Last Friday my wife and I received our new Droids, and after using it pretty intensely over the weekend, these are some of my overall impressions. I won’t even attempt at making this post exhaustive – instead I’ll try and post some follow-ups on things like what apps I’ve found useful (or not) and so on.

I must say that I wasn’t initially sold on getting a Droid – the Google Nexus One is supposed to be coming to Verizon sometime this Spring, and knowing that it has more memory, faster processor, a newer version of Android, etc. I was very tempted to just wait. However, just as decision-time was looming reports started to emerge that the Droid would soon be upgraded to the same, newer version of Android (2.1). Also, the Nexus One has definitely had its share of issues for early-adopters, so ultimately I decided to go with the slightly older but seemingly more reliable Droid.

Initial Setup

Setup was relatively painless for me, already having had a Google account. I had sync’d all of my contacts from my old Blackberry to my Google account using Google Sync, and I had already “cleaned up” my address books in anticipation of importing them to the new phone. You may notice I referred to address books. That’s because I’m taking advantage of one of the key features of Android 2.0 or newer, the ability to connect with multiple Google accounts.

I use Gmail for both my personal and work email, calendar, etc. but with separate accounts. Initially, I was worried about how this would go – would I end up with many duplicate contacts because some people appear in both contacts lists? Would I be able to specify where new contacts are saved when I create them on the phone? How would calendars work?

All my fears were laid to rest as I set up the phone, first with my personal account, then adding my work one. Android does a great job of combining duplicate contacts while still allowing you to un-join them if it makes a mistake or if you want them to remain distinct. When you start to add a new contact, it immediately asks which account to create it under.

One slight disappointment is that the calendar only syncs with the primary account on the phone, my personal account in my case. However, since I had already set up calendar sharing between my work and personal accounts I am still able to view, edit, and add to my work calendars. Disaster averted.

Kudos

I’m incredibly impressed with the inherent flexibility of the Android OS. The commercials for the MyTouch 3G (which also uses Android) that tout the system’s myriad personalization options are really spot-on. Within a couple days, I already have a setup that is very usable and customized to my taste. I’ll write more about this when I blog about apps.

The touch screen is great. This is the first touch device I’ve owned and I’ve always been a bit leery, especially of onscreen keyboards. However, the screen is so responsive and the virtual keyboard so good that I find myself rarely using the physical keyboard.

Google Maps and Google Voice integration are awesome. The navigation app is simply game-changing (no wonder Garmin’s stock dropped significantly once Google introduced it!)

Some other highlights:

• Threaded SMS messaging
• Push support for Gmail
• Great call quality
• Very good voice recognition

Gripes

Of course, nothing is perfect, not even shiny new tech-toys. There is always room for improvement, and these are just a few of the things I’ve run into already that leave me wanting more:

Groups support – Gmail itself does a great job of supporting contact groups, allowing you to send messages to groups, arrange contacts, etc. Android’s support of groups is incredibly rudimentary. All you seem to be able to do is filter your contacts by choosing which groups sync from your Gmail accounts and which groups are hidden. Even then, it is a multi-step process that’s more work that it’s worth. I can’t set ringtones based on group membership, I can’t send emails or SMS texts to groups, and I can’t even modify what groups that contacts are members of. This is the biggest FAIL I’ve come across thus far …

Notifications – I’m surprised to say this, but my old Blackberry Curve did a much better job of managing notifications than the Droid. On the Blackberry there was a single menu section for specifying all the many notifications – phone calls, text messages, email accounts, etc. You could set up multiple notification profiles and easily enable them from the home screen. In comparison, the notifications subsystem in Android is much more rudimentary. Within each app, I can control its notifications, and there are some system-wide settings for ringtones and such but no support for multiple profiles. Once notifications are set, all you can do is adjust notification volume, turn off audible alerts (leaving only apps that would normally vibrate), and turn off both audible and vibrating alerts. I’m really disappointed that I can’t set up a more specialized vibration profile, but it seems I may have to find “an app for that” …

Physical Keyboard – One of the bragging rights of this phone is that it has a physical keyboard. However, it sucks. Seriously. I loved the keyboard on my Blackberry. Despite its tiny keys, I could quickly and accurately type what I needed. At first I thought it might just be a learning curve issue, but then I tried the onscreen keyboards (both in portrait and landscape mode) and found them much more usable and accurate. Including a physical keyboard on this device was a significant design decision by Motorola – you would think they would have made it worthwhile! It leaves me wishing they had left it out and saved a couple millimeters in thickness and reduced the mechanical complexity.

