Android 101

Coming back from the store I got home and immediately plugged my brand new Motorola Milestone to a wall outlet and started configuring it. Got my Google login in it and booted it up, I was immediately impressed by the fact that by then it had already done half the work as my email, calendar, contacts, were all perfectly inside my phone and ready to be used...
I then went on the Android Market and started looking for nice cool apps to make my phone be more like I wanted... Customizing an Android phone to make it work just like you want is a very satisfying experience, you can change pretty much anything you want in it...
The sad part is that I quickly started noting that there were a lot of things that I wanted to do but there were no apps for it... When I went to google.com and started looking for answers as to why my phone, which was supposed to be customizable in every way, wasn't living up to that promise...
I soon discovered that the apps existed and were in the Android Market, except I couldn't access them because I live in Brazil... and Brazil didn't have paid apps available - don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great free apps on the Android Market, but when you're just starting and don't know much about it you don't get the full experience without the paid apps.... - that really bummed me out, I knew what apps I needed and they existed, but I couldn't use them...

So there I was, a complete newbie in the android scene, without paid apps and no root access - although by then I only had a faint idea of what that was and that it was dangerous to get.
I had bad battery life, struggling to get through the day with a single charge, my phone was filled with useless, and irremovable, apps but I still loved it and knew that I was holding in my hands a little piece of the future...

Let's start at the beginning...

I live in Brazil, and I got my first android phone pretty much by accident...

I had a Nokia N95, but it was getting old and a little beat up - plus I'm an electrical engineer student, therefore I love gadgets - so I decided: it was time to get a new phone. I loved Nokia phones and they were pretty much all I knew, so for me the obvious choice was to get a N97 - keep in mind that this was the beginning of 2010 - it had all the specs, looked good, nice tilt screen. I had two problems with it though, it was unavailable in most stores from my mobile operator and it was expensive, really expensive - around U$1000,00.
By that point I've heard of android but hadn't really read a lot about it, only that it was new and had potential...
When I got to the store that allegedly had the N97 they told me it was out of stock and they had no timeline to receive it... and then they offered me a Motorola Milestone. It was cheaper, they had in store and I had a gut feeling about android that told me that I should go for it... So I decided to take a look at it. The woman who was helping me went and got one so I could try it a bit.
When she got back and gave it to me I got the battery in it and turned it on...
Then the magic began... It was pretty much love at first sight, it was a beautiful phone, pure android experience, no skins, no "enhanced" interface, nothing, just plain and simple android...
I played around with it for a bit and decided to go ahead and get it....
It wasn't cheap, but it was a lot cheaper than the N97 - which I eventually found out was a much inferior cell...