Droid 4: The Phone of Promises

While I'm not quite as much of a gadget fan as some of my more techie-oriented friends, I do enjoy picking up a new electronic goody now and then. And that is why yesterday I traded my Droid smartphone (one of the original Motorola Droids) for its newest descendent, the Droid 4.

Doing so may have resulted more from gut feeling than reason. Had I reasoned the matter through, I probably would not have picked up the Droid 4 one day after its release on the market. I would have waited for collective market experience to materialize concerning its reliability and usefulness. Instead, I saw months ago that it was coming to the market; went to a Verizon store yesterday; played with it for a few seconds; and decided to buy it.

So far I'm happy with the decision. The Droid line may be a line of dinosaurs, with their slide-out physical keyboards in an era of virtual onscreen keyboards; but I've always found physical keyboards far more accurate and easier to use than their counterparts. The phone feels light and comfortable; it's fast; and so far it has acceptable battery life.

But I can't help noticing that this is the phone of promises. It has the "Gingerbread" Android operating system, rather than the state-of-the-art "Ice Cream Sandwiche" Android OS on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus. Further, intrigued by the camera that faces the user, I clicked on the Skype app on the phone -- only to reach a screen telling me that the Skype video calling app for that phone had actually not been developed yet.

So it's a "stay tuned" phone. Not the worst thing. It's fun to have stuff to look forward to.