One Week

One week with the Droid. How has it been faring?

- The learning curve is pretty much gone. I haven't used every little feature (like keyboard shortcuts), but I don't think there are many that I don't at least know about. Having to use the Menu button to access app settings and features isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The most important ones are easy to get to, and a lot of the ones I thought can be mostly ignored once you get things configured the way you want.

- I'm liking the touch keyboard more and more.

- I like the ability to add widgets. It forces me to do things like actually check my calendar in detail.

- The accelerometer is a bit wonky.

- While the built in apps are very well made, for some reason I assumed that Android Marketplace would be filled with all sorts of optional, fun apps from Google themselves. That isn't really the case; they've got some stuff on there, but in far less quantity. Maybe they're too busy updating the OS itself.

- Too many "bastard stepchild" apps. The best ones integrate seamlessly with Android, but others are quick and dirty ports from the iPhone. You can tell which is which based on whether the MEnu button does anything. On the iPhone ports, it won't, and instead all of your options will be on the bottom of the screen. Not the end of the world really, but without proper optimizations for the Droid's screen/touch capability, these apps can be more troublesome to use than they should be.

- Google Listen is a great program, but not a perfect one. You can add podcast subscriptions in Google Reader, and Listen will sync up with them, allowing you to tune in to your favorite podcasts wherever you are. At first I thought this was one of those programs that enables lazy people, and I guess it still is, but it is the kind of convenience I can get behind. Before, I would have to download podcasts to my PC (often rebooting from Ubuntu to Windows solely to do this), load them onto the Zune, and delete them afterwards. I would also have to make sure I had enough space on the player. It wasn't terribly time consuming, but it required a lot of effort and upkeep just to listen to some hour long shows. Google Listen allows me to fire up a show, then ditch it as soon as I'm done. And since it downloads the sound files, I can start a 'cast when I get on the subway, and continue listening when I go underground and lose phone signal.

So what's the problem? While the interface is simple and crisp, the updating mechanism is confusing when set to manual. It never really tells you whether a refresh is successful, so you have go to your show list and see if there are any changes. Furthermore, the playback mechanism is not explained in detail. I guess the best way to describe it is that Listen downloads any show you start to play, but begins playback immediately. So it looks as if it is streaming, but it saves the buffer for later use. This is nice, but I'm not sure if there is a way to force it to just stream or just download. I don't mind having to delete old shows, but I would like to know exactly what is going on (and why).