My new Nexus One
My G1 has been a good phone but lately it's been showing its age. I'd been thinking about getting something else, and this was the final straw:
In this photo my phone is ringing. The com.android.phone application is trying to do something - probably look up the incoming number in my address book to tell me who's calling. Unfortunately the G1 doesn't have enough RAM so it has to page out the app I'm running to run the Phone app, which takes long enough that the watchdog triggers to suggest killing the phone app that I need to answer, whose modal dialog box blocks the phone app from letting me answer the phone, which means I can't answer my call.
I've been putting up with this for a little while, and I could keep putting up with it in the future while a GSM phone with a high-res screen and a physical keyboard arrives, but on Monday I said "aw screw it" and I bought a Nexus One.
A few other events converged to push me in this direction:
- I bought the G1 not because it was the objectively best phone out there, but because I wanted to support open software and hardware. I bought the Nexus One for the same reason, and because it also represents open consumer choice and less evil contracts. Google seems to be trying to break the provider lock-in business model, a cause I strongly support.
- My new no-subsidy contract means I'm no longer waiting for a specific upgrade window. My contract is so cheap that I'll never get a subsidy, which means I don't need to wait for a subsidy before upgrading.
- Having an unlocked phone without a contract means I'm not married to this phone. I can sell it on eBay and buy a new model if there's something better out there.
- My main complaint about the G1 is 192 MB RAM, 64MB less than current iPhones. The Nexus One has 512 MB RAM, twice as much as current iPhones, which I'm hoping will be good enough for the future.
- I got to try a Nexus One out at dinner a few weeks ago and it seemed a lot better than I was expecting it to be. The 800X480 screen is particularly nice.
- They've added multitouch.
- Linus doesn't hate his Nexus One.
- Having a second phone means I can start hacking on the first one without bricking the only phone I have. First I'm going to try installing Cyanogen on the G1 to see if that makes it more usable. If that works I'll try tethering the N1.
My Nexus One showed up on Saturday and it's pretty nice. Two years ago Android was about 50% as polished as that version of the iPhone OS. Today, Android 2.1 is pretty darn close - a little worse in some ways, a little better in others.
The Hardware:
+ Lighter than an iPhone, feels very well built.
+ 480x800 OLED screen looks very nice - the high resolution is great, but I think LCD has the advantage in direct sunlight.
+ 512MB RAM means none of the swapping or stuttering that I had with my G1.
+ Even under "OMG Shiny New Thing" usage the battery seems to hold up OK.
+ Unlocked; you can use it with any GSM provider in any country.
+ High quality camera actually takes some very nice pictures.
+ Any company can produce Nexus One accessories without paying a tithe to Google, so stuff's pretty cheap.
- The power button on the top is so thin and flush with the case that it's sometimes difficult to press.
- No dedicated "answer" and "hang up" buttons, which are totally handy if the ringer surprises you.
- Having the headphone jack at the top and the power at the bottom means it's difficult to listen in the car while charging. Put all the plugs on one side only, please.
- Doesn't receive 802.11 very well. K's iPod Touch picks up networks that mine can't lock onto.
- I really, really miss the physical keyboard. I don't like losing half the screen when I go into input mode, I miss the fast app switching hotkeys, and it's next to impossible to touch type if you can't feel the keys.
- OLED screens can have burn-in issues and otherwise degrade with age. Wondering how this is going to look in a couple of years.
The OS & Software:
+ Supports multiple google accounts both for mail and for .
+ The on-screen keyboard is good. I particularly like how you can pick words out of the predictive line-up.
+ Voice recognition means you can dictate text into anything that accepts text entry. Works surprisingly well. Recognizes and correctly spells "Orville Redenbacher".
+ Pinch-zoom is interesting in combination with the old style zoom. The "auto-fit pages" feature that reformats wide columns of text only works with conventional zoom, which means you can use that style zoom to set the column width and pinch-zoom to move around. It sounds confusing when I describe it here but it's nice in practice. (This might be an unintentional feature.)
+ The Android App Store is optional, not mandatory.
- You need network access to use speech recognition.
- No Japanese language input (that I know of).
- The text input is missing the iPhone's "magnifying glass" feature that lets you position the cursor. You can also use the trackball, but it would be nice to have something like that feature.
- It seems to be missing the G1's "IM" client that did AIM, YIM, and MSN messaging. AOL offers a free AIM client but it's not the same. This will probably be a dealbreaker for deafies, who use AOL for relay phone calls and need reliability.
Last week Apple banned apps that mention Android and cancelled App Store customer accounts of jailbreak developers (maybe not). The Nexus One also uses common industry-standard data and charging cables and doesn't demand a fee from accessory manufacturers which means I can buy a skin for $0.89 and find a car/home charger or data cable in any electronics store in the world that'll be just as reliable as, if not identical to, the one it shipped with for $7. Glad I'm not living in their walled garden.
