Ever since the iPhone was announced, I wanted one. I desperately wanted one. The problem I had, and still have, is the horrible coverage in the area I need it most — the area where I work.

AT&T’s network shortcomings, despite what a heftier Luke Wilson will tell you, is well documented. I was told by an AT&T rep that I would be lucky to receive a text message in the area I work, and certainly have major trouble with phone calls. Not good. It’s a map issue.

I stuck with Verizon and their map, which gave me 3G Broadband in the same area that AT&T could not guarantee text messages. I also was stuck with the Blackberry Storm. The multiple, daily urges to toss the Storm into the Arkansas River was too much to bear. I purchased the Motorola Droid two months ago and cannot be happier.

I am in Sales and spend most of my days on the road going from appointment-to-appointment.  I have a lot of clients who are very needy.  It is not uncommon to receive 50 calls in a day in addition to a full day of appointments.  It’s tough.  I had a very successful sales year and I attribute much of the success to the Droid.

The apps I use most often on the Droid is Google Voice, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and GMail.   I live outside of my sales territory, so prior to activating Google Voice I was using a long distance cell phone number with my clients.   With Google Voice, I was able to pick a local phone number for my clients to call — for free! This makes a big difference on how my clients and prospects perceive me.  A local phone number is very beneficial.

The Droid has perfect integration with Google Voice. I am notified almost instantly after a message is left.  A few seconds later the message is transcribed into text. Perfect! This saves me a ton of time not having to dial into voice mail and then finding scratch paper to write down the message. A quick read and a press of the button and I’m returning the call.  Then another press of the button to the Calendar to view my next appointment and one more press of the button for step-by-step navigation to their front door.  Awesome!

Another great feature of Google Voice is that it saves all of my messages like email, so it’s easily accessible.  You can also add contact info on-the-fly and add notes to each individual message.  When you add the contact info it updates to your GMail contacts, as well as your contacts on your phone.  Beautiful!  And of course, GMail then syncs with Google Calendar, which in turn syncs with Google Maps for step-by-step navigation.  And all of this syncs with the Droid instantaneously.  It has streamlined and organized my day.  I love it!

The Droid has yet to fail me. I would do a “battery pull” with the Blackberry Storm at least ten times a day to get the phone working again.  I haven’t pulled the battery once with the Droid.  It just works.  Droid does, or something.

My iPhone envy has not completely diminished, though.  It’s too bad the iPhone is still exclusive to the AT&T network.  It’s also too bad Google Voice is not compatible with the iPhone.  I’ve read conflicting reports of who banned the Google Voice app from the iPhone, either Apple or AT&T.  Either way, a phone without Google Voice is a deal killer for me.  Perhaps the best compromise is to purchase an iPod Touch.

I will continue writing about my experience with the Motorola Droid and Android in the near future.  I have discovered a ton of great apps that I’ll share, most of which are free.  It’s a wonderful phone that has made my life better!  I say this with confidence.

It took a couple hours out of my weekend to install the Google Mobile App on my Blackberry Pearl, but I should get those hours back soon.   Google Mobile App combines some of the prior apps like Search, Reader, News, Notebook, Docs, and Picasa into one icon.  It’s pretty slick.  It gives me much more room on my Blackberry “desktop” and helps keep resources available.

I also updated Google Maps, GMail, and Google Talk and kept them as separate icons.

I finally took the plunge and switched my email address to a GMail interface.  I didn’t get a GMail account, rather a personal/business account through Google Apps.  This way I use my own email address (scott [at] scott stafford [dot] com) with the Gmail interface.  The business account is $50 a year, but you can also get a free account.

I love the push technology of Blackberry, but the mobile interface of GMail is much easier to navigate.  The control over labels and the ability to archive and search is great to have on the road.  Ultimately, I am willing to sacrifice immediate push-email for ease of use.

The biggest hurdle was changing the MX Records in my hosts Control Panel.  That took me about 20 minutes.  Here is what I changed them to:

There were multiple instructions to change your MX Records, depending what host you use.

So now I have my Calendar, Email, Reader, Maps, News, Docs, and Google Talk all streamlined in the palm of my hand.  Oh, and I can also place phone calls.  Red lights are now much more tollerable.