Shirley's San Antonio Real Estate Blog

 MY MOTOROLA DROID DOES!

Right before our trip to Florida for Thanksgiving, I decided to upgrade my phone at Verizon after having a Blackberry Curve over a year.  I was in the store getting a Netbook for our trip, and that's when I first set eyes on the Motorola Droid.

I was a little reluctant to give up my trusty Blackberry that had grown attached to me like glue.  I asked my sales rep tons of questions and probably spent a good 45 minutes in the store playing with this new Motorola Droid phone, pondering whether or not I could give up the trusted name-brand Blackberry for another Motorola phone.  After owning a Motorola once before, I swore I'd never own another.  That old phone was a piece of junk, every problem that could go wrong, did go wrong with it. 

The sales rep at the Verizon store in Sturbridge did a great job answering my questions and concerns.  He explained that the Droid isn't a phone, it's a computer with an application to access a phone on it.  It is an intelligent piece of equipment. 

After owning this phone for several weeks and really spending hours playing with it and getting to know it, I figured I'd share with you some of my favorite apps for business, fun and entertainment.  All of these can be found in the Market on your phone and all are free!

Here's My List of What My Droid Does:

• ShopSavvy- This app allows you to scan in bar-codes at a store on most popular items and performs a search to find where the lowest advertised price is in other local stores and online.  Tried it out on a Kung Fu Panda dvd we had lying around, works great!
• iMusic - Great app to download all of your favorite music for free.
• Swift - For Twitter, this app is very user friendly and helps me stay connected to my Twitter account on my phone.  Was sad to have to give up my TinyTwitter on my Blackberry, but this app is just as good, if not better.
• Bloo - A great Facebook app to help you stay connected on Facebook.  It is a little more user friendly than the mobile Facebook already on your phone, so I like to use a little combination of both.
• Handcent - A great sms messaging app that you can customize and adjust settings for your text messages.  You can set different LED colors to flash for different contacts and set it to pop open a bubble when you get a new text.  Much better than the original messaging app on the phone.
• DroidLight - A great flashlight app that helps shed some light on those dark situations.  Best flashlight app I have seen for the droid, uses your built in flash for light rather than just the screen. 
• Toggle Settings- Convenient app that allows you with one click to easily change all of the settings on your phone such as silent mode, bluetooth, ringer volume, etc.
• Advanced Task Killer - Helps kill all of those applications running in the background that you're not using so you don't drain your battery life too fast. 
• FlyScreen - When enabled, you can set your phone to show news, weather and recent Tweets when your phone is in locked mode.
• YouMail- Great voicemail app that lets you listen to your voicemails on your phone without having to call voicemail.  You can also get text transcripts and emails of your voicemails.
• Gmote - Turns your Droid into a remote for your computer.
• Droid Coupons- You can lookup and email yourself coupons for many local restaurants and stores.
• Mabilo Ringtones- Download tons of hot new songs for ringtones for free!
• Where's My Droid - If you lose your phone and it's on silent mode, you can text a specified message to your phone that will make it start ringing so you can find it.
• Google Sky Maps - If you like astronomy, this is a really cool app that allows you to find and name the stars in the sky.

So far so good with this cool little phone.  Can't beat a touchscreen AND a keyboard option!  This is a lean, mean social networking machine with the bonus of phone capabilities built in.  Check it out!