Part II - Me and My Droid

I was awakened yesterday morning by the familiar sounds of my BlackBerry alarm. This was spooky, seeing as I had turned it off  (or did  I?) Sitting patiently on top of my washing machine, devoid of its SIM card, it was giving its loyal best, playing the horrible Stewart Copeland ringtone my family dubbed “the Clowns are Coming.” I felt a bit sad as I removed its battery.

There was no time between getting my new phone and driving to an appointment to figure out the basics like, how to answer it. I saw calls come in and frantically pushed the green “Call” button trying to connect - to no avail. “It’s broken!“ I lamented, followed by, “I hate this phone!“

Luckily, my iPhone-using friend Cathy was in the passenger seat and took on the challenge of trying to install Pandora. My logic was that if one was already part of the touch-screen-nation, one would intuitively know how to use my Samsung. One was completely bewildered. On the BlackBerry, all downloads go to a folder called, you guessed it, “Downloads”. From there you can move them to your main screen. Not so on the Droid. We could see that Pandora felt it was downloaded, but we could not find it. Thus, we downloaded it again - and a few more times. Finally, we discovered the app in a folder called “My Apps”, which lives inside “Applications” and was on the second (or third) screen of my phone. To me, this is not intuitive.I need the instant gratification of downloading something and then it actually being there or auto-launching. It took us several more minutes to figure out how to move the app from My Apps to my home screen.

Once the tiny “P” for Pandora was on my main screen, I tasked Cathy with moving all the apps I frequently use to the same area: Calculator, email, text, camera, clock, navigation and calendar.  I didn’t know how to use them, but it comforted me to see them there.

We practiced calling my phone. I finally figured out how to answer it on the fourth try. I called my daughter to leave a message but I apparently did not know how to end the call. She got a rousing five minute recording of the inside of my purse. Texting was/is more frustrating to me on the Droid. You may call it user-error but the miniscule text box I am provided with quickly fills up with my constant sausage-finger misspellings as I try to get used to the touch screen. I had to add a disclaimer to the bottom of my email signature about not being on narcotics. I have somehow added a security function to my phone that asks me to connect four dots using my “security pattern”. If I don’t connect the dots properly, I don’t get in. This will be a problem when I have a few drinks.

I asked the folks at my phone store to disable the swype keyboard as it was making my head explode. I like the old school click of real keys doing predictable things, not a swoosh of my finger that enables predictive text. Plus, I am easily distracted and the swyping turned into a laser light show for me. I use my phone sideways now to type sentences for fear of sending meaningless crack-attack missives to my clients. I gave myself a pat on the back for figuring out how to take pictures (of my cat) , then finding where the Droid was hiding them (in the Gallery).

Most importantly, two days later,  I do not have to listen to the FM dial, and my emoticons look like tiny green aliens.