I have been mulling over the idea of writing this post for a while now. It was mostly triggered by a video I saw on Android Central. I was excited that they finally had an (apparently) female-centric podcast with female hosts, called “Girls Gone Gadgets”, with hosts Georgia and Ashley. Now maybe the play on “Girls Gone Wild” in the title should’ve tipped me off, or even their logo, (which I think is supposed to be a pink heart with Android antennae and an Apple bite, but now that I look back, sure looks like breasts in a tank top), but I went in hopeful that Android Central was finally addressing the growing female smartphone audience and providing us with some content to consume.

Instead of clicking on a full episode, I thought I’d start with a peek behind the scenes and see who these women were, and clicked on this video Ashley Esqueda put together to describe how she develops her weekly show for Mobile Nations, “Monday Brief”:

I was so disappointed. This seemingly-smart girl made fun of the work she does to produce the show, and even talked about her boobs. Even if she’s being sarcastic, I just had really hoped for something different.

But I decided to go ahead and watch the “Girls Gone Gadgets” Pilot thinking (based on the title) that they might be aiming that show more toward women. I figured Ashley’s behind-the-scenes video was probably intended to just be silly, and that they would probably be more informative in the actual show. I wasn’t surprised at all when the women were introduced “Charlie’s Angels” style, and still held out hope for the episode. Ashley started out by saying she was nervous in front of the camera, and immediately turned what she said into a sex joke and said “there are boys in the chat room”. She explained that they were going to talk tech by saying “don’t be afraid that we’ll talk about cramps and the perfect shade of lipstick”. I was losing hope fast, and it was becoming clear by the chosen phrases that I was not in this show’s target audience.

Ashley and Georgia go on to have a discussion about Android tablets vs iPads, then start talking about what not to do with your smartphone on a date, and Georgia says “Let’s help some guys out”. I honestly stopped watching at that point because they hadn’t even yet addressed that there may be some females that came across their podcast and might be interested in learning how the women used their devices. It was clearly produced for the apparently majority-male audience Android Central already has, rather than using female hosts talking about how they use gadgets to attract more female readers and viewers. I think Android Central and Mobile Nations missed a big opportunity there.

However, it’s not an uncommon mistake. You may have recently heard some of the recent hubbub related to “booth babes” at tech conferences, sparked by this BBC video (featuring a one-time WomenWithDroids contributor, Taylor), and the role of women in the tech industry is a valid discussion to have. Just how do tech manufacturers see women?

Now let me be clear, I have no problem with companies that use sexy models to attract attention to their products, I just assume their aim is to attract men. I have no problem with tech blogs using hot female hosts – I’m sure they can talk tech just fine while attracting a large male audience. What I worry about is the apparent lack of female voices in the industry, or more specifically, the lack of people talking to female tech consumers.

I say “apparent” because I don’t believe there is actually a lack of women in tech. A growing number of women are working in technology-related fields, and there are several women with prominent roles in tech journalism that aren’t just writing for men. Some are listed in this list of “Women in Tech You Need to Follow on Twitter“. Most of all, there has been a noticeable increase in women consuming technology, and it’s time companies took note.

When I started this blog with CraftLass, she was the only other woman I had met that had an Android phone. Remember how the original Droid was being marketed as the “powerful robot” alternative to the “pretty princess” iPhone? Now, I see as many women with smartphones as men, and a high number of them have Android phones.

In February 2010, 73% of Android owners were male. In 2011, Nielsen published numbers on which apps women and men used, so at least businesses were starting to wonder how women used their phones, but I couldn’t find any numbers on how many of their survey respondents were female. I published a survey here on Women With Droids in June 2011 and got over 150 responses, so I knew women were buying Androids in increasing numbers.

More recent articles show that women buy more technology than men (4.7 tech products on average in 2010 vs 4.2 for men), more women (88%) buy technology than men (83%), women download more music and movies than men do, and women spend more time on fewer websites, showing engagement and loyalty.

Barnes and Noble announced that 75% of Android-based Nook Color tablet owners were women, and I’d venture a guess that more than half of Kindle Fire owners are women, too. I have looked, but haven’t found any recent reliable stats about the breakdown of male and female Android users, so please let me know if you come across any. Check out this great TechCrunch article by Aileen Lee about “Why Women Rule the Internet”, which explains that when it comes to social networking and online shopping, women participate at a higher rate than men do.

Women use technology. Women are educated. Women have purchasing power. So, why do tech blogs, conferences, and gadget marketers insist on continuing to focus their efforts on attracting men? My guess is that it’s because, unfortunately, the majority of decision-makers in these companies are men.

