Finding the right technology for our trip has been a real challenge, especially since things change dramatically every year and we don’t have an unlimited budget to buy the latest innovation each year. That being said, since 2007 phones have been high on the list of things to solve.
One of our most important goals, as you know by now, is streamlining our gear –we want more functionality for less weight and less bulk. One of the standard questions for anything we buy, clothing or gear, is whether it has multiple uses or functions. We already know that smartphones have wonderful functionality.
Our biggest challenge has been that we are headed to areas outside the US and we need a global phone. When I see what the smartphones can do, I’m not willing to use a non-smartphone, but whatever smartphone we pick still needs to be global. What I’ve run into is that the global phones simply haven’t had the functionality and good reviews that the US smartphones do.
Last year, since her phone was dying quickly, Chelsea’s dad got her a Droid X. She has loved it from the first day. Despite the fact that we’ll be leaving the country before the plan is up, we figured that the functionality was so important to her that it was worth the extra charges. We also discovered that we can simply buy a $10 phone, put that one on the plan, and disable her monthly data plan when we leave. Since she wants to keep her phone number, that’s a win-win.
I, however, have opted to remain low-tech until I could get a global phone I liked, which meant it wouldn’t be until we left the country (global phones work on different systems than US phones do). Since 2007 I’ve been tracking the global phones, and have been very discouraged. Imagine my thrill when I discovered that Motorola was coming out with a Droid phone that was dual mode, had all the functionality we wanted, and had great reviews!
Enter Droid 3. With great reviews, a dual mode setup, a dual-core processor, and improvements over the Droid X, how could I not grab this one? The timing was perfect – my Verizon plan came up for renewal, which meant I got a big discount off the price of the phone. I waited impatiently until the actual renewal day came and headed down to our local VerizonToGo store yesterday morning, bright and early.
Todd started the process of buying the phone for us, but much to my horror, they didn’t have a Droid 3 in stock, despite the fact that I’d called on Sunday to verify they’d have one. He called around and discovered that the only one in stock from Miami to Stuart (that’s over a hundred mile range) was right down the street in downtown Delray, so as soon as his colleague Matt came in to work, Todd took off to get the phone for me.
I was delighted with Todd and Matt’s service and knowledge. I got a number of my burning questions answered to my satisfaction, easing my stress at putting out that much money. By the time all was said and done we walked out with a Droid 3, a Jawbone Bluetooth headset, screen protectors, and a wee little hard-sided case for the headset and our USB memory sticks.
Guess what we did last night? Yep. We sat on the couch playing with our new technology. Chelsea had had Matt give her the latest upgrades for the Droid X, so both of us had plenty to do. In fact, this puppy can do so much that I now have a list of seventeen items I need to figure out, and that’s before I start downloading apps!