First Thoughts – Experiencing the Verizon Droid Incredible

This will be a post in progress as I highlight and document my experience with the relatively new Android smartphone by HTC – the Incredible on the Verizon network.

As a heavy BlackBerry user since 2002 or so, the change is dramatic, and though I will still have my trust BB Curve 2 on standby during this trial, my goal is live exclusively on the Android OS.

Unlike the BB, the Droid doesn’t have a physical keys – so there is some vibrating feedback when a key is pressed, but there are no tactile keys or the touchpad/ball/wheels I had become accustomed to with the BB. It is a leap to be sure, and to date, my only real experience with touch-based smartphones was with the iPhones (pre-4).

First thing to note, it doesn’t sit in the pocket like the BB did, and it is a little heavier and longer than the BB, but naturally, comparable to the iPhone. The form is much more pleasing than the original Droid by Motorola. The biggest decision to date is whether to use the case and holster (something I haven’t needed to do since I got the original BB Curve.

Web 2.0

I’m waiting for some video cuts to upload to Vimeo from a presser I did a few weeks back, and it got me thinking.

Back in the 80s, before my dad brought the PS/2 home, I recall getting onto an older machine using PowerMenu by Brown Bag software, this was before I was blown away by 3.1. How far we have come…indeed.

What is truly amazing these days is the software you can download and install in seconds – no coding, headaches or restarts. Thanks to AIR and others, Tweetdeck, Flickr, Twitter, Vimeo and others can all be operated simply and easily. This has to be one of the largest democratizations of software and hardware in history. The prevalence of netbooks, webcams, Droid phones and other devices brings this all together. I look forward to trying out the WordPress app on my BB, should be interesting.

There is still part of me that misses Run DOS Run.

Brown Bag's PowerMenu