So, instead of just complaining about it, I would like to do something about it. Women With Droids was started as a blog written by women for women to help us make the most of our smartphones. If the “big blogs” won’t do it, we will.

I am starting to build a team of women to have online video chats (low-cut shirts not required!) about how we (the female half of the population) use apps to make our daily lives better, write articles about apps we’ve tried and whether or not we recommend them (like we have been doing here for a while, but at a faster pace), and to basically be the go-to source for women with Android phones.

So, are you with me?

I want and need your help! If you want to write an app review (or 10!) for us, if you have an idea to contribute, if you want to participate in a video chat, or just want to help spread the word about Women With Droids, let me know in the comments, and I’ll be in touch to get this all organized and start growing Women With Droids into the blog it was always meant to be! Even if you don’t want to play an active role, even just commenting on our posts and sharing our articles helps a lot!!

Follow us on Twitter, and circle us on Google+! Also subscribe to Women With Droids by RSS or email so you don’t miss any follow-up articles! >(:] )=

We plan to be back to regular posting on WomenWithDroids starting this week, when we’ll be featuring several female app developers and the great apps they have to offer! If you know a female developer that we should feature, let us know and we’ll set up an e-interview!

In the meantime, I’ve started doing news updates via our Google+ Page (circle us!) and Paper.Li online newspaper (subscribe!), which gets auto-tweeted to our Twitter account (follow us!).

There’s also a giveaway in the works for some DecalGirl skins, including a new Droid 3 skin. If you don’t want to wait for the giveaway or want to get some DecalGirl skins as gifts for your friends & loved ones with gadgets, You can get 10% off at DecalGirl using this banner link and Decal10 coupon code:

It’s good to be back!

~Renee
WomenWithDroids.com Founder

In this 2nd follow-up to our Android Phones for Women survey, let’s dive into what you thought about a “feminine” Android device, and how you thought an Android phone designed for us ladies should look:

• 71% of you are not offended by the idea of phones designed to appeal specifically to males or females
• 60% of you said that on a scale of 1 to 10, your likelihood of purchasing a phone marketed especially to women (assuming it had all of the features you wanted) was a 7 or higher. 20% of you selected a 10, meaning you would seek out a phone designed for women.
• 51% of you said you are offended when manufacturers market phones specifically for women that have stereotypical non-functional features like a pink body
• 44.5% of you said that color options would appeal to you, and 35.5% said phone bodies or skins with patterns and designs would appeal to you
• 70% of you said you thought that color options would appeal to most women, and 45% of you said you thought phone bodies or skins with patterns and designs would appeal to most women
• Only 16% of you said that phones with a smaller body would appeal to you, though 35% of you thought a smaller phone body would appeal to most women

Percentages calculated out of 154 survey respondents.

Before I go further, let me point out that in other parts of the survey, it was very clear that top hardware specs were more important to females than the way the phone looks, but for this post, we’re just looking at this aspect of an Android phone designed for women. (I chose to look at this aspect of the survey first because of the ad discussed below.)

So from these stats, it appears women are receptive to phones designed with more feminine aspects, and if we were designing the “perfect” phone for women, it looks like multiple color and pattern options would be a good thing to offer — as long as those options aren’t just stereotypical colors like pink. Surprisingly to me, a large majority of respondents would not be interested in a phone with a smaller body.

Here are some excerpts from survey comments on the look & feel of a phone for women:

• “Women like bright colors!” – Julie Lett
• “As much as I like pink, I don’t want a pink, girly phone!” – Anonymous
• “The size of the droid phones is an indicator that the phones are clearly for men. The bulkier and heavier the phones are, the worse they fit in a pocket of tight girl jeans… My hands are small and delicate, I don’t want to have to wrestle with a huge brick just to answer the phone or text someone.” – Anonymous
• “I personally would want a phone aimed at women that had the specifications of all the higher end Android phones, but with a feminine touch by way of colors and skins to make it a little more girlie.” – Anonymous
• “I do not like black phones – they are hard to find in a purse.” – Lucy F
• “Too much glitz or pink can be a turnoff, especially if you’re marketing to women over the age of 16.” – Anonymous
• “Something not too big like a 4 inch screen.” – Anonymous

There is a rumor that this is an ad for a phone code-named the HTC Glamor, which people think will be marketed to women because of the color choices and the “clothes in a closet” design. All we know about it so far is how it looks in this ad, and it’s alleged code-name.

What do you think? Tell us in the comments!

