The takeaway – this is an awesome site if you are into hacking your droid. That’s going into a permanent link.

So now for getting to root…first update to 2.01 if the software has not already been pushed to your phone. Just follow the instructions, download the file, rename it update.zip, put it on the top level of your sd card. Then, this is the only tricky part, turn the phone off. Turn it on again holding down the X key until you see a triangle and an exclamation point.  Now press and hold the camera button while hitting volume up. This should get you into a menu that allows you to reboot or install the update file. Use the D-pad on the physical keyboard to move up/down/select on the menu. Reboot. It might take a while.

Now download the root update file here and follow instructions. Same deal, rename as update.zip and go through the above steps.  Reboot the phone. Now go to Android Market and get Android Terminal. Launch it. Type “su”. Now you are root. Whoohoo! What next? That’s the big question.

I’m able to get screen captures of the phone now. Check out the earlier post of first impressions now updated with screen shots. You too can do this, by simply installing 4,000 pieces of software and using up nearly a gig of disk space! I used this article as a guide but I have to say it was a pretty loose guide. Hit the link to see my redone version. I did not want to put this “experiment” on my linux box so this will be the Windows version (my laptop):

• Install the Java SE Development Kit (JDK). Just select the plain vanilla JDK, not the bundles. Should be around 90M.
• Install Eclipse for Java. Also huge.
• Once you’ve installed Eclipse you will need an Android plugin. Install instructions are here.
• Download and install the Android SDK by following the “Quick Start” instructions here.
• Go back to Eclipse and configure the Android plugin by locating your Android SDK folder, and pointing it to Google’s archives. Steps are included in the above Eclipse plugin link.
• Finally, install the Windows USB drivers for the phone (Windows calls it the “Motorola A855″).

If you’ve done all this correctly, then plug in the phone. Navigate to the folder where you’ve store the Android SDK. Go into “Tools” and double click on “ddms.bat”. This will launch an application that should show your phone on the left-hand list. Select it and from the menu select “Device” and “Screen Capture”. You should get an image that’s 854×480, the resolution of the phone. Through this simple process [ahem] I have produced the above shot of my desktop. Cool!

Another note, if an email arrives during the “interval” between syncs, and  you read it, you will not get a notification beep (although the email will be on your phone). If you don’t read it, you will be notified.  Makes sense. [UPDATE: if you receive an alert, and do not check it, the next email will not cause an alert. It seems satisfied to alert you once that you've got unread items, regardless of how many pile up. Demerit.]

horizontal touchscreen mangles page. yuck.

It does not have the seamless UI experience that the iPhone does, which means it has some rough edges. One example would be filling in web forms using the horizontal touch screen keyboard. You don’t end up with much screen space, so your input field (for example, on a website form) fills the entire screen, with a “next” button right there.  When you fill the field and hit “next” you go to the next field, but it’s easy to lose where you are on the page and which field you are filling. Of course, if you don’t like this, you can use the slide-out keyboard instead and your view of the page goes back to normal. Most of these are not showstoppers, which is why I call them rough edges. Click on “more” for example images.

Vertical touchscreen keyboard for web form. Watch those fat fingers!

Same page, horizontal touchscreen keyboard. Nice big keys but where am I on the page?

Horizontal use, with slider keyboard out. But what if I don't want the slider keyboard?!?

If you live for the massive amounts of apps you can load on your phone, you will be disappointed. I use my phone mostly for web and email, so that doesn’t bother me. Plus I am sure given the popularity of Android that the number of apps will continue to increase. But my kids are a little disappointed at the selection of games. Oh well, I didn’t buy it for them.

But on the positive side, here are my thoughts.

• It’s fast. Not speaking about the carrier, just the phone. Running the web version of gmail is about 60% faster than doing it on the iPhone 3G. Switching between running apps is nearly instantaneous. The short time required to pull the phone out of your pocket and be up and running on wifi is a welcome change.
• The browser is fast – again it must be the processor – and there’s no question that the Verizon 3G network beats ATT’s hands down in speed.  That may be a function of solid coverage vs. technology edge, I don’t know.
• Highly integrated with Gmail. the iPhone was no slouch at this either, but if you have your contacts and everything else in Gmail, all you need to do to get this phone up and running is sign in. Boom. Everything will be waiting for you, your email and your contacts.
• Runs on Verizon network so I can ACTUALLY USE IT AS A PHONE. Even in my house. Even in my basement.
• Email delivery is an improvement over the iPhone, perhaps as result of the carrier, but still not perfect.

Let’s expand on that last note, email delivery. The iPhone can sync email but the delivery and notification is sporadic and the battery use is horrific. My 3G iPhone would not make it through a full day, let alone 12 hours, on a charge when using email sync.The battery life on the Droid is better, but not eye-popping, and I’m sure some of that has to do with a brand new battery vs. a year-old one in my iPhone. The reliability (read: how fast and consistently the email notification matches the actual arrival of the email in your inbox) is improved somewhat, but is still far from a Blackberry’s military precision at delivering email to the phone. I used to get email on my Blackberry before it ever hit my desktop. There are technical issues here beyond my understanding but part of it has to do with the wifi being turned off if the phone is not used for a while. That’s something the iPhone also did ( and boy was it slow to get wifi up on wakeup ). But I’m assuming that the network kicks in after that so you’d still be syncing in realtime. But experimentation has shown that sometimes I get notifications and sometimes I don’t, and sometimes it happens quick and sometimes it doesn’t. If you’re on a BB and you depend on that phone’s reliability and fast notification, I am not sure I would recommend a change for you. Maybe the Storm 2?

I just figured out a shortcut to this screen. On the home screen, put your finger on the very top statusbar, and drag downward. You should see the notifications screen revealing itself. Cool.

Another feature is the ability to sync with multiple gmail accounts. It works smoothly however I have a suspicion that it will only sync the calendar on the first gmail account you use. It does not sync calendars on subsequent accounts you enter.

I don’t know if that is google or moto, but how about a gold star for both. Google for inventing Android and Moto for using it.

Just kidding, this sucks, I can’t give the phone a demerit but I can give it to Verizon. Bad Verizon.