Droid X: The Missing Manual

Chapter 1. The Guided Tour

The Droid X—an elegant, muscular-looking phone—is an enticing gadget, and the first time you hold it in your hands, you’ll immediately want to put it through its paces, calling friends, browsing the Web, checking your email, and more.

That’s as it should be: The Droid X is the Superman of smartphones. As you’ll see in the rest of this book, it can do some remarkable things that make it feel as if the phone truly does have superpowers.

To help you unlock all those powers, though, it’s a good idea to get a solid understanding of how the Droid X works, and a look at all its different parts. You’ll want to know where all of its buttons, keys, and ports are located, for example—not to mention how to get to your Home screen and panes.

Power/Lock Key

Smack dab in the middle of the top of the Droid X, you find a small, rectangular silver button. It may be only a single button, but it’s a hard-working one, and it performs several functions:

• Sleep/Wake. When your Droid is turned on, pressing and releasing the button puts your Droid X into Sleep mode, a state in which the display is turned off and the device uses only a minimum amount of power, in order to save battery life. When the Droid X is in dreamland, it also doesn’t register any taps, so that you can’t accidentally send an email or delete every picture on your phone. When your Droid X is asleep, pressing and releasing this button wakes up the Droid into its locked mode—you’ll see how to unlock it a little later. ...