Motorola Milestone Droid

Motorola Milestone Droid 
by Motorola

Motorola Milestone Droid 

I have a limited amount of cargo space in my bag. I seriously do not want to waste money and real estate on 15 different gadgets. 


Criteria: 

PHONE. I want to be heard and to be able to hear. Droid: Brilliantly does this. anyplace anytime, anywhere. I have not had a call dropped or lost, but I have had a little issue with face dialing. 


GOOGLE VOICE: Transcribes all my voice mail and sends it to my phone. from the house phone, from the cell phone, all redirects to one location. SWEET. and for the hearing impaired, I can read it and hear it at the same time. it is fairly accurate with people that articulate well, it is hit and miss for people that talk like they have a mouthful of cheerios. 


RINGTONES: any song I have on any album I can rip to MP3 and make it a ringtone. a FULL SONG ringtone, not just 20 seconds that repeats. very nice. 

CONTACT LIST: I want to manage this on my computer with a NORMAL keyboard and access to GOOGLE, FACEBOOK Photos, and other resources, DROID: Brilliantly does this. 


TEXTING: I have to have a NORMAL QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode to type with two thumbs. Droid does this Brilliantly. Each texting conversation is kept in a running dialog with that person. so I know what question was answered when I get a text a day or two later, without wondering what they are talking about because I forgot what I said last. this is BRILLIANT! 


CALENDAR: 
EACH family member uses google calendar and this is without a doubt the only way that we can maintain our complicated calendar with color coded blocks of time for scheduling. Cub Scouts, Business Meetings, Chess club, Dr Appointments, birthday party's, remove the day planner from my wallet and reduce the weight by a few pounds is WONDERFUL! Everything sync's automatically, instantly giving me a two in one device. 

DIGITAL PHOTO ALBUM: this is a squealing delight, the picture quality and size is fantastic, and I am a pro-photographer so I am pretty picky on picture quality. I am very happy to have three in one purpose device. 


MP3 Player: with 5 kids, I rarely have a moment alone but yes, I have had time to sneak on the ear phones and listen to a song or two and it was very nice to have my own music instead of whatever white noise is going on around me. that gives me four in one devices. 


GPS: when my husband got turn by turn with his blackberry a year ago I was so jealous, but the blackberry device is just vile in my opinion. He has the pearl and I despise the flaky little keyboard. I simply knew that there had to be something out there and I was so tempted to get the separate GPS but who need yet another device? GOOGLE MAPS is fantastic. voice search is sweet, the only drawback is the horrible 'digitized voice and poor pronunciation of words like creek and other simple street names in my neighborhood. overall better than the alternative. Happily I have now five in one devices.

LATITUDES: this is where we add the marzipan to the cake, I NEED to know where my kids are. I am one of those parents that simply need to know. If I could put a chip in their ankles at the vet legally, I would do it. With Latitudes, I can see where they are on the map anywhere without them having to do anything. They only share with me so I know that they are not 'at risk' but when you have a young adult daughter driving 2000 miles cross country alone, it is a frantic feeling when they do not call to check in. Latitudes works locally as well, if your 10 year old takes their phone and goes into an area that is out of the zone, you get an alert. I know without being strapped down to a computer all day, I can leave the house, but not leave my peace of mind. Six in one devices enough? 


SHOPPING: yes, I am watching every penny. If I am shopping and it is a 'good deal' I want to know that it is really a good deal. there is a bar code reader, SERIOUSLY. a bar code reader that will search Amazon and give me a price IMMEDIATELY. and I can decide to buy there where I am or with One-Click, order it from Amazon. I have had it on my doorstep the next day after going through this process. THIS IS INVALUABLE. seven in one devices. 


CAMERA. ehn not even close. I am way too picky when it comes to picture quality. They definitely dropped the ball on this one. I still have my Lumix DMC-LX3 in my purse and have to painstakingly upload to a computer and then to the blog for this but eventually it will get better. the mpg white balance is way too warm and I was not at all pleased with this. they need to go back to the drawing board and actually get some good optics. Same quality as the Alias 3 megapixel - BIG MINUS on this one. 

BONUS: 
Weather channel: I have 5 kids in 4 cities, I need to know. 
Facebook: always connected, wheee cool. this is a fun and nice little app, not as easy to navigate as a computer, but good enough. 
Twitter: fun. 
Gmail: Oh definitely invaluable. 
Mozilla: reading the newspaper, this is just way way too much fun. I am starting to wonder what I need a family for with all the fun that this has. 
Games: Soduku, word search, chess, but seriously, who has time with all the other features like Facebook newsfeed? 


a negative: the fail would be no java yet. it is expected in a couple of months so many web pages in the browser do not work since we are a java based experience, I am waiting patiently. 


overall I love my droid more than my kids, more than my husband, more than my Nikon D300. It is my full function voice recognition turn by turn GPS, it is my full function mp3 player. it is my fantastic digital photo album, it remembers and keeps a running stream of my text's in a 'chat' format. it is my wifi anywhere I want to go browser / email / facebook / news/ weather / on demand connection. and I hear that it is a pretty nifty phone too.