Can You Remove the Battery?

The most common questions I get asked about the DROID are:
- What is a DROID?
- Do you like it?
- Can you remove the battery?

The last comes primarily from iPhone users and people who are considering acquiring one. This is one of the most unnerving aspects of the iPhone as every cell phone I've ever used eventually (and even regularly) got into a state where the only recourse was to take out the battery.

Much as we respect Apple engineering, we all seem to share a basic belief that the physics of current cell phone technology is such that it is simply not possible to design a device that won't require removing the battery from time to time.

The answer for the DROID is yes, you can remove the battery. In fact, I had to do just that today for the very first time. I had checked various things on the phone first thing and checked it about an hour later and it was dead. I assumed that the battery had unexpectedly lost charge. I had noticed on a couple of occasions that the battery had started to drop quickly, so I plugged it in again. Nothing. Moved the charger to another outlet. Nothing. Finally I removed the battery and put it back in and then all was well. The battery was even fully charged.

Although this was a bit disconcerting, this exhibition of fallibility was also strangely reassuring. The DROID is a real cell phone, not some mysterious alchemy.

I have found that the DROID does tend to get confused when moving between wireless networks. I leave my home office and go to my consulting office or the reverse and somehow it just won't connect to one of the new set of wireless networks.

Usually turning the wireless on and off does the trick, but from time to time I need to turn the phone off completely.

The iPod Touch hasn't needed as many re-boots. On the other hand, I don't drag it around with me as much as I drag my DROID.

Coming up: a few apps I like on each, GPS, geocaching