At 8am this morning, I walked into my local Verizon store and got myself a new phone, Motorola’s Droid.  It was the first time I can remember that I was able to walk into a carrier
store and not have to wait at least a 1/2 hour for service!  Thank you Verizon.  The store was busy, but not a crazy crowd like Verizon was hoping for.  I heard there were six people in line at 7am when the store opened.

First and foremost – goodbye AT&T, hello Verizon.  So happy to be back to the land of full-bars and service that works when I walk around or drive through town.  AT&T – it’s that simple.  Just fix your service – and we’ll all come back.

Now onto my new phone.  The Droid is slick and cool looking.  It’s a little heavier than my iPhone, but that’s because there’s an actual keyboard, although you can also use a touch screen keyboard if you want.  By the way, there are 2 Droid phones at Verizon to chose from – one is just a touch screen (smaller and lighter) and the other has the added slide-out keyboard.  Lots of fun accessories to choose from, of course I had to check them out. The one I’m still on the fence about – a multi-media dock that hooks up to your computer or nearest plug. When the phone is docked, it turns into a big clock and you can chose to play music, watch photos or video, and check out the weather.  As soon as I can figure out how to load music and video, I’ll let you all know if the $29.99 for the dock was worth it.  I also bought the pink gel cover ($16.99) – which I had to take off to properly fit the phone in the dock.  I like the cover, so if I don’t find the dock to be useful, I will keep the cover and return the dock.  No earbuds included with the Droid, but the ones I already had work, so I didn’t have to spend another $29.99 for earphones.  I almost splurged for the car dock ($29.99), it’s basically a phone holder so you can use the GPS on the phone.  But when I found out it doesn’t also charge the phone, I passed and bought the car charger (you guessed it – $29.99).  Oh wait, I also had to buy screen protector sheets for $12.99.

From what I can tell so far, the Android Apps don’t even compare to the iPhone apps.  There’s 10,000 apps in the Android vs. 100,000in iTunes. All the usual stuff is fine – Facebook (I do like the widget!), Opentable, Pandora, etc… but when you get the creative random apps – they don’t seem to be as creative as the iPhone ones.  If you know of any – let me know!!  Purchasing an app is pretty annoying too.  The purchase is done via Google Check-Out, therefore requiring a credit card number. Oh sure, so does iTunes, I know, I know….

The default notification sound is a robot voice that says “Droid” – it’s hilarious & annoying.  The first I heard it,I looked around the room trying to figure out if my tv was on.  Now I leave it because it makes me laugh.
All in all, the Droid is pretty cool.  I’m not sure if I’ll become a convert.  I’ll update after the weekend and let you know!