A new phone came out today.  Called the Droid?  Maybe you’ve heard of it?

Oh, that’s right.  I think I’ve mentioned it already…

But seriously, this is the last post that I intend to write specifically talking about the Droid.  I was 5th in line at the Florence Verizon store at about 7:15 AM and had the phone in my hands by 8:30 or so.  I went ahead and picked up both the car mount and the home dock.  

The car mount doesn’t come with a car charger, which kind of sucks when you’re buying it the first time, but if I should ever lose it or break it it’ll be nice that I’m just buying just the mount and not the charger.  It’s pretty well made.  It’s plastic, of course, but the suction cup mechanism is comparable or better than the one for my Tom-Tom, and the arm is adjustable at any angle you’re likely to need.  Plus, once you have it the way you want it, you can lock it in place by tightening a couple of fittings. It’s nice.  The home dock — excuse me, “Multimedia Station” — comes with a wall adapter identical to the one in the box with the phone, but the USB cable is longer.  I don’t know where “Multimedia” comes into play since it’s really just a USB charging stand with a magnet embedded that throws the phone into a new Home screen, but I don’t feel ripped off.  I plan to use it as an alarm clock since charging every night is pretty much a must.

The main thing I wanted to highlight here is that the applications and some settings from the loaner phone did, indeed, make the trip to my phone as soon as I tied it to my Google account.  All the apps downloaded.  Some settings came over (my wi-fi settings, for example), but any app that requires a login (Remember the Milk, Twidroid, facebook, etc.) requires reauthentication. Bookmarks came over, but not cookies.  All in all, it seems like a good balance between convenience and privacy. I was happy, to say the least.

I think there’s one thing about this phone that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, and it falls into that comparison to the iPhone and the Droid category. This phone is a standalone device.  Yes, you can hook it up to your computer if you’d like, but no major functionality is tied directly to a desktop machine (cough..cough..iTunes…cough…cough).  Whatever I need to do, I can do it on the phone.

Refreshing.