Bluetooth Voice Dialing – The last gripe I’ve got (for now) is that Android doesn’t support bluetooth voice dialing. Period. It’s just not there. I’ve done some research and this is simply a feature that isn’t implemented in Android (yet?). This is a huge disappointment for me, because I (did) usemy bluetooth headset for voice dialing all the time. The Droid does have a “Voice Dialing” app, which works very well. You just can’t use it with bluetooth. This seems like such an obvious oversight to me. Even my wife’s old LG enV2 had this feature. My old Motorola e815 that I had 3 years ago had it too. Bluetooth voice dialing pre-dates Android’s existence! Why is it not supported?!?!?! Argh.

Final Thoughts

Don’t take all my gripes to mean I don’t like the Droid – I still love it. It’s just that when a device has so much potential it’s hard not to notice the areas it falls flat on its face. I’m still finding it incredibly useful and overall a much more powerful device than my Blackberry. I still have some things I need to tweak (getting favorite mobile sites bookmarked, etc.) and more apps to play with, but I’m sure that will come with time.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts where I’ll talk more in depth about apps, Google Voice integration, and more!

Background

Just a quick bit of background about where we’re starting from. As I said we are currently on a family plan with my parents, as we have been for the past 6 years. For the past two years we’ve been using Motorola e815′s, which we’ve been very pleased with. They were the last phones Verizon sold before they started putting their own proprietary menu system on all their phones. They’ve been great phones, and they have most all of the features that are common on phones even today (bluetooth, microSD slot, and so forth.)

We have also been pleased with our service with Verizon, so we don’t really feel like we need to switch to another carrier. We are planning on dropping the land-line at our home, since we will finally be getting local Indiana numbers on our cell phones. Between my starting a new job and us getting rid of our house phone line we’ll have a little money to spend than the $30 a month we have been for the past two years, but we don’t want to go overboard.

Carriers and Plans

Even though we’ve had a good experience with Verizon we were willing to look at other cell phone providers in the interest of getting the best price and service. I looked into Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and more. I found that most all of them had the same basic pricing structure for their plans. The main differences were in the special aspects of their plans and their coverage.

T-Mobile has their “5 Faves”, Sprint has early nights and weekends, AT&T has rollover, and Verizon has “in.” Each of these has its advantages, but more than those I am interested in getting good coverage both in town and when we’re traveling. Since we both still have family in Virginia we wanted a carrier that would give us good coverage here, there, and all points in between. I know Verizon is good for this, so I started checking out the coverage maps of the other providers. Of these others, AT&T was the only one that seemed to come close to the coverage we’ve gotten with Verizon.

I’m looking at getting a Blackberry, and all carriers charge an additional monthly fee for Blackberry service. Most all carriers charge $29.99 a month in addition to the price you pay for the main voice plan. T-Mobile was the exception to this, charging $19.99/month.  With regards to voice plans all the major carriers were within spittin’ distance of one another when it came to minutes and pricing structures. There are differences, but overall it is pretty much a wash.

Phones

I’ve been thinking for a while now that I might want a Blackberry. I’ve carried various sorts of PDAs over the years, with varying success. I have a feeling this was in part due to the fact that older PDAs were sometimes of questionable reliability and versatility. The other half of the equation is that I never really needed the functionality provided by such devices. I think that a “convergence device” like a Blackberry, that includes cell phone abilities, constant internet connectivity, text messaging, and all of the PDA functions, would be much more useful than my previous trials with more limited devices.

