My Home Screen

I admit it. I really rushed my first post on the Droid.  I did that on purpose because I think it honestly did show the things that are likely for people to struggle with at first if they are a little slow like I am.  Now that I have taken a breath, read extensively, discussed on forums and played with it I am ready for another post.  This one I hope will not be edited as many times as I did the first.  The first post had to be changed many times as I uncovered sometimes false solutions which I outed and ultimately real ones.  Something as feature rich as the Droid has to engender some sort of learning curve.  I am just hoping to shorten that curve for others just a bit.

In this post I hope to provide just a few tips that would have been nice if I had them when I first played with it.  Next I will give you a list of apps I particularly like and finally my decision on whether or not I am keeping it.

The first tip I will repeat from the first post is that in order to view the Notifications you must drag them down with your finger.  I am repeating this because several people told me they appreciated the tip and didn’t know about it previously.  I want to make sure everyone who reads this knows about it.  The second tip is regarding your home screens.  You have three of them (I believe there is an app to extend that but I am not covering that here).  Your main screen is what you see when you unlock your phone. (Mine is shown above).  You have a screen to the left (drag the home screen to the right) and a screen to the right (drag your home screen left).  The first thing that took me a while to discover is how to organize these screens.  If you “pull up” your main applications screen all you need do is touch and hold an application to place it on the screen that is showing.  For example, If you want to put an application on your “left” screen, drag your home screen right, pull up your applications screen, touch and hold the app and you will be able to drag it to whatever spot you want on the left screen.  It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of room, so that’s why they have those apps that extend them.  When I fill up what I have and need more I will figure out how to use that.

Adding Shortcuts

One of the handiest shortcuts you can have is a Navigations shortcut that will get you back home from wherever you are.  From any home screen touch and hold a blank area.  Click “Shortcuts”, then “Directions”.  Type in your address, choose the other options and click Save.  You can move it around the screen by touching and holding the icon.  To delete the shortcut, drag the icon to the applications folder arrow at the bottom — when you do that it will turn into a Trash icon.  To add shortcuts to web sites, do the same thing as before but instead of choosing “Directions” choose “Bookmarks”.

I know these are fairly basic things but we all need to learn them at some point.  If you are seeking something more specific and/or more advanced, feel free to ask in the comments and I ‘ll see what I can do to help.

The Menu Key

I just read the manual (Hey – there’s a manual!) and discovered the name of the key with all the lines going across it at the bottom of the phone.  It’s called the Menu key. Not knowing what that key was for gave me all kinds of grief at first.  If you are stuck in an app and don’t know what to do hit that button – it will give you lots more options.

Ok I believe these are the basic tips that you need to start being productive.  Now for the apps.

The Apps

Even though as you scroll through the applications in your App Market it appears like there is an endless number of them, many of them seem to be of little use (at least to me) or duplicates or both.  It cuts down on things if you only search for free apps which I do.  Still being new I am hoping that I will be able to discover new and exciting apps, but here is a short list of the ones I think bring the most bang for the (lack of a) buck.

1) Advanced Task Killer: This is the ridiculous but absolutely necessary application I mentioned in the first post that kills other apps still in memory.  If you don’t use it on a regular basis you may find your phone slowing down and/or the battery draining too quickly (at least this is what I have been told). Update: Please read the comment posted below by @SeanWest that contradicts the need for this application, but don’t believe it: New Update: Ok I think the need for the Advanced Task Killer is now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. I had just fully charged my battery overnight. Since I use the phone sparingly from home it will easily get through the day without a charge.  I have been using the “My Tracks” app when I take the dogs out for a walk to track my distance and time.  That is a drain on the battery, yet useful.  I “record” my walk and “stop recording” when I return.  I did this today and still had plenty of battery left.  I would think the battery drain would have ended.  Not true. When I picked up the phone a few hours later it told me to start charging again as the battery was low.  Looked at the culprit and it was My Tracks plus another application that I had barely used yesterday.  So this idea of the OS automatically terminating programs is false. Use the Task Killer.

