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Sparkle (1)
I did it. After months of bitching out loud to my friends and colleagues, tweeting about it and blogging it, I dropped AT&T (and thus the iPhone) and got back on Verizon with the Motorola Droid. I thought it would be a rough transition, but it turned out to be not so bad. In fact, the Droid is a pretty slick device. But, like any "smart" tech these days, it's not truly yours until you've customized it, put your mark on it. And on the Droid, like the iPhone, that starts with the apps.
Now, I've had my Droid – I've named her "Zora" (and you Blade Runner geeks can guess why) – for only a few days, so I haven't gotten far in the app exploration. I've generally avoided paying for most apps (which is why paid apps are the topic for a subsequent post), but there's a lot to be had for free.
Here are a few....
(Reader note: Search for these in your phone's "Marketplace" app. You can download them directly from there. [Note on the screenshots: Yes, they're photos. It seems that the only ways to take Droid screenshots from within are either via a Windows machine (which I don't use) or via apps that reviewers say are unstable. A little power-home method, as with the iPhone, would have been nice. Maybe in the next Android OS release?])
Voicemail
Google Voice
Forget Verizon's Visual VM. The reviews are pretty brutal. And Verizon charges you an extra few bucks a month for it. That's right, charges you each month!
You have a Droid. Embrace it! Use Google Voice for your voicemail! You can set conditional call forwarding for when you don't answer or are already on the line. Have calls sent to your Google Voice account ... and get your messages transcribed for you as well! (You can still play the messages.)
A dedicated Google Voice app gives you a very slick GUI to browse through and play your messages.
The transcripts can be rather odd, though. That's definitely still very alpha.
(Don't have access to Google Voice yet? Check with your friends. Every Google Voice user gets 3 [or more?] invites.)
As with all of the apps here, I limited by experiments to apps that got 4 out of 5 stars or better from users. That left two main candidates for Twitter.
Twidroid
I like this one. Very basic. It makes me miss Twittelator Pro on the iPhone. But it suffices. And I can set my own notification sound if I get a message.
My main caveat, however, is that this app requires access to your email attachments. Why do its creators, zimmerman and marban, require this? What are they after in your email attachments?
Seesmic
This is a stable Twitter app. I just don't like it that it dumps you at the top of the Twitterstream. You have to scroll down to see what's new. That's weird to me.
And Seesmic requires access to your Contacts. Why, I have no idea, as it does not seem to integrate with Contacts. I can only guess it's the trade-off: hand over your data on your friends and in exchange you get this free app. Am I wrong here?
Music
Pandora
The Pandora app is very familiar, except it boots up with this dire warning about using up your data quota on your cellular plan. (Be sure to get the unlimited plan with Verizon. It's $30 per month, but worth it.)
Shazam
Again, the familiar app to identify tunes. Nice to have!
Amazon MP3
This is a nifty app just for finding music downloads. Since iTunes is out of the picture, and you can't play any DRM iTunes music on your Droid, this can be a handy app to have! Especially if, like me, you tend towards Amazon for your main music downloads resource.
News
AP and USA Today
These will appear identical to what you've been seeing on the iPhone.
Reuters
With a different interface – the sections are separate columns which you get to by horizontal scrolling, like switching desktops – it takes some