You all did an awesome job filling out our “Android Phones for Women” survey, ladies! We have some really valuable data here. I think I must have hit a nerve with some of the questions, because we got really passionate answers — sometimes with polar opposite views!

I am well aware that you can’t lump everyone into one category, and that every woman is different and uses her phone differently. However, I believe there are some ways that women use their phones, and some features they desire, that manufacturers will miss if they don’t design it with females in mind.

So, I have an idea for how we can use this info… let’s design the perfect Android phone for us! That doesn’t mean it’s a phone that men can’t also use, but that it is designed to have the features that the majority of survey respondents cared about, and we’ll ask additional questions to fine-tune the results.

We can combine brainpower and opinions of the 150+ women that answered the survey and gather additional data about specific features to create the “Ultimate Android Phone for Women”. What do you think?

And just to give you a taste of the results, here are the responses from the first few questions about phones and carriers:

Carrier

Phones/Devices

We also had one each of:
motorola flipside 2
Vibrant
Epic 4G
Galaxy Tab
LG Optimus V
Droid Eris
Optimus V
desire z
Samsung Galaxy Tablet
droid millennium
infuse
Xoom
motoroi A854
Xperia Play
Droid X2
Dell Streak
Samsung Continuum
HTC Incredible 2
Samsung Galaxy mini
Droid pro
Samsung Intercept
Droid Charge
Galaxy S
I own an android phone
Xperia x10i
HTC G2
HTC Hero

So, I’m guessing that the early adopters are the main ones out reading Android blogs like ours, based on the huge percentage of respondents that have Verizon Droid-branded devices!

Thanks again everyone, we’ll be chatting more about this soon!

This blog was started back when the original Droid was being marketed as a “not girly” phone – presumably, that was a bash at Apple’s style-over-power approach, but I believe it also kept some women from getting Android phones for a while. We started this blog to let women know that there were other women out there that used and loved Android phones, and that we could blog about them, too!

Now times have changed and lots of women have Androids. The question that’s starting to come up now is whether some phone models should be developed especially for women and what those phones could look like.

I don’t want to bias your opinions too much, so I won’t get into it now, but I put together a survey to collect your opinions about phones designed for women. If you have a moment, please click this link http://bit.ly/jWgrKl and fill out the Google Form survey. A few of you have already filled it out from the link I tweeted earlier, and I’m really enjoying reading the responses so far!

After a lot of ladies have had a chance to fill it out and we start to get good stats, I’ll follow this post up with a summary of what you all REALLY think about the idea of an Android phone made for women!

Thanks, everyone!

Hello WomenWithDroids readers!

One of our goals in the new year is to increase the number of posts that we publish per month. In order to help us achieve that goal, we have decided to bring on a new contributor – which could be you!

I want to make it clear up front that none of our contributors are paid for writing for WomenWithDroids.com (yet!), though I have agreed to split any ad/affiliate link revenue among the contributors (or spend it on accessories we agree to purchase for review) after we earn enough to cover web hosting costs. This year we used the income to purchase our ad cards and some accessories that we reviewed over the previous few weeks.

So, if you are a Droid Woman and you’re interested in blogging for a hobby and love your Android phone, please consider joining us! (It’s fun!)

Here are the requirements:

• female
• uses an Android device as primary phone or tablet
• good writing skills
• can commit to writing one post per month
• can use the WordPress author interface (if you’ve never used it before, it’s not difficult to learn)

The posts can be simple app reviews or how-to articles, video reviews, or accessory reviews.

The way we are going to ‘audition’ new contributors is to invite anyone that is interested to write a guest post, then we will narrow down our favorites and possibly ask you to write a second post or answer a few questions by email, then we will select our next ‘permanent’ contributor. (P.S. Even if you can’t commit to contributing once/month, feel free to write if you’re interested in guest-posting one time!)

Here are examples of past guest-posts:

• Accessory Review: Tune Belt by Deb
• App Review: Startup Auditor by Ellie
• On the Move? Pack Your Apps! by Liz

To ‘apply’, email me at renee at womenwithdroids.com to reserve a topic (to make sure we don’t have overlap in our guest posts), then I will set up an author account for you so you can write, edit, and save your guest post. Over the next month or so, we’ll publish all well-written entries on the blog.

Feel free to email me or comment below if you have any questions! I can’t wait to find out who is interested in helping WomenWithDroids grow in 2011 by joining us as a contributor!

Thanks everyone for making this a great first full year for Women With Droids, and a special thanks to all of our contributors for helping get this blog off the ground!

Let’s take a look back at the articles that were read the most. Without further ado, here are our Top 5 posts of 2010!

