Droid Does

One of my brothers celebrated a birthday yesterday. I thought of calling him several times throughout the day and then, like an idiot, entirely forgot to call him till the following morning. “What’d you get?” I asked him. He’s much younger than me but still old enough to feel the pull of adulthood and told me his birthday was kind of nice just to have over. Then added, “I got that new Droid phone, though. It’s sweet.”

The ad line for this phone is, ‘Droid Does’ suggesting there isn’t much it can’t do. My brother began listing a few of the things the phone does that his past one couldn’t. “I really just got it though. I’m still getting familiar with it but overall it’s really sweet.” And then he mentioned a feature I’m familiar with, “It even has a barcode scanner that lets you find products both in your area and online and compare prices.”

About a year ago a friend was over and was explaining this same feature on the original Google phone. His explanation left out the critical word ‘barcode’ claiming only, “This phone has a scanner built into it. I can just point it at anything and it’ll tell me where to buy it.” This particular friend has a lot of energy and began surveying the room for an item to scan. In an effort to help I offered, “Here’s an apple, can it scan that?”

“No, but it can scan pretty much anything but food,” his voice rising with a hint of frustration.

“How about the piano right there?”

And again, “No.” Then he added just a bit louder, “It’s really more for finding stuff you’d buy,” before beginning to move from room to room looking for something to demonstrate this new feature with. I bought both the apple and the piano and wondered what his scanner actually did as I followed him into the kitchen. There he found one of my daughter’s schoolbooks and flipping it over began scanning the barcode only to get an “item not found” message.

Exasperated he simply packed the phone up and left.

Apparently Droid does what G phone doesn’t