Ed Greenberg

Comments on the Droid

Well, nobody ever said writing text on the Droid would be easy, and it’s not, so back to the desktop for this post.

On Friday Nov 6, I was third on line at the Verizon Store in Panorama City to buy my Motorola Droid. I’ve been asked what I think, and all I can say is “yes, this is the Droid I was looking for.”

So far, I’ve managed to duplicate almost all the Palm functionality I’ve grown to use over the past (OMG) 13 years. Yes, I just realized that I got my first Palm Organizer in 1996. I’ve had a Palm Pilot, Palm Pilot Pro, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Palm Tungsten T, Tungsten C, Treo 600, 650, 700 and 755. It should be noted that I didn’t have to pay for all of these. I got the V, VII, TT, TC and 600 from my employment at Palm between 2000 and 2005. I bought the 650 and 700 from Verizon and got the 755 from Asurion when I dropped the 700 in the can. (Yes, that’s what I said.)

For the past few years, I’ve been wondering what’s next. When iPhone came out for AT&T, I didn’t really like certain aspects of it, and it was becoming pretty obvious that PalmOS was getting pretty long in the tooth. Palm Pre was a welcome surprise, but I wasn’t switching to Sprint, and then the initial reports were not really encouraging. Friends were starting to make Android noises, and I wasn’t really listening, but as the Droid release date came closer, I started to pay attention. So what’s that you say?

• Open platform?
• Multitasking?
• Sync with Google Apps?
• Program in Java?
• EVDO rev A plus Wifi?
• GPS?

Then I saw the photos of the car dock and the bedside dock. That’s is. I was sold. If the phone would do all that and be stable and solid, I was willing to part with PalmOS.

In my next post, I’ll review my application list, and how I addressed the various apps that I used in my Treo.

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