone shine, but also give a view into some of its possible weaknesses.  One such app is Google Sky Map.  When launched, this application simply displays the stars in the sky.  What’s unique about this application is that it only displays the region of the sky that the back of your phone is pointed at!  As you move the phone around the sky, the screen updates in real-time to display the stars, planets, constellations, etc where the phone is pointed (the back, anyway).  The one weakness I’ve seen, though, is that the sensors, while extremely sensitive, are not instruments of precision.  The application uses the GPS, tilt meters, and compass to give you the display.  The effect is outstanding and I’m anxious to get outside to see how accurate it is.  I just got the phone this morning, and it’s cloudy out right now, so I guess I’ll have to wait.

Another app that comes with the Droid is Google Maps with turn-by-turn voice navigation.  I haven’t used it yet, but it takes the place of your Garmin or TomTom quite effectively!  You can find locations using voice recognition also.  I haven’t had time to review it yet, but it looks to be most everything you need.

Some of the other neat apps I’ve downloaded and tried:

Compass – a standard app for phone that come with the hardware.  I think the compass on my phone is one of it’s weaknesses.  It appears that when rotating the phone, the compass can be off by as much as 10 degrees or more!  The digital needle will sometimes only move 75 degrees when I rotate the phone 90 degrees.  This may play into the precision of the Google Sky app too.

The Weather Channel – finally, a good-looking app with a good-looking map!  All the power of Google maps with overlayed radar data.  I like it better than Weatherbug because it does have radar in motion, although it’s limited to just a few frames.

Barcode scanner – scan a barcode and it will do a Google search for that product!

Bubble – a level on your phone!  Use your phone to level or plumb what you place it on or against.

It also comes with nice Facebook / MySpace / Twitter apps.  The Android Market has a whole bunch of stuff, a lot for free, others for < $5. 

The hardware specs are nice too.  It’s fast, comes with 16GB of storage, has a 5MP camera (which is mediocre, but I hear they’ve got a software upgrade coming out next month which will make it better).  It takes DVD-quality video at 20 fps (haven’t tried yet).

So far, this phone is awesome, and I’d HIGHLY recommend it.  The only software shortcomings so far is the lack of contact groups and multiple calendars on the phone side.  Contact photos on the phone are not synched to the Gmail account. 

I haven’t even scratched the surface yet.  I’m going to bed though.  I’ll write more as time permits (which means probably never…)

Obama Admits: He’s too inexperienced to run for President

Obama declared in 2004 that he was too inexperienced to run for president. What changed?

digg story

Lecture:How Modern Liberals Think

Why do modern Liberals think the way they do? What makes them tick? Why are they wrong about the issues?

This is a 47 minute video from a former liberal.

digg story

What caused our economic crisis?

Here’s a pretty good history of the housing crisis which led to an overall financial crisis.

Obama Thought Subprime Loans were a GOOD IDEA

I guess that’s why the democrats fought against the Republican efforts to reign in Fannie and Freddie.

Democrats covering up Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac warnings

As early as 2004, Republicans tried to tighten controls on Fannie and Freddie, and the Democrats fought them with teeth bared

Democrats and Selective Memory

My Personal Thoughts on Obama

The man is smooth, mostly.

As David Spade once said, “the man can sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in a white dress.” (Tommy Boy, 1995) How many times has he talked himself out of trouble this far on the campaign trail? He uses his eloquence to explain away the negative things we’ve learned about him. The big question is, what has yet to come out about him?

Personally, I think he shares some of the sentiments that Rev. Wright espouses. Maybe not to the conviction that Wright does, but I think his thought processes are shaped by his environment. Does that make him a bad person? No. Would that make him a bad president? Maybe, maybe not. The jury is still out. Democrats that support Obama are yelling out “let it go, let it go” because Obama has now made a clean break. Sure, they want everyone to let it go because it hurts their candidate’s chances. The fact is, he should have let it go many years ago, but I guess now he will “reap what he has sown.”

The nice thing about McCain, and Clinton for that matter, is that everything they’re about is pretty well already known. Clinton does what is good for Clinton, and everyone knows that. McCain, for all intents and purposes, appears squeaky clean. His apparent faults only seem like faults because the rest of the man has so much integrity that his minor failings stand out.

If you haven’t, you should read McCain’s Wikipedia entry. It tells the good and the bad about him, and it’s amazing some of the stuff he went through in captivity. Anyone who says he isn’t a patriot or doesn’t love his country just doesn’t know anything about the man.

As far as Obama goes, there are too many unknowns about the man, and besides, I don’t agree with many of his proposed policies.

Note: McCain came out with his healthcare plan today – it’s amazing how comprehensively it covers its own costs, lowers costs for Americans, and provides coverage for everyone who wants it without bloated government programs and mandates that everyone will have to pay for. You can read more about it in this CNN article. Say NO to socialized medicine. I can’t understand why people that complain about medicare, social security, and other government entitlement programs would want to put out government in charge of yet another bloated program which will cost Americans much more than they’ll ever get out of it.

PHP Objects are a wonderful thing

If you don’t know about PHP objects, you might want to learn. PHP Objects (and objects in general) are great for representing objects that you will re-use more than once, or objects you want to instantiate on the fly.

PHP 5 Objects

More to come…

Hello Blogosphere type people!

This is my first foray into the Blogosphere. At times, I may be drole, dry, funny, boring, or just plain idiotic, but keep it respectful and I’ll do the same.