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.

Is This the Droid You're Looking for?

I'm writing this post on the Droid phone I got last week.  In part, the post is a training exercise in typing with the physical keyboard-- which is either unfamiliar (which would explain my current awkwardness with it) or unwieldy (which would explain future awkwardness in using it).

Overall, I'm delighted with Droid.  It's much more reliable than my kludgy Treo 755P.  It synchs with my work email like a dream, the display is stunning, the web browsing works great, the apps are fun, and the camera is quite nice (ever since an update was pushed to the phone that fixed a focusing bug).

There are some annoyances.  As noted, the physical keyboard takes getting used to - sometime the onscreen keyboard's just quicker to use.  The built in apps have quirks -- for instance, the email client won't do signature lines, and the calendar won't let you swipe from month to month.  But overall I like my lil' Droid.