Motorola Droid micro-review 

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Since a number of friends have asked, here's a micro-review of my new Droid (Motorola A855).

Preface:
The Droid is my first "smart" phone, so I can't say much in comparison to iPhone, Palm, Blackberry, etc. I've been using it now for a week and a half - enough time to get a feel, but not long enough to start hacking it. These are just my general (and quite personal) opinions.

The Good:
- The screen is absofuckingly amazing: 3.7in (94mm), 480 x 854 pixels, 16:9 widescreen. These are some of the tiniest pixels I have ever seen.
- Contact integration from Facebook and Gmail. This works remarkably well, although you might have trouble finding someone's phone number if you happen to have hundreds of Facebook friends. Importing the contacts from my old phone wasn't too bad, I had to save them out as a CSV file and then import them to my Gmail. From there, the phone automagically synced.
- Gmail, POP email & Facebook built in.
- A real web-browser, which means the full, real internets, not that little sliver that my old phone gave me. Walking around with Google in my pocket has... well, it has changed me.
- Google Navigator. Buh bye dedicated GPS units. Turn by turn directions, with voice synthesis & speech recognition, semi-real-time traffic and Google search. Built in. For FREE.

The Bad:
- My bank (Chase) doesn't have an Android app. The ability to do online banking from my phone, was one the reasons I bought a smart phone.
- Occasional crashes. The Droid (unlike the iPhone) allows you to run multiple apps simultaneously. Since most of the apps are developed by 3rd parties, there's no guarantee that they'll play nice together (or even by themselves). This isn't a big deal, rebooting the phone always clears things up... it *is* a computer ...

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