by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: June 25, 2010

The Verizon Droid is the toy of the year! The device, in combination with Verizon's pricey, but highly desirable plans, coverage, service and technical support is not to be trifled with.

First of all, the Droid has a gateway, through "market" to more applications than a person can ever use. By sticking to applications that have four or more rating stars, there is just about anything that a person would be interested in having to make their device more functional.

The phone/computer/web surfing device has a good design. The battery compartment is easy to access when the highly recommended second battery needs to be installed. The battery drain on the Droid is the only other major drawback, besides the price of a calling and data plan. Battery drain can be managed, however, by judicious choice, use or shutdown of applications that do not need to run constantly. Also, managing the display and other battery draining issues helps.

The home charger has a unique design. The cable has a USB connector that makes it a power cable as well as a USB cable for working with a computer. Optional charging accessories include a regular car charger and even a complete charging dock for displaying and watching videos or for mounting in the car.

The home screen has three pages that allow a good number of icons, or some beautiful artwork. The menu and apps menu are easily accessible and the front controls are simple.

There is a decent 5 MP camera that can be supplemented with various apps, such as the mobile Photobucket and Photoshop applications, which are available for free. Other apps use the camera and its flash for bar code reading, flashlight, Morse code and other uses.

The phone is easy to use, with a simple icon that can go on each of the home screens. There is a standard set of controls and a keypad for dialing, speakerphone and other phone features.

The keyboard slides out for keyboarding, or it pops up on the screen depending on which application is being used. The physical keyboard requires pressing the "alt" key  while typing characters and numbers. The up arrow key has to be pressed while typing to use capitals.

The virtual keyboard will switch keyboards at the press of a key and is much easier to work with.

Since the costs of bandwidth and texting are major issues, Verizon's unlimited plan is worth the price. When some companies say that you have "unlimited" bandwidth or texting for a much cheaper price, they may have some limitations buried in the fine print if you use more than 200 or 300 megabytes per month. Verizon says "unlimited" and means it.

Verizon's technical support is also the best on the planet. They will patiently help with just about any problem. There is also a Motorola Droid forum and help site and a more comprehensive user manual online.

All in all, the Verizon Droid is useful, functional and opens a whole world of portable computing, talking and web surfing that helps us all to get away from the home computer and to get along much better with the world of work, school, finding our way around and shopping.

This review gives 4 and 3/4 stars out of 5.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth M Young.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.