This is the Droid you're looking for...

While I don’t have R2-D2 sitting next to me, I do have his distant cousin as his my companion. For nearly a year, I’ve used Motorola’s “Droid” smartphone and while many of my friends do have smartphones, many don’t, so I wanted to talk about what they can do for you and why you should have one.
Basically, the  term “smartphone” is a misnomer - they’re actually pocket-sized computers. Back in the Nineties, I had a Palm PDA that could do roughly some of the same things, but they were isolated, cut off from the Net. With a smartphone, you have an always-connected computer that simplifies many of the routine tasks of life.
For instance, I have little applications, or “apps” on my phone that keep track of what I’ve spent for what, what I eat, how much I exercise and what effect it’s had, and car expenses. I use it to check my bank account and pay bills, use it to track credit card balances, utilities, and dates due automatically. Dropbox lets me store all my writing in a secure server so I’ll never lose it in case of a crash. I can look up where movies are and what time. Scan2PDF Mobile lets me take a photograph of a document and turn it into a PDF file so I can mail it. The Weather Channel and Weatherbug apps let me know if the weather is about to turn crappy so I can go take care of the horses before it rains. TuneIn Radio lets me listen to any radio station anywhere in the world (It’s a trip getting Radio Antartica) Documents To Go let me work on Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files on my phone. Catch lets me take photos or notes of things I want to remember. This doesn’t even count being able to access the Internet and everything that’s available there with browsers that work just as well as the  big ones.
In short, my life is on my phone now. And what if it’s stolen or lost? Well, my girlfriend’s Droid was lost and stolen a few months ago, but I have an app called “Mobile Defense” on it that’s basically LoJack for phones. She left the phone in the bathroom at her office building, went back to get it, and discovered the phone was gone. Without Mobile Defense, that would have been that, but I went to the Mobile Defense site, called up her phone, and without the thief knowing it, was able to tell it to start signaling where it was. My girlfriend went over to the house, where a much-surprised mother went back and got the phone back from her daughter, who claimed she had just taken it to keep it safe and was going to return it the next day.
So, if your cellphone contract is up and you’re wondering whether you should get a smart phone, my advice is definitely yes. No matter how simple or complex your life is, you’ll find very quickly that having a phone like this will help you keep track of your life and organize it in ways you didn’t think possible. Good luck and have fun.