5. How to take Screenshots – This somewhat complex how-to must’ve gained us a lot of traffic from search engines before there were any apps to help take screenshots. Now, depending on your hardware, you may be able to find an app that will make the process of taking screenshots on your Android device much simpler!

4. Renee’s Homescreen Makeover: Launcher Pro – There are plenty of homescreen replacement and launcher apps out there, but the high-quality upgrades continually made to Launcher Pro keep me loyal to this app. I hope to review some recent Launcher Pro additions early in 2011!

3. Pandora Radio on the Droid – Being able to take Pandora on the go with me was one of the things I was most excited about when I got my Droid. Apparently, you were excited about this, too! This remains one of the most visited posts on the blog even now.

2. Beginners Start Here – This is actually a page with a collection of articles, not a single post, but it is a popular source of content we’ve all contributed over the year that we thought would be helpful for beginners, along with some advice. Please share this link with new Android owners you know!

1. Women With Droids Must-Have Apps – Of course, we get asked most often what apps we recommend, and people seem to love our collective app recommendations. This list was actually generated by exporting the lists of apps on each of our contributors’ phones & showing you the ones that the most of us had in common! Which reminds me… it’s about time to update this list! We’ll let you know when we do!

Have a Happy New Year, and here’s to a successful 2011!

Number images from Flickr users: stewf, stewf, luxomedia, and See-ming Lee

We’re excited to announce a new interactive feature here on WomenWithDroids.Com: “Ask the Droid Women!”

As you probably guessed, you can ask questions in the comments of any “Ask the Droid Women” post (including this one), and we will pick some of your questions to answer. Who are the Droid Women? Find out on our About page here! Each of us will weigh in with our own unique perspectives, then any WomenWithDroids readers out there that want to follow up can add their opinions in the comments.

We’d love for you to ask specific questions, like “How do you use your phone to manage your daily to-do list?” or “What’s a good game to play to relax before bed?” as opposed to really general questions like “What’s your favorite app?”.

So, what do you want to know about how we use our Android devices? Ask the Droid Women by commenting below, then keep your eye out for future posts to see if we answer yours or to weigh in on others’ questions with your opinion!

You may have noticed a lull in our posts lately as we recover and regroup after the loss of our dear friend and Women With Droids contributor Elmyra Jemison, whom we knew as Ellie.

We learned a little over a week ago from her siblings online that Ellie suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. We had all been concerned after not hearing from her for several days (it was unusual for her not to post anything on Twitter for any extended period of time), and this horrible news came as a huge shock to all of us.

She said she loved playing games and trying out apps on her New York City train commutes, and she always found good ones to review here and had something insightful to say about each one. Her sister let us know that she really enjoyed participating in WomenWithDroids and that really means a lot to us. We wanted to share our thoughts about Ellie here in a post.

From Renee:

Ellie has been a prolific contributor to this blog since joining in March, and she helped me keep this site going during times when I would have struggled to keep posting actively myself. When life got really busy at one point and I asked if she could write a couple app reviews to offset my lack of posts, she hunkered down and wrote 5 or 6 all at once and said I could post them whenever we needed one. She always stepped up to the plate and never hesitated to contribute more than anyone asked of her, and her enthusiasm encouraged me and helped this site to grow.

I had only been in touch with Ellie by Twitter and email until a Women With Droids web chat a few of us held for the first time this month. Hearing someone’s voice makes them a little more “real” than just chatting online, and I am glad I got to meet her via phone before she left this world too soon. Though I knew her only briefly, Ellie made a strong impression on me (as she seemed to make on everyone she has come into contact with) and I will miss her and her wonderful contributions that helped this blog stay afloat and grow. Her family is in my thoughts and prayers.

From Deb:

I recently came on-board with WWD and while I didn’t know Ellie long, I immediately sensed there was something special about her. So young, talented, and a tech maven!  I was excited to share an upcoming project with her. All of us are still in shock regarding her passing. It’s feels weird having a fun dream in your mind that’s shared with a group of great people then losing a significant part of that dream suddenly and permanently.

I spent more time on Ellie’s site the day I got the news and came across her “30 days of writing” tumbler account.  While her website shows her very accomplished side, it was here I found her heart. I’m so sad our paths didn’t cross sooner. My prayers go out to her family and friends. As Craftlass said, ‘Her star shines brightly.”

