I eventually remembered having it when I played volleyball the night before and drove across town and got it. Fortunately, someone had found it and turned it in to the lost and found. It was probably a good place to lose my phone as most of the people there know each other and are generally pretty honest.

Then last week I was talking to my mom and she mentioned she misplaced her Droid (I convinced her over Christmas that if she was going to get a smartphone, the Droid was her best bet – she’s a former Verizon employee and would never touch anything AT&T so the iPhone was out).

She wasn’t quite as fortunate as I was. She let it sit on top of her car and drove off. They couldn’t figure out where it fell off and she eventually had to use her smartphone insurance, pay the $89 deductible and order a new Droid.

However, that got me to thinking there must be an app to track down and find a lost Android based phone.

As it turns out, there are several.

Probably the most popular is “Where’s My Droid.” I just installed it and tested it out myself and it’s pretty sweet if you’re forgetful and misplace your phone.

You can send a special code word via SMS to your cell phone and it will turn on the ringer even if it’s on vibrate or silent. I wish I’d have had that feature on my old Razr – I always had the ringer off and managed to misplace that thing every couple weeks it seemed.

It also has a special code word you can text (you can pick these words, by the way) to your phone that will activate the GPS and will text you back it’s location and a link so you can get directions to your phone via Google Maps.

There’s another fun app called Instamapper that also allows for remote activation where you can watch on a map where your phone is and if it’s moving. I have both installed.

Of course, this all implies the phone is on. If it’s powered off, you’re SOL.

So what can you do? Well, probably the best

I know there are apps like Wavesecure that will lock down your phone should it ever get stolen. It will contact a friend (who you can specify when you setup your account) if your friend is stolen and allows you to remotely lock down your phone so that it can’t be used until the unlock pin code is entered.

And it has one feature that makes this a killer app. Smartphones have access to a ton of your personal information – that information is worth far more than the price of the phone.

However, with Wavesecure, you can remotely wipe the the data on your phone and memory card so that least your private personal data can stay safe even if your phone can’t be recovered.

I also like to make it easy for people to get in touch with me so they can give my phone back to me.

While I know that high end smartphones like the Droid and Nexus One are certainly attractive to thieves, I give people the benefit of the doubt and just assume that I misplaced or dropped the phone and that someone found it and would be more than happy to give it back if they could get in touch with me.

One App that makes that simple is to install the “Contact Owner” app on your phone. It’s a very simple app that will display your name on the unlock screen of your phone, an alternate phone number and email address for anyone who finds your phone to contact.

I actually have my Google Voice number set as my contact number. Even when it forwards back to my cell phone, I can still see the call log and will get any text messages sent to that contact number without needing my phone to access them. Also, if they leave a voicemail, I can check it online – no phone required.

So there you have it, some apps to keep track of your phone if you’re as forgetful as I am.

Taking a play out of the Google playbook and likely looking to get some kind of foothold in the U.S. smartphone market, Nokia has stepped up and is now offering their Ovi Maps navigation software completely free.    It’s like Google Maps Navigation, but for Nokia Smartphones.

It has some nifty features, and the price is hard to beat, but it’s still not as good as paid apps for the iPhone or standalone PND devices.

WIN!

Just like all the best navigation software, your maps are stored locally. That means more accurate routing and (Google, are you listening?) if you lose your data signal, you still have navigation because everything you need is stored locally.

It also has many of the other features you’ve come to expect from PND devices.  It displays your current speed, the distance to next turn, and the upcoming street name.   Voice directions are also clear and easy to understand.

It also works anywhere in the world (Google Maps Navigation only works in the U.S. ) which means that if you live somewhere other than the United States, you now have a free navigation option.

FAIL!

Just like with Google Maps Navigation, there are some bizarre and glaring omissions (and just because the software free doesn’t give it a free pass – cell phone data plans and smartphones both cost plenty of money so it’s hardly “free”).  There is no on screen qwerty keyboard for entering in addresses.  It only offers a handwriting recognition system and a texting style numeric keyboard.    And while the built in keyboard works just fine, guess what?  When you have the unit in the windshield mount, you can’t open up the keyboard.

Just like it’s Google  brethren, it has no idea what the speed limit is anywhere and doesn’t offer lane assistance for complicated interchanges (Navigon does an amazing job with this and I’ll admit spoiled me a bit, but I’m okay with being demanding from my GPS software).

Expect it to be on every GPS enabled smartphone from here on out.   I made a list below for the phones it’s available on now.   Just head to maps.nokia.com to download it.

Available on the following Nokia handsets:

• X6
• N97
• N97 mini
• E72
• E55
• E52
• 6730 classic
• 6710 Navigator
• 5800 XpressMusic
• 5800 Navigation Edition
• 5230

Conclusion

Overall, Ovi Maps is a capable navigation program.  With free map updates, no up front cost, no monthly fees, and more importantly, efficient routing; Ovi Maps can take you where you want to go.  It’s not MobileNavigator or TomTom for iPhone yet, but if you have  a Nokia phone, you definitely wan this.

