Today I bought the Motorola Droid phone and after a few hours of playing around with it, realized that SmartPhones suck at being used as a phone :-(. They have fancy features and Internet access and what have you, but with my old (not-so-smart) phone, I could dial a number that I was used to dialing without looking at the phone (using a couple of key presses or using speed dial using my memory of the physical layout of the keys). With the Droid, it appears like you cannot do a simple thing such as speed dial (remember there are no keys available to dial the phone — you need to “look” at the screen and bring it life by doing stuff like flicking your finger on the screen requiring the use of two hands — one to hold the phone, one to gesture correctly — and then get the number you want out of some form of menu — ugh).
Thinking about this, it seems like BlackBerry is really the best smart phone — they haven’t compromised on the traditional phone functionality and have smartly addressed the iPhone market with the Storm which they aren’t really paying too much attention to. The rest of the touchscreen smartphones including the Driod are simply chasing the iPhone market segment without innovating on what a cell-phone is — iPhone defined a new segment for itself and it’s finish and polish outclass just about everyone else. The others should not simply copy it — they should come out with something vastly superior to it. Until they do, I am stuck with the Driod.