In this photo my phone is ringing. The com.android.phone application is trying to do something - probably look up the incoming number in my address book to tell me who's calling. Unfortunately the G1 doesn't have enough RAM so it has to page out the app I'm running to run the Phone app, which takes long enough that the watchdog triggers to suggest killing the phone app that I need to answer, whose modal dialog box blocks the phone app from letting me answer the phone, which means I can't answer my call.
I've been putting up with this for a little while, and I could keep putting up with it in the future while a GSM phone with a high-res screen and a physical keyboard arrives, but on Monday I said "aw screw it" and I bought a Nexus One.
A few other events converged to push me in this direction:
- I bought the G1 not because it was the objectively best phone out there, but because I wanted to support open software and hardware. I bought the Nexus One for the same reason, and because it also represents open consumer choice and less evil contracts. Google seems to be trying to break the provider lock-in business model, a cause I strongly support.
- My new no-subsidy contract means I'm no longer waiting for a specific upgrade window. My contract is so cheap that I'll never get a subsidy, which means I don't need to wait for a subsidy before upgrading.
- Having an unlocked phone without a contract means I'm not married to this phone. I can sell it on eBay and buy a new model if there's something better out there.
- My main complaint about the G1 is 192 MB RAM, 64MB less than current iPhones. The Nexus One has 512 MB RAM, twice as much as current iPhones, which I'm hoping will be good enough for the future.
- I got to try a Nexus One out at dinner a few weeks ago and it seemed a lot better than I was expecting it to be. The 800X480 screen is particularly nice.
- They've added multitouch.
- Linus doesn't hate his Nexus One.
- Having a second phone means I can start hacking on the first one without bricking the only phone I have. First I'm going to try installing Cyanogen on the G1 to see if that makes it more usable. If that works I'll try tethering the N1.
My Nexus One showed up on Saturday and it's pretty nice. Two years ago Android was about 50% as polished as that version of the iPhone OS. Today, Android 2.1 is pretty darn close - a little worse in some ways, a little better in others.
The Hardware:
+ Lighter than an iPhone, feels very well built.
+ 480x800 OLED screen looks very nice - the high resolution is great, but I think LCD has the advantage in direct sunlight.
+ 512MB RAM means none of the swapping or stuttering that I had with my G1.
+ Even under "OMG Shiny New Thing" usage the battery seems to hold up OK.
+ Unlocked; you can use it with any GSM provider in any country.
+ High quality camera actually takes some very nice pictures.
+ Any company can produce Nexus One accessories without paying a tithe to Google, so stuff's pretty cheap.
- The power button on the top is so thin and flush with the case that it's sometimes difficult to press.
- No dedicated "answer" and "hang up" buttons, which are totally handy if the ringer surprises you.
- Having the headphone jack at the top and the power at the bottom means it's difficult to listen in the car while charging. Put all the plugs on one side only, please.
- Doesn't receive 802.11 very well. K's iPod Touch picks up networks that mine can't lock onto.
- I really, really miss the physical keyboard. I don't like losing half the screen when I go into input mode, I miss the fast app switching hotkeys, and it's next to impossible to touch type if you can't feel the keys.
- OLED screens can have burn-in issues and otherwise degrade with age. Wondering how this is going to look in a couple of years.
The OS & Software:
+ Supports multiple google accounts both for mail and for .
+ The on-screen keyboard is good. I particularly like how you can pick words out of the predictive line-up.
+ Voice recognition means you can dictate text into anything that accepts text entry. Works surprisingly well. Recognizes and correctly spells "Orville Redenbacher".
+ Pinch-zoom is interesting in combination with the old style zoom. The "auto-fit pages" feature that reformats wide columns of text only works with conventional zoom, which means you can use that style zoom to set the column width and pinch-zoom to move around. It sounds confusing when I describe it here but it's nice in practice. (This might be an unintentional feature.)
+ The Android App Store is optional, not mandatory.
- You need network access to use speech recognition.
- No Japanese language input (that I know of).
- The text input is missing the iPhone's "magnifying glass" feature that lets you position the cursor. You can also use the trackball, but it would be nice to have something like that feature.
- It seems to be missing the G1's "IM" client that did AIM, YIM, and MSN messaging. AOL offers a free AIM client but it's not the same. This will probably be a dealbreaker for deafies, who use AOL for relay phone calls and need reliability.
Last week Apple banned apps that mention Android and cancelled App Store customer accounts of jailbreak developers (maybe not). The Nexus One also uses common industry-standard data and charging cables and doesn't demand a fee from accessory manufacturers which means I can buy a skin for $0.89 and find a car/home charger or data cable in any electronics store in the world that'll be just as reliable as, if not identical to, the one it shipped with for $7. Glad I'm not living in their walled garden.