I’ve seen a lot of people making lists of “must have” Android apps, and then they go and include stuff you definitely don’t need, but is certainly cool.

For example, on my phone I have the Tricorder and Lightsaber apps.  While they’re both cool, if you deleted them tomorrow, I’d be sad, but I’d survive.

On the other hand, if you took away my Google Voice Visual Voicemail (note: this is how you get Visual Voicemail for free – don’t pay for it, just get this App and a Google Voice account), I’d be without Voicemail.

So here is my list of what I think are some “must have” Apps.  Keep in mind that while I’m fairly tech savvy, I’m no expert on what should or shouldn’t be on a smartphone – I think all the features are cool.

Oh, and one more thing.  I’ve seen some people complain about how the phone (Motorola Droid and other Android phones like the Nexus One and HTC offerings) lacks certain features out of the box.  That’s the cool part – if you want to do it, there’s probably an App for that, and if there isn’t, you can create one!  It’s infinitely customizable to you.  That’s the real appeal to the iPhone and Android phones.

Anyway, must have Droid Apps…

1. ChompSMS or HandSent2 – The built in SMS on Android sucks donkey balls.  It didn’t allow me to send a text to multiple people at once or to groups.   ChompSMS fixes that little snafu.  It’s the app I use most often.
2. Contact Owner – Ever left your phone somewhere, but can’t for the life of you remember where it is?  I know I have.  And if not for the person how found it being ambitious enough to call contacts in my phone, I wouldn’t have found it.  This app is quite simple – it displays your name and contact info (including alternate phone number and email address) on the phone with an “if found, contact” message.  If someone finds your phone, they’ll know how and who to contact to return it.
3. Wave Secure – Smartphones are expensive even when heavily subsidized by your phone company.  What would you do if it got stolen?  Well, being careful is the best way to make sure nobody steals your phone, but if they do, you’ve got WaveSecure.  If your phone is stolen, this App can help track it back down and will even notify people (that you pick) that your phone has been stolen.  It can even lock the phone down so that the thieves can’t access your personal information.
4. Home++ – Android has three screens by default for putting shortcuts and icons on.   Honestly, once you start playing around with your phone, you’ll find yourself wanting more screens to better organize the apps you use most often.  For example, on my phone I have a screen just for music programs and one just for all the various programs for going online.  Home++ allows you to have up to seven screens and it does some other cool stuff too, but all I use it is for the extra screens.
5. Pandora – While Android is certainly not iPhone for music, it’s certainly a capable device.  I really like my customized Pandora radio stations and being able to listen to them while I’m driving in the car (or wherever I happen to be) is awesome.  Last.fm and Slacker are also both good music streaming clients if you’d like more options.
6. Voice Recorder – The Droid has no built in voice recorder.  No problem, just download “voice recorder” or “rehearsal”, problem solved.
7. FoxyRing and Locale – There are two apps that have a similar function and Locale is definitely the more ambitious of the two, however I don’t need all the features and find FoxyRing is exactly what I need.  You’ll probably want at least one of them if not both.   FoxyRing is an app that measures ambient noise and adjusts the ringer volume accordingly.  In a loud bar?  Then the ringer will go off at it’s loudest volume so you can hear it.  Sitting in your living room reading a book?  Then the ringer will go off at a much lower volume so it doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you.   It also features a “silent” mode.  You can set times when the phone simply won’t go off.  In class at a certain time every day?  Just set the phone to be in silent mode.   Don’t want to take phone calls in the middle of the night?  Again, silent mode.  However, you can set the phone to allow certain emergency contacts to get through.  So if you want your mother to be able to call in case of a family emergency, but not your drunk friends, this is the perfect app for that.
8. Mototorch – This is another simple app.  It uses the LED flash on the camera as a flashlight.  It’s simple, but handy.
9. Gtask – Another simple app that synchs to Google tasks in your Gmail account.  There are a ton of “to do list” apps and really cool ones like “don’t forget the milk.”  For me, this simple one is all I need and the fact that it synchs to Gmail, which I use all day long is why I chose it.
10. KeepScreen – This is an ultra handy app – and all it does it keeps your screen from turning off.  For example, if you’re playing music, but want to keep the controls up without having to unlock the screen every time, this program will do it.  You can set it so that when certain programs are running, the screen simply doesn’t turn off.  Be careful as leaving programs run will drain your battery faster than two shakes of a lambs tail, but it’s great when you just need the screen to stay on without having to touch it every few seconds.

Oh, and while this one is built in, if you use Google Calendar, you can have it text you a reminder if you have anything scheduled you don’t want to forget.  I didn’t know about it until recently, but now I use it regularly.

