What! You say you use your Droid 2 to talk? That’s so early twenty-first century! By 2008, as reported by the Nielsen Mobile research group, the average mobile phone user sent and received more text messages than phone calls—357 text messages a month compared with 204 calls. Fittingly, the Droid 2 is a messaging monster. Not only can you send and receive plain old text messages, but you can send and receive pictures and videos as well.
When you send text messages, you use the SMS (Short Message Service), which limits you to 160 characters (including spaces and punctuation), which comes out to a sentence or two. That may sound short, but in a world where Twitter limits you to messages of 140 characters, 160 characters can suddenly seem like a lot of space.
Text messaging doesn’t come free. With Verizon, you have a choice of paying per message (typically 20 cents per text message and 25 cents per video or picture message), or from among a variety of monthly plans that range from $5 per month for 250 text, picture, and video messages, up to $20 per month for unlimited messaging.
When you get a text message, the Droid 2 plays the familiar robot-like “Droid!” notification sound. What happens next depends upon whether the phone is active or asleep.
If you’re using the phone, a text message icon appears in the Notification area, along with the name of the person sending the text message and the message itself.
If the phone is asleep, after you unlock it, you’ll see a text message icon in the Notification area, but not the name of the person sending it or the message itself.
Tip
When someone sends you a text message with links in it, the links are live. Tap a web address to visit it in your browser, or tap a phone number to dial the number for a voice call.
In either case, pull down the Notification bar and tap the notice. If you’ve got more than one text message, the notice tells you so.
You go straight to a list of your most recent text messages, those you’ve sent as well as those that have been sent to you. The messages with blue dots next to them are those sent to you; all others are ones you’ve sent. Each message shows the date it was sent or received; any sent or received on that day show only the time. You see only the last text message in a conversation. So if you exchanged four text messages with someone three days ago, you see only the last message listed here.
To read the message you were just sent, tap it. You see the message in a text balloon, and if it’s part of an ongoing conversation of messages, you see each message.
Note
Text messagers are having to get used to an unpleasant fact of texting life: spam. It’s not nearly as prevalent as email spam, but you’ll most likely get some at some point in your messaging life.
To respond, tap in your message using the keyboard, and then press Send. Off your message goes, instantly. You see the record of your message appear in a text balloon. If your friend texts back, you see it in another text balloon…and so on.
To send a text message if you haven’t received one, tap the Text Messaging icon on the Home screen or the Application Tray. The list of all your messages appears. Tap the + button, and a screen appears that lets you create a text message. There are several ways to tell the Droid 2 where to send your text message, both accessible from the To field:
Type a name into the field. The Droid 2 will look through your contacts and display any matches. Tap the contact to whose cellphone you want to send a text message.
Type a phone number in the field.
Tap the Add icon
. Your Contacts list appears. Choose the contact to whom you want to send the text message.
After that, tap your message in the message field and tap Send, and your message goes on its merry way.
Tip
If you prefer to talk rather than type, press the microphone key, and then speak your message. Yes, it’s odd to send a text message that starts out as the spoken word, but welcome to the twenty-first century.
There are plenty of other places on the Droid 2 where you can send text messages:
When you’re viewing a contact. Tap the Message icon next to a phone number to address a text message to that number. When you’re in the Contacts list, Recent, Favorites, or anywhere else that lists your contacts, you’re only a tap or two away from sending a text message.
When you’re viewing pictures or video. You can share these things via text messaging the same way you can share them via email. When viewing the picture or video, tap the Menu key, tap Share, and then select Text Messaging.
From the Messaging widget in the Productivity pane. The Productivity pane (Productivity Pane) includes a Messaging widget that displays the last text message or update you’ve received from a social networking site. If it shows a text message, tap it, and you can send and receive messages from there.
On the Droid 2, the term “text message” is an understatement, because you can send a whole lot more than text using the SMS service. It’s a breeze to send a photo, an audio snippet, a video, an entire slide show, or a “name card” with contact information on it. (For details about name cards, see Fancy Tricks with Contacts.) When you’re composing your text message, press the Menu key and then tap Insert to choose any of these items from a menu. You can also take a picture, or record audio or video, which you can then send.
If you take a picture or video, the Droid 2 will let you know whether it’s too large and offer to resize it. Click Resize to resize it and send it. You end up back on the text messaging screen, where you see an attachment icon on the left side of the screen. And on the right side of the screen, the letters “MMS” tell you that you’ll be sending the file via the Multimedia Messaging Service, which is used to send media files via text messaging.
Tap Send, and the Droid 2 sends your picture. After a moment or two, you’ll see the message you just sent, including the picture, audio, or video.
When you’re composing a text message and you press the Menu key, you have more options than just inserting a picture, audio, or video:
Add subject. As the name says, you can add a subject line to your text message.
Set priority. You’ve got two options, Normal and Urgent. Whenever you compose a message, it’s sent via the Normal option. If you want the recipient to know it’s urgent, tap this, and then select Urgent.
Delete. Think maybe it’s not such a great idea to send that message? Then bail out and delete it here.
When you get a text message, there’s a lot more you can do with it than just read it. Hold your finger on the message, and you get a variety of other options:
Open message. Opens the message, just as it says.
View picture. If the text message contains a picture, tap this option to view the picture (or video, if it contains a video). Of course, this option appears only if you’ve been sent a picture or a video.
Save picture. Lets you save the picture to your Droid 2.
Share picture. Share the picture with others via email, text messaging, the Droid 2’s photo sharing capabilities, or an online album, if you’ve set one up.
Forward message. Lets you share the message via the text messaging service.
View message details. Displays information about the message—when it was sent, to whom it was sent, priority level, message size, and so on.
Tip
There’s a single location on your Droid 2 where you can see and access all your communications—text messages and all your email and social networking accounts—in one place. Go to the Application Tray and tap the Messaging app. You’ll see icons for text messaging, and all your email and social networking accounts. Tap any one to use it. There’s also a Universal Inbox that lists all those messages in a single location, mixing text messages, emails, and social networking updates.
Delete message. As the name says, it deletes the message. (You can’t undo the deletion.)
Copy message text. Copies the text of the message to the Droid 2’s clipboard. You can then paste it anywhere you want.
Take a look at the keyboard when you type a text message. Notice something unusual? In the lower-right part of the keyboard, you’ll notice a key with the infamous smiley emoticon on it: :-). It appears whenever you text message. Tap that key, and the emoticon gets placed into your text message. Hold down the key, and you’ll find a whole host of other emoticons you can add. (But do civilization a favor and use them in moderation.)