My Smartphone and Me

So you may have noticed that on a couple of my posts I have a little signature at the bottom that reads: Posted via Blogaway on my Droid X. Well, if you were wondering, that means that was a mobile post, made from my spiffy Android-Powered Smartphone.

I wasn't really a strong believer in smartphones until earlier this year. I was very

happy with my LG Versa (pictured right) and didn't

really have the urge to get any thing newer. Well, that all changed near the beginning of the year when my younger brothers (working for the VZW Indirect Agent that I now

work for) picked up their brand new Motorola Droids, the first Android phone to hit Verizon.

The Motorola

Droid had a 3.7" screen, a slide

out keyboard and a 5mega pixel camera, making it one of the most powerful smartphones on the market. I played with it for a little while whenever I saw my bro

thers and eventually, when I started working for the Verizon Indirect Agent and got to play with the phone even more, picked one up for myself.

At first the wife didn't really see the use of it, but soon after she came around as well and was anticipating the next upgrade on our account so she could pick one up as well.

The original Droid was a decently solid phone, but on the horizon more powerful phones soon appeared. I had my phone rooted (giving me access to features and settings on the phone that were not stock) and had the phone overclocked (running faster than the stock settings). But eventually it just wasn't enough to keep me.

So I decided to pick up a Motorola Droid X. An absolute behemoth as far as phones go, the X has a big 4.3" touch screen, an 8MP camera and a stock 1ghz processer (nearly twi

ce as fast as the original Droid.)

If I hadn't already been a solid supporter of the Android platform, the Motorola Droid X would have done it for me. The phone is snappy and responsive and handles all of the awesome Android customization that I have found absolute necessary (a bit OCD, you see).

Most people have a very hard time with my phone when they pick it up, because I've got it customized to such an intense level. Running WidgetLocker, I have my lockscreen set up with different widgets that allow me to change settings in the phone without ever unlocking it. I can get to my dialer, email and messaging applications all from the outside of my phone.

Once into the actual phone, you'll find LauncherPro Plus set up and running. With a 3 page, 5 icon dock, I'm able to put all of my most used applications on the dock and never have to worry about having them clutter my homescreens or about going into the application drawer to find them. A recent addition to LauncherPro added a "Swipe Gesture" to these dock icons. With this option, I can add a second application or shortcut to each of my icons, thus effectively removing 30 total options to the Dock.

For my 3 dock pages I have system functions and misc apps on one (system panel, root explorer, calculator, blogaway, foursquare and GPS settings), basic apps in the middle (dialer, visual voicemail, facebook, twitter, my app drawer button and swipe to lock the phone, text messaging and email) and on the last, quick dials to my 3 brothers, mom and wife with swipes to direct message them. LauncherPro also comes with the ability to hide apps in the app drawer if you don't use them.

Most of my 7 homescreens are cluttered with widgets (a facebook/twitter feed, a calendar agenda, a bookmarks widget, a contact list for work related people) with 2 pages dedicated to actual applications and frequently used settings.

The most use I've gotten out of my Droid was when we went on Vacation a few weeks ago to Texas. Not only did the phone serve as our GPS the whole way down (Google Maps with Navigation, GO!) but I was able to keep up on almost all of my non-work related reading and interaction without the need of a computer.

I can honestly say that I will probably never get a phone that isn't a smartphone and for the forseeable future, I'll be sticking with Android as well.