Those are some of my favorite “must have” apps.

I’ll probably make a list of ones that are “nifty” and “spiffy” but not quite as practical in the future, but that’s all I’ve got for today.

So I got one of those fancy Droids a couple weeks ago and when you go from a Razr to a Droid, everything is cool and fancy.  I honestly don’t know how a lot of the features that are “gee whiz” cool compare to other smartphones like the iPhone.  They’re all cool to me, but wow is the Facebook and Google Voice integration slick.

Anyway, instead of posting my thoughts about the phone side of things, I figured I’d post about the thing I am qualified to review – the GPS, specifically Google Maps Navigation Beta.

I’m on my fourth GPS device and have extensively researched others.  In fact, I decided to get the phone with its built in navigation instead of one of the new high end TomToms.

So I have fairly high standards for what I want in a GPS device, and I have to say that Google has managed to include cool features I would never have thought to ask for… unfortunately they also neglected to include some fairly important industry standard features.

I like it, I love it

As you’d probably expect, Google Navigation uses their Google Maps data for all the routes.  The maps are up to date (I hated updated buying updates to my old ones) and since it accesses their online database, they’re about as up to date as you can get.  Up to date maps doesn’t sound like a big deal until your GPS device tries to convice you to take an impassible snowmobile trail in the middle of nowhere Colorado – then you’ll appreciate having accurate maps J

The voice search is also awesome.  It knows where businesses are (even local ones, not just chains) and can find them with a simple search.  My car broke down a week ago and I was able to find a towing service close to me (I didn’t want to be stuck there any longer than I had to), and call them using the same device… and I was able to read reviews before I made any calls.

It can find landmarks, categories of businesses, schools, pretty much whatever you want.  And if you decide to type in the information, it’s not all that picky and can even figure out what you meant to spell if you spell something wrong (just like their search engine can).

However, one thing it can’t do is navigate to someone in your contacts list even if their address is in your phone.  My guess is that feature is coming, but so far it doesn’t do that.

Google Street View is pretty cool especially as it can display a picture of the intersection and a picture of the business you’re navigating to.  However, I’d like to more advanced instructions for complicated interchanges.  For example, my last GPS would tell me to take and exit and which lane I needed to be in when necessary.  It isn’t necessary all that often where I live but let me tell you, it’s immensely helpful when it does come up.

You have the option to use Satellite view just like with Google Maps on your computer and you can even overlay the terrain if you’re out hiking.

And one feature I really like was the ability to navigate “nearest” whatever.  For example, you can tell Google Maps Navigation to “navigate to nearest movie theatre” and it will.

Fail!

Night mode

While there are some excusable omissions, one that is just a complete brain fart is the lack of a night mode.  Honestly, I was expected that the phone would not only have a night mode, I figured it’d automatically kick in when the sun set based on its location – the phone has a lot of location aware features like that and I figured Google Maps Navigation would have that… it didn’t.

I learned this on a trip from Nebraska to Wisconsin.  Fortunately, I don’t need directions for the trip, so when it got dark and night mode didn’t kick in and I couldn’t find it in the menus, it wasn’t a problem for me just to turn the program off and finish the drive sans navigation.

But seriously, no night mode?  I’m assuming this oversight will be fixed in the near future, but as far as I’m concerned, the program should never have left alpha testing without that feature.

Update (Feb 2010) – Night mode exists now (came as part of Google Maps 4 app update) and yeah, it works like I expected it would – location aware and based on sunset and sunrise.   Glad to see they added it.

Speedometer

Another industry standard is how fast you’re going.  And TomTom and Garmin devices also happen to know the speed limits where you’re driving and can tell you when they change.  Google doesn’t even display how fast you’re going.  I know, I know, that’s what the speedometer on your car is for.  Well, I find the one on cars is frequently off by 1-3 mph.  On a long trip, a 3mph difference is half an hour I could have saved and the GPS speedometer is always extremely accurate.

Data Connection Required

Here’s another real head scratcher.  The need to have a data connection for navigation.  I can totally understand the need to have a data connection for things like Street View, Satellite View, and some of the more advanced features – it’d just be too much to store on the phones memory and updating would be a pain.  However, needing a data connection for even basic navigation is bad design.   Google needs to offer an option to download the maps to your phones memory card and to use those maps when data is lost.  GPS and navigation needs to work in the middle of nowhere.

Those are my biggest complaints.   But here’s why I’m still happy about getting Google Maps Navigation vs TomTom.  I know that Google will continue to update it and that it’s likely to be a true rival to TomTom and Garmin within a year and those complaints I have will likely be addressed soon.  If I had a Garmin or TomTom, I’d be waiting a lot longer and I’d probably have to pay for the upgrade.

Google Maps Navigation may not be quite ready to challenge the big boys for navigation supremacy just yet, but for the price (FREE), you could certainly do a lot worse.