So my hubby and I have been looking at cell phones for a few months now. Our 2 years on our contract was up and we could upgrade our phones in September, but James really wanted to wait until the new phones came out for the holiday season. I had already decided that I wanted the new HTC TouchPro 2 that came out online a few weeks ago. They don't actually have it in the Verizon stores yet, but we went to another carrier and tried out their version, and it was pretty cool. It's been out of stock online though pretty much since it's been released, so I hadn't gotten one yet.
Well, in the meantime, Verizon launched a new phone, the Motorola Droid, that runs on Google's new operating system (I guess that's what you call it....I'm really not too tech savvy about stuff like that) Android. I wasn't looking at anything new, but in looking for himself, James read about the Motorola Droid and told me I ought to check it out.
I am so glad I did, because it is SO cool! Now, I realize that I could live without all the bells and whistles, but all those bells and whistles are SO fun (and many are useful). It's a touch screen phone with a slide out keyboard. An actual keyboard was one of my requirements and this one works well. The touch screen is really easy to use as well and works so much better than my last phone (the technology has improved SO much in 2 years). My favorite part is that there are TONS of free apps that you can download....and they are so cool.
One app that I really like is the Bible. Now, you've got several choices of Bible apps, but in most you can search, browse, bookmark, and take notes all with about 20 different versions of the Bible. Very cool!
I also love the Facebook app as well as the Pandora Radio, where you can tell it your favorite artist or song and it will put together a playlist of similar songs and artists. I typed in "Todd Agnew" and pretty much liked all the music that came up.
It also comes with Google Maps and it's navigation system. You can actually get the street view as you are driving, but I'm thinking I should watch the actual road instead of the road on my phone :) I has verbal driving direction too, so not to worry.
My FAVORITE app, however, is the barcode scanner. It uses the phone's camera and you aim it the barcode on a product and it scans it and locates the product. You actually use this in all sorts of other cool apps. I have definitely played with this one the most :) ShopSavvy is this really cool program that lets you scan a product barcode and using the GPS feature, it searches for the best price on the product locally as well as online. This will be a really handy feature when Christmas shopping! I also found this really cool app that lets you make a meal plan and keeps track of all your nutritional info for the day. You just scan the barcode of the ingredients you use or on the food that you eat and it automatically calculates it. You can also look it up in it's extensive database of foods and restaurants. It's probably not an app that I will use, but it's very helpful none the less. THE VERY COOLEST thing that I found was a little app called Key Ring. You know all those little cards for stores' loyalty programs that you carry on your keychain? You use the barcode scanner and scan them in your phone. It stores them, each with the store's logo, and you just hit a button and it pops on the screen. You hand that to the cashier to scan, instead of having to carry all those little cards. Since I've already lost my Kroger card and my others are getting pretty beat-up, I can't WAIT to use this!
I know there are tons of other things that I will discover about the phone, but I just thought I would take few minutes away from playing with the thing, and tell you about it. Seriously, it's a pretty cool phone :) I know that the iPhones have been around for a while and do many of the same things, but this was my first "smart phone", and I'm just loving it!