2) Twidroid: For Twitter use I agree with everyone else that this is the best app to use. It has a great pic uploader (better than Twitpic in my opinion) and I can do just fine with the free version.  The upgrade or paid version is for multiple accounts.  I have an allegiance to Tweetdeck as that is what I use on my desktop.  But as of this writing Tweetdeck is not available for the Androis OS.  One thing I miss on Twidroid are my Tweetdeck groups.  However, if in Tweetdeck I export my group as a private Twitter list I can now view that group in Twidroid – it’s almost as if I’m using Tweetdeck. Sweet!!

3) Pandora: This is a streaming radio application that can be somewhat customized to your music tastes.  If you tell it the name of the artist you like it will create a “station” around that artist by supplying you with random (but popular) songs from that artist along with other artists from that same date period and genre.  Honestly the sound isn’t all that impressive and I have yet to discover why.  It is clear enough but it almost sounds monaural. Maybe fodder for a later post.  Be careful about this one though. It tells you right off the bat that if you are being charged for data then this will use a lot since it is streaming audio.  I was assured by my Verizon Wireless rep that by paying the email and unlimited web fee each month (which runs $30.00) I am ok. I specifically asked him about Pandora and he told me I could use it as much as I wanted.  Make sure you are sure about your own plan before you use it.

4) Mabilo Ringtones: This one was quirky at first but it updated itself and hasn’t posed any problems for me since.  I am not a big fan of the ring tones that are installed by default, as a matter of fact I think most of them are lame.  Mabilo provides many that are fun and free which is the coolest part of all.

5) Sports/News: There are USA Today, AP Mobile, Live Scores and many other similar type apps. I read that USA Today is very power hungry for some reason, and quite frankly I found it a bit difficult to use as its buttons are so small and sometimes unresponsive. But this will surely end up being a personal preference so I’m not going to go into too much more detail here.

6) Shop Savvy: This is one of those “wow” applications, albeit I think it might be very useful as well.  Say you are in a store and come across an item you want to purchase. If you have access to a box with the barcode on it you can actually scan the barcode with this app. It will tell you where you can get the same item at the cheapest price, either in another local store or on the web.  This at least can give you the feeling that you may (or may not) be paying too much for the item at the store you are in.

7) Google Goggles: I found this one a bit later on. Not sure how useful it will be for me (yet) but it is worth a look.  Rather than try and explain it I will provide this link that has an accompanying video that explains it in detail. One of its applications is that you can take a picture of a business card and the app analyzes the picture and actually reads the data from the card allowing you to store it in your contacts.  It read my card with about 90% accuracy. I look forward to playing with this a bit more and trying out its other features.

There are a few others but really nothing that exciting. I use the Droid for calling people (hey it is a phone ya know!), keeping up with Facebook and Twitter and being able to get my emails when I am away from my computer.  If you think I left out a “killer app” feel free to add it in the comments section.

The Final Decision

I purchased the Droid on the 27th of December, so I guess I have until January 26th to make my final decision. I can take it back up to that date and only have to pay a $35.00 restocking fee.  It has been a bit of a bumpy ride up to this point but unless something really bad is revealed about the phone I will probably keep it.  The screen is beautiful and the resolution is sharp.  Love the keyboard (not the slideout one) and the navigation. Yes I may regret when in a year from now they release one that is far better but let me enjoy this one while I still can.

Support

I mentioned the forums I have come across which might be helpful if you are having a specific issue. I will list them again here.  Embarrassingly enough I just read the “manual” which is the getting started pamphlet that came with the phone. Much of the stuff I already talked about is in there and there are a few more little gems.  But who reads manuals, anyway??  It also mentioned an “official” support web location which is the following: http://www.motorola.com/support/droid

If you use Twitter I highly suggest keeping a search column open for #droid as well.  Some useful things will be sure to come your way.

Other Forums:

DroidForums.Net
Motorola Droid Forum
Android Forum: Motorola Droid

Enjoy everyone!