A Case of the Droid(s)

A little over a week ago I traded my Verizon Palm Treo 755p cellphone for a Droid (technically a Droid A855).

I had been looking for a new phone for a few weeks prior to that and would have bought an HTC TouchPro2 had they had them in stock.  But Verizon had been sold out of them shortly after they started carrying them.

The Palm Treo was my first Smartphone.  I chose it because I had owned several Palm operating system PDAs and already had some applications I wanted to keep using, and I’d read some positive reviews for the phone.

When I first bought the Treo from Verizon I was required to try the data service with it for 30 days.  I found that browsing the Internet on the Treo was an exercise in frustration, mostly due to the small screen, and after 30 days I canceled the data service and never looked back.

After that the Treo became just a fancy cell phone for me, and a pretty good one at that.

The large battery intended to power the PDA gave the phone extra-long battery life and the keyboard was easy to use for texting.

But two years later I was eligible for a new phone and after talking to some people about and seeing the Apple iPhone the geek in me wanted to get a cool new Smartphone too (to keep up with the cool young kids I guess!).

A friend at work had bought the HTC TouchPro2 and liked it so I was waiting patiently for them to get the HTC phone back in stock when I talked to another friend at work who had bought his Droid the very first day it was available.  There was a lot of hype surrounding the introduction of the Droid and to be honest I hadn’t really been paying that much attention.

At that time I narrowed the choices down to smartphones I knew I could get right away:  either a Droid, or an iPhone.

However getting an iPhone would require that I switch my phone carrier over to AT&T and I really didn’t want to go through the hassle.  Based on my previous experience with the Treo I also had some reservations about whether or not I would fully exploit the capabilities of another Smartphone and wondered if I could justify the $30 a month extra for the data plan.

After checking out the specs on both the iPhone and the Droid and reading some reviews for the Droid I took the plunge and ordered a Droid online.  It arrived the next day.

Since receiving it I have to say that it’s the coolest gadget ever!!

The large screen (albeit a stretch for my aging eyes) is more than large enough to display web pages, and the interface is pretty intuitive and easy to use.

And although I’d read the applications for the Droid were limited, I’ve found plenty of them available (the coolest of which is Google Sky Map).

The Droid is very Google-centric.  For those unaware, Android, the operating system for the Droid and other Smartphones, was bought in 2005 by Google.

So if you don’t like Google for whatever reason, you’ll want to steer clear of any phone running Android, especially the Droid!

The first thing the Droid wants you to do is set up your Google GMail account.  Since I didn’t have one I had to create one.

It’s not required but since it automatically syncs your GMail contacts list with the phone and I think it’s a lot easier if you have a GMail account and edit the contacts there in your browser instead of on the phone.  I exported my Treo contacts using Palm Desktop to a comma delimited CSV file then tried importing them into GMail.

But I discovered the GMail CSV import is pretty picky about the CSV field names and the order of those fields, and I spent some time importing contacts into erroneous fields into GMail.  After looking online trying to find more information about the GMail CSV data fields I generated the field names and order simply by creating a contact in GMail and then exporting the CSV.

Here are the field names from my GMail contacts CSV export:

“Name,Given Name,Additional Name,Family Name,Yomi Name,Given Name Yomi,Additional Name Yomi,Family Name Yomi,Name Prefix,Name Suffix,Initials,Nickname,Short Name,Maiden Name,Birthday,Gender,Location,Billing Information,Directory Server,Mileage,Occupation,Hobby,Sensitivity,Priority,Subject,Notes,Group Membership,E-mail 1 – Type,E-mail 1 – Value,Phone 1 – Type,Phone 1 – Value,Phone 2 – Type,Phone 2 – Value,Phone 3 – Type,Phone 3 – Value,Address 1 – Type,Address 1 – Formatted,Address 1 – Street,Address 1 – City,Address 1 – PO Box,Address 1 – Region,Address 1 – Postal Code,Address 1 – Country,Address 1 – Extended Address,Organization 1 – Type,Organization 1 – Name,Organization 1 – Yomi Name,Organization 1 – Title,Organization 1 – Department,Organization 1 – Symbol,Organization 1 – Location,Organization 1 – Job Description”

You’ll have to examine the GMail contact information to find the allowable fields for the various “Type” fields.  For example valid phone types are “Work”, “Home”, “Mobile”, etc.

It was a bit of a hassle to do this manually and there’s probably an easier way to do it.  Too bad there isn’t a generic contact CSV format that everyone uses…

The only real problem I had with the Droid was setting up my email accounts.

When you set up your email accounts in the Droid it actually validates the respective POP3 (incoming) and SMTP (outgoing) settings before allowing you to continue.  In August Verizon discontinued its SMTP Relay Service, and my home ISP doesn’t allow SMTP Relays.  That meant I didn’t have a valid SMTP server to complete that part of the setup and there’s no way to just bypass that part of the setup.

I didn’t really need my emails set up to send email as I figured I could use my GMail for that purpose.  But I couldn’t even complete the email configurations without a valid SMTP server.

After much research and experimentation I found that using the SMTP server “outgoing.verizon.net” with either port 25 or 587 and no security will pass the setup server validation.

These only act as “dummy” settings though; if you try to send email via those SMTP settings the emails won’t actually be delivered (and you won’t get any indication that it doesn’t work).  It’s simply a way to complete the email account setup in the Droid.

If you do have access to an SMTP server that allows Relays you should use that with the appropriate settings (you’ll likely need security enabled with a username and password) and you will actually be able to send emails too.

Other than that problem I’ve been very happy with the Droid.  It’s a fantastic cell phone and the reception at my house is better with it than it was with my Treo.

Although the built-in 5 MP camera struggles in low light due to its tiny lens/aperture it takes very nice photos and video in good light.

The Droid also gives me with a talking GPS navigation unit via Google Maps.

As it’s a relatively new device there are definitely some bugs.  Apparently there is an firmware update due sometime early in December that will address many of them.

Overall the Droid is definitely an amazing and impressive gadget!