This is not a tech blog, nor am I the right person to be doing a full review of tech stuff – for a few reasons, I’ll get into. But, I do have one of the Motorola Droid cell phones, and Verizon did have to pay to use that LFL trademarked term, and there might be regular readers of this site who are interested enough to hear my thoughts on it – so I thought I’d give it a whirl. If you think this might be the Droid you’re looking for, read on after the break.

Let’s go back to the reasons why I may not be the best person to review the Motorola Droid. For starters, I work for Verizon, though admittedly not the wireless side of the business but the FIOS TV side. Think of it like Disney Animation and Theme Parks – same company, but I don’t think the Theme Parks have much to do with what animated feature is going to be made next. So, I learned about the Motorola Droid at the same time as the rest of the world, mostly through other gadget sites over the past few weeks.

My excitement was building – let me get this straight. This phone has a beautifully large touchscreen, plus a slide out keyboard, GPS with turn by turn Google Map directions built in for free, mobile internet, a digital camera and camcorder, music player, video player, the Android OS with all the apps that go along with it… uh, yeah, you had me at “Hello”. On my Christmas list this year was getting a GPS navigator, and my phone is already at least 3 years old (the original LG enV) so I definitely wanted the Droid.

But I also knew I couldn’t really afford it, because I don’t need a new contract (I recently re-signed mine) and I’d be paying full price. So I was planning on living vicariously – until my company (Verizon) decided to have a contest where we would have a chance to win a Droid (funny aside, when I told my wife the day before the contest that I was going in to work to try and win a droid, she thought I was talking about a Star Wars toy for the kids) – and I won one!

So far we have two reasons why I may not be the most reliable source. First, I work for the company, second I got the phone for free. Now we can add the fact that I don’t review tech stuff – sure I’m a gadget guy, I have had a number of portable game systems as well as ipods, but I don’t review these things for a living (or even for fun). I use them for fun though, and what I lack in the experience of giving out technical details I make up for with excitement, a genuine interest in the product and personal honesty – so if you’ve lasted with me this long already, let me give you my thoughts on the Droid so far.

I love it. As Captain Panaka said, this is an extremely well put together little droid. I’m not going to go into detailed specs – if you want that, there are plenty of places on the web where you can find it. But I’ll give you my impressions on as many of the features of this phone as I have had a chance to use. First the touch screen is fantastic looking. I don’t know if it’s better than my ipod touch, but it’s certainly in the same ballpark. The touch screen is very responsive even if it’s lacking the Apple patented pinch zoom – the Droid uses a double tap instead to zoom in and out.

The operating system (or OS) is the Google Android software – which apparently is the next big thing in terms of mobile software because it’s a Linux based platform, which basically means it’s ‘open’ to any developers (as opposed to a closed system like Apple’s, Palm’s or RIM’s). That doesn’t necessarily mean a lot to me, but there were two things I noticed right away. First, the interface is really easy to use – like a very intuitive computer screen. Click here, move that there, open more than one program at once – I felt right at home. I’ve heard some reviewers talk about not knowing how to do something (and there is very little in the way of an instruction book) – but I haven’t struggled with it at all so far. There’s a menu button at the bottom of the screen that almost always gives you what you’re looking for.

Since I’m talking about that, I’ll mention the other face buttons, back (which should be obvious to anyone who’s used the internet – just in this case it works for everything on the phone – want to get back to the last thing you were looking at, hit back), home (which will always bring you back to the home screen), and search (which is like a google search of your phone – if you’re looking for a contact or a website, put it in that search and it’ll give you all sorts of links for you to click on). Also on the outside is the mini-USB connection port, which runs to a USB cable you can either plug into a computer for syncing and charging, or into a special adaptor for plugging into a wall socket for charging. The first steps towards a universal charging cable have been made. There’s a headset plug, a volume control and the slider that reveals the physical keyboard. Honestly, I haven’t used that very much yet, but I didn’t find it any better or worse than the one on the enV. Again, this is one of those areas I’ve seen reviewers harp on – it’s a non-issue for me.

And while I’m on the subject of things reviewers have had issues with – the one I’ve seen mentioned the most is the camera. And I have to say, I’m a little thrown here. I’ve read reviewers who say the camera’s terrible, but they think it’s the software and not the hardware. I’ve also read things like the software is too slow, the camera pictures are hard to focus and the colors don’t come out right, and that there’s no audio sound to let you know you’ve taken a picture. Now perhaps there’s been a software update since the units that went out for review to these tech sites – but I’ve literally had none of those problems. I was able to quickly open the software, managed to take the photos of my kids before they got bored and moved on, the colors seemed exactly right, and there was a distinctive camera click as the shot was taken. I haven’t used the camcorder yet, but I understand it’s linked up to youtube so you can post directly to that as you record.

There are a few negatives I can think of so far. The battery cover slides out a little easier than it should – not so easy that it’s going to come off on its own, but it’s still easier than any other phone I’ve ever owned. Some of the applications I’ve downloaded are not yet optimized for the Droid – these are Google Android applications, which have been made to fit a multitude of phones – ones with much smaller screens in some cases – so the game in question isn’t using nearly as much of the screen as it should be. I’ve also heard that putting music on the phone isn’t as easy as an ipod – because you have to load it on yourself as opposed to syncing into a program (like itunes) – but again, I haven’t gotten to try that out yet for myself.

But there are tons of applications – from the streaming radio app Pandora, to plenty of games, social network programs and information services. You can customize your main three screens with whichever applications you’d like – and the rest will stay in the main menu for your use at any time. I’ve used the turn-by-turn directions from Google Maps and found it to be fantastic – quickly and easily updating when I didn’t follow the directions given, and giving plenty of warning for upcoming directions. You have the ability with this phone to do voice commands, where you can ask the phone to look up a restaurant of a particular name, and then voice activate Google Maps to give you directions to that place from where you currently are. It’s a powerful system that I can’t wait to use more.

Since this is a Star Wars site, I’ll mention that I did do a search on that term in the Android app store and found a few – though they were mostly wallpapers and sounds for the phone. Other than it being a very cool piece of electronics, and the name Droid, there’s nothing particularly Star Wars-y about it – and yet because of how much it does I can’t help but feels like it’s my own personal droid helper – it’s got all the tools I need in just one device. I can’t wait to continue to play around with it, and while I can’t tell you if this is the Droid you’re looking for – I can tell you this little Droid and I are going to go through a lot together. I see myself using it for all the things I’ve been using multiple electronics for in the past – I can sync it to e-mail, my calendar, use it as my alarm clock, my contact list… it goes on and on. And more likely than not, just like the title suggests, my obsession with my latest gadget is going to cause me a lot of trouble – in the form of my wife wanting to hide it from me. But is it out of anger, or because she can’t stop playing Robo Defense on it?