Electronics

Motorola's Droid is a full featured smartphone that's a perfect fit for the snowboarding lifestyle.

For the last few years I've envied iPhone owners, but that all ended when I started using the Motorola Droid on Verizon. The phone is everything I've looked for in a smartphone, and it does it all with prowess.

As tempting as touchscreen phones are, 90% of my use is for business, and I suck at typing on touchscreen – two factors that have kept me on a Blackberry for a long time. The Droid fixes that by providing both touchscreen and keyboard inputs; training wheels for a touchscreen device. The keyboard isn't quite as "clicky" as the Blackberry input I was used to, but within a few weeks my typing had pretty much caught up.

With all the networks fighting about whose 3G map is bigger, it's worth mentioning that Verizon's 3G is pretty impressive in the Colorado Rockies. The Droid has full 3G coverage at many of Colorado's ski resorts – checking email has never been faster from the top of Steamboat at 10,500 feet.

The built-in media player works great. No need for special software on your computer, just plug the Droid in with a USB cable, and drag songs onto the phone. Of course with Pandora you can also stream free music over the 3G network any time you want. The 5 megapixel camera works well, although a bit slow on action shots. With the great 3G network reception, getting photos from mountain to Facebook is faster than ever, which makes the camera much more useful than its speed would otherwise make it.

Even better is the in-car navigation features. I've used a Garmin GPS device for a few years now, but haven't touched it since I started using the Droid. Simply put, I just don't have a use for it, Google's navigation is at least as good as the Garmin, if not better, and best of all the maps are up to date and free!

With the Android Market, there's all kinds of other things your phone can do. The must-have app is Google My Tracks, a GPS-based tracking system that can map out your day on the slopes. While you get your Apres on at the end of a day of riding, you can pull up a Google Map of your day, including stats like total vertical descent, max speed, and average speed.

From pocket to car, and from music to phone calls, I've been very impressed with the Droid. Phone call quality is great, but phone calls make up for only a small percentage of my Droid usage. The phone morphs into pretty much anything you need. In your pocket it's a phone, but when you get in the car it's also your navigation device. Arrive at the mountain and it's also your music player and GPS tracker.

After more than a month of use, there are only two things I dislike about the Droid. First, the battery cover doesn't stay on very well, and it pretty regularly falls off when I pull it out of my pocket. A piece of tape or a protective case fixes that, but I don't quite understand how the phone made it to market with a flaw like this. Second, there's nowhere to attach a wrist strap. Perhaps that's a low priority for most users, but for a device that I'm prone to pull out and check stats on the chair lift, it makes me a little nervous.

Overall I've found the Droid a pleasure to use. Many of the features available on the Droid will soon be available on other Android devices, but the Droid's seamless merging of function and form is the first to really showcase Android's promise. If you're looking for a new phone, and need that physical keyboard, definitely take the Droid out for a spin.