From Liz:

Ellie was one of the best people I’ve ever known – surprising for someone I’ve never met! She was insanely intelligent, often commenting on social injustices and political wrongs with clarity and poise, and often expressing a great sense of humor. I enjoyed many a late night conversation with her on Twitter, just bouncing back and forth on the most random of topics (there is a “thread” of about 10 tweets regarding a cupcake somewhere) and having a blast doing it. I remember staring in awe at some of her writing – she seemed to be able to effortlessly put word to page! Everything she contributed to WomenWithDroids.com was always a great read, professional yet personal, and extremely helpful. I loved checking her blogs when sometimes life got a little frantic and I couldn’t keep up with Twitter. She was great about putting a bit of her self and her voice into anything she put together.

Ellie was always dropping a kind note or giving a quick boost on Twitter to anyone who crossed her path, and we adored her for it. The world is a little darker for the passing of her light, but that light is carried on in the hearts of those she touched. Ellie, I will miss you a lot hon.

From CraftLass:

I was only just getting to know Ellie, I’d loved her posts from the moment she started writing for us and I saw her blog, but it took me awhile to follow her on Twitter. As soon as I did we started chatting about all sorts of things. It’s always a wonder to meet someone who can be passionate *and* eloquent about almost any topic you throw at her, and Ellie was that sort. The conversation that really stands out was about her wanting to start inline skating, one of my favorite things to do. I was hoping/planning to take a trip up to Harlem to take her skating and actually get to have some relaxed fun together, just a couple of geek girls in the city with our Androids.

If someone had told me I would be crying over someone I had never actually met in person I would have been shocked, just as shocked as I was to hear we lost Ellie. That’s how special she was, it only took one conversation to see it clearly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ellie, you will always be a part of the WomenWithDroids team… we will miss you…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ellie’s family has set up a memorial fund and guest book at the American Heart Association website if you would like to leave a note or make a contribution.

Read Ellie’s WomenWithDroids posts here

You’ll see a lot of Android blogs touting the wonders of rooting your phone, and as a programmer and open-source proponent, I know that reducing bloatware can make a big impact on the speed of your device and your ability to customize it. However, I’m not going to root my Droid. Let me explain why.

First, what is rooting? Rooting (as far as I understand it without having done it) is basically reducing the Android operating system to its “base”, removing all of the software and restrictions imposed by the manufacturer and/or service provider, and giving you full access to every aspect of your phone – below the surface of the soil, so to speak. You can get around a lot of the standard Android security measures by rooting. It also allows you to install a “custom ROM” and to install some applications that won’t work on “unrooted” devices.

There are a lot of good reasons to root your phone. It’s also easy now with several “one-click” root methods available, and some major blogs like Lifehacker recommend it. However, there are a lot of reasons not to root your phone as well – you open yourself up to malicious apps (since you disable some security measures) and you can accidentally “brick” (or ruin) your phone as well. Android and Me did a good job of outlining a lot of the dangers of rooting. (Also, it can void your warranty.)

However, despite the dangers, I’m an experimenter, and I would normally be the type to dive in and root my phone. So why haven’t I?

We have gotten great feedback from you all through this blog and through twitter, thanking us for showing you how to use your phones, and not going off-course and posting leaked rumors about new phones, showing you how to be a “hacker”, or just re-hashing the news broken by other blogs that have actual inside contacts at device manufacturers and service providers. I let them do the news-breaking (and phone-breaking) and you can find headlines and links to top Android news stories from other blogs on our Twitter page. Here in the WomenWithDroids blog, we want to keep the focus on app reviews and how-to articles that help you make the most of the phone you already own. (There are plenty of other blogs where you can drool over the next hot device coming out!)

Even though there is a high concentration of tech-types online, and we could show you some “really cool stuff” if we did root our phones, that’s not our goal here. Interestingly, by reading lots of other Android blogs as a non-rooted phone user, I totally understand why constantly seeing posts about apps that require rooting can be really frustrating for those that haven’t rooted (or make you feel like you have to root your phone for it to be awesome, which you don’t).

So, that’s the long story on why I won’t root my phone, and you can be assured that the WomenWithDroids blog will keep the focus on the “typical” Android phone user (and “typical” doesn’t mean “boring” here!).

So, I’m avoiding the urge to root for you, the “home team” – and to be honest, I don’t feel like I’m missing out. My original Droid does just about everything I want it to do, and more! I actually enjoy “keeping in simple” and not worrying about all of the potential dangers I would be exposing my phone to by rooting.

We’ve really appreciated your positive feedback about what we’re doing here; whether you comment on the blog, tweet or retweet us on twitter, or tell your friends to check us out, the buzz really keeps us going, and growing! We’ve got some plans in the works to bring even more fun & unique content to WomenWithDroids in the future, so stay tuned!

“Exposed gnarly roots” photo by Martin LaBar on Flickr