Shortly after New Year matrushkaka mailed me a new Nexus S. I've been using it for a few weeks, and as with the Nexus One here's my thoughts
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I hear it's also missing the LED which tells you whether you have email/texts/etc waiting. I don't think I could live without that (and will thus be going for an HTC next time instead of a Samsung).
Yes, they've also eliminated that. Seems that iPhonification - the overenthusiastic elimination of useful modal controls - is not exclusive to Apple. (Supposedly they're eliminating the home button in the next version.)
The entire phone has rebooted all the way back to the "X" startup graphic.
It was pretty bad at one time, but then I uninstalled two apps that were well behaved under 2.2 which I suspected were watchdogging the phone process and it got a lot better, but I had one reboot yesterday after screening a call while using the nav.
The version is 2.3.1, build GRH78, no 'b' anywhere in that string. Then again this is a platform where over-the-air updates are common, from the company that called Gmail "beta" for years and years. The mainstream phone manufacturers have just started using 2.2, so it's possible that they consider 2.3 a beta of something that most people aren't expected to use yet.
I'd think full phone crashes would be unexceptable. I'm surprised they released it without properly sandboxing the processes. Though looking at Chrome I can see some of the same issues: The flash plugin dies pretty often which doesn't shut down the entire browser but certianly dies in a ugly manner across all tabs. And I have had to shut down the whole browser as it was randomly locked up. And this from a browser that was developed and promoted to be keep tabs in separate processes. If Chrome is any example Google's programmers aren't perfect at sandboxing and they suck at graceful error handling.
Is there a reason you go for the benchmark models of android hardware? I ask because I have an HTC Vision that I've been pretty happy with that I'll let you play with this summer if you want.
I don't know about the HTC Vision but the T-Mobile G2 had an evil boot loader that would lock your phone back if it discovered that you'd rooted it and installed anything. HTC is also slow about releasing updates, and the "Sense UI" seems like unnecessary kruft. I like owning hardware that I can control and that I don't have to fight. I like owning the reference hardware; it's generally good, and when it's not good I have only one group to point the finger at.
I have the opportunity to pick up a NS for a couple hundred less than retail. Debating whether to go for it. I loved the N1 I got through my last job and didn't mind the occasional weirdness of running a development version of what is now the 2.3.
But - and this is a big but - the keyboard drove me nuts. I hear the keyboard is a little better in the NS. Is that true in your experience?
Also, how does the phone fare when you drop it onto, say, a sidewalk? The N1 was prone to flying out of my hands often.
I think you'd go nuts with anything other than a physical keyboard. matrushkaka would, certainly.
I wouldn't want to drop this phone. It certainly seems less droppable than a Sidekick. I've dropped the N1 a few times, but I had a silicone case for it that absorbed the shocks pretty well.
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Really? Does the entire phone reboot? Is 2.3 still considered beta or something?
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It was pretty bad at one time, but then I uninstalled two apps that were well behaved under 2.2 which I suspected were watchdogging the phone process and it got a lot better, but I had one reboot yesterday after screening a call while using the nav.
The version is 2.3.1, build GRH78, no 'b' anywhere in that string. Then again this is a platform where over-the-air updates are common, from the company that called Gmail "beta" for years and years. The mainstream phone manufacturers have just started using 2.2, so it's possible that they consider 2.3 a beta of something that most people aren't expected to use yet.
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I have the opportunity to pick up a NS for a couple hundred less than retail. Debating whether to go for it. I loved the N1 I got through my last job and didn't mind the occasional weirdness of running a development version of what is now the 2.3.
But - and this is a big but - the keyboard drove me nuts. I hear the keyboard is a little better in the NS. Is that true in your experience?
Also, how does the phone fare when you drop it onto, say, a sidewalk? The N1 was prone to flying out of my hands often.
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I wouldn't want to drop this phone. It certainly seems less droppable than a Sidekick. I've dropped the N1 a few times, but I had a silicone case for it that absorbed the shocks pretty well.
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The keyboard is aces and I have a protective case around it to absorb shock if I drop it.
The only issue is it's still on 2.1, but Samsung swears we're getting upgraded soon. Hopefully they're going to leapfrog 2.2 and go straight to 2.3.
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