Having been with Verizon for so long I have gotten used to having a somewhat limited selection of phones when compared to some other carriers. Verizon and Sprint use a different cellular technology  (known as CDMA) than other carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and others around the world (called GSM.) Though Blackberries are available on most all networks, there has historically been about a 1 year lag time between new Blackberry models coming out on the GSM networks and their later release on CDMA. As I researched what Blackberry model I liked best I settled on the relatively new Blackberry Curve. It has been out for over a year on GSM networks, and as I began researching phones it had not yet been released on Verizon and Sprint. Thankfully, within the last month or so both carriers have since made them available.

I like the Curve because it has a nice large screen for messaging, managing appointments, and so on. It also has a full keyboard, like a miniaturized computer keyboard, so it is much easier to type out text messages and emails. It’s relatively small compared to other smartphones so it’s not as unweildy as some when it comes to actually using it as a phone. Another reason I’ve settled on a Blackberry is because there is a vast number of 3rd party applications available, and it’s more widely established and supported than Windows Mobile devices or the oh-so-glitzy Apple iPhone.

My wife had previously been eyeballing the LG VX8350, a nice, music-capable phone (on Verizon) that has recieved some very good reviews. As I was researching phones I ran across another phone I thought she might like and she immediately fell in love with it. The phone is an LG enV2, which is considered a “messaging phone.” It’s not quite a smartphone, but it’s more than just a basic phone. The enV2 has a clamshell design that hinges open to reveal a full keyboard and a second, larger display inside. Though neither of us have done a lot of text messaging in the past, she likes the design of the phone so much that it won her over anyway. This is especially true since I will have a phone that will make it easier for texting back and forth with each other. Additionally it has music-phone features, great battery life, and a sturdy design, which add up to a very compelling feature set. Like the VX8350 it too has recieved good reviews.

Decision Time

There were a few factors that ultimately factored into our final decision. With me wanting a Blackberry I could go to just about any carrier and pretty much get the same phone. However, with my wife really liking the enV2, Verizon was looking more likely. As I mentioned coverage was a big factor, and Verizon was on top there as well. Unsurprisingly, cost was another consideration. We have been able to save a lot of money the past few years by sharing a plan with my parents.

The last time we renewed our plan we were already in Indiana and checked about changing our numbers over to local Indiana numbers. At the time the folks at Verizon said it wasn’t possible to have one plan with phones numbers from both Indiana and Virginia on it. Since we are really ready to switch our numbers over to local numbers now we were thinking that we wouldn’t be able to share a plan with them. Though we knew this would mean paying more for a plan it would allow us to drop our land line and save some money to use towards the increased cost.

This all changed as I was reading through some Verizon literature I got from a local reseller. In one little paragraph it mentioned exactly what we hoped to do – sharing a family plan with family in other areas of the country with everyone having local numbers to where they live. And so I called up the Verizon telephone sales number and asked them about it. According to him not only is what we would need possible, but it’s quite easily accomplished. So that hurdle that I previously anticipated no longer existed.

By continuing to share a plan with them we could upgrade to a plan that includes unlimited text messaging to anyone on any network for less than we would pay for basic cell phone service alone on our own. All of this gave Verizon a distinct advantage as we prepared to make a final decision on what to do.

Final Thoughts

At this point we’re planning in the next couple weeks to check into any additional discounts we might be able to get and figuring out exactly when to take the leap to renew our contract for another two years, purchase new phones, finally get Indiana cell numbers, cancel our land-line phone service, and have our DSL switched over to a new package that doesn’t require a land-line.

It’s been a circuitous path to end up back where I started, with Verizon, but I feel that having done all of this research I can do so with confidince. I know that we’ll be getting good coverage, phones we like, services we will use (like unlimited in-network calling and unlimited texting), and as good a price as we would be able to find.

I don’t know how informative or helpful this lengthy post will be for anyone else, but I think this has been an experience worth sharing. I expect that as we get our new phones and so forth that I’ll write a couple posts about my experiences with a Blackberry. I’ve promised my wife that I will not become a “crackberry” addict and I’ve given her full permission to point out if I am doing so. I give the rest of you the permission to do the same. If I start to show symptoms … please encourage me to seek professional help!