One week later…

Do I like the Nexus One? Yes, coming from somebody who has not had the smartphone experience so to speak.

But I think if I had an iPhone I would probably stick with it, if I was app/OS neutral. Ok I hate iTunes on windows and I don’t own a mac, so that is where I’m from. Besides that there was nothing influencing my decision heavily either way. I paid a premium for the N1 to use on AT&T, so my views might be colored slightly via cognitive dissonance. W/e.

There’s also that there’s this thing called flash 10.1 that Android doesn’t have yet. Which didn’t matter much–the only things I would have done was being able to view Nicovideo and CR (both have iPhone apps). So i can actually go through my twitter without skipping everything Link tweets, lol. Viewing streaming video on your iPhone or your Nexus One is a sure way to kill your battery life anyways.

The other sure way to kill your battery life is taking pictures.

Oh hay at least you can swap batteries with the Nexus One. It comes with a 1400 mAH battery and you can pick up another one for like, $25. There is also like a 2700mAH battery for like $60. I think it’s something worth looking into, because power use is something you have to be mindful of. If you plan to do some serious work on your phone, pack another battery.

For the daily grind, one battery holds just fine. I’m on the computer most of the time anyways and I hit 20% only at the end of the day.

The N1 needs more accessories. Like a proper headphone adapter (tho those iPhone ones will do in a hurry) with play/pause/ff/rew controls. And a separate battery charger if you have an extra battery. Cases and such are all available now.

The iPhone comparison are just for ease of discussion, and for AT&T wireless users, it’s a damn certifiable alternative. That said, for some reason they still have not changed my data billing to the correct plan…knocking on wood here. And if I were to compare it with the iPhone (which I used a good deal, but not enough to see all its flaws), it would be that the Android 2.1 experience is still not as polished. It does a lot of stuff better, but some of the stuff not so much, and it can get annoying. The stuff N1 does better tend to be important things so that is good. Small details like better keyboard etc can be fixed with apps. But things like lack of multitasking means I would never be able to have the twitter experience I have on the N1 on an iPhone unless I jailbreak it. Or being able to idle on IRC while doing that, lol.

Given the ability and flexibility of the N1, I’m hard pressed to think ill of it. At least most of the shortcomings can be overcome with skill and modification or third party parts. It is probably true for the iPhone as well, but the Nexus One is designed to be open from the start, so that advantage, while subtle and not directly affecting much, makes a big difference.

It all sums up with this anecdote. More than a few reviews of the N1 complained about the lack of sync software. It’s a valid complaint if you find operating a thumb drive with file folders too annoying. (And it can be if you’re an iTunes/iPod person). But the big deal about sync (as any WP7 fanboy could tell you) is cloud. Sync to PC is mainly just for moving media from one storage to another storage. Where’s my iPhone cloud synching? It’s just as advanced as Android’s, which is via Google. I realized this, and I thought that is where things have to go. And devious Apple has roped in a whole convenience factor into its ecosystem, that people expect that sort of compatibility across a walled garden as guarded as syncing with iTunes. On the Nexus One, I can just drag and drop the big files, and let my 3G or wifi connection do everything else. What is there to sync? It’s always in sync anyways.

2. Yes, it’s the weekends soon! I will be able to take my phone to some actual dead zones! The church building I visit on Sundays is a certified AT&T dead zone, so we’ll see how it works. Oh, the train tunnel for NJ Transit trains to get into NY Penn is also not very friendly, and it got me once yesterday going into the city. So I guess no browsing after the train passes Seacaucus!

On to day 3:

I will focus on the things that matters–direct user impact from my own point of view. You can compare specs on your own, but you wouldn’t know if the size, weight and usability are any good, and these are the subject things that makes things like metacritic useful.

Your skill in touch-typing on capacitive screens has improved (34).

Your skill in touch-typing on capacitive screens has improved (35).

Your skill in touch-typing on capacitive screens has improved (36).

Everquest much? And no, obviously I can’t blog using it.

I still am all thumbs about the capacitive screen, but I’ve definitely gotten better. The problem partly is due to my really thick skin on my thumb, so when I use my thumb at a certain angle and hitting a particular part of the screen, the screen just does not register. Maybe it is the phone? I have no way to tell.

I still haven’t figured out all the UI behaviorism yet for the keyboard. (For example, what happens when I press the auto complete word at different points in the text stream.) That should come soon enough.

What have also been a little annoying are the soft/hard keys at the bottom. I would be typing away and accidentally hit search or back or home. Hitting menu doesn’t tend to do anything, and hitting home or back is usually something you can recover from. Hitting search however…

Unlike the iPhone, I have a harder time moving the text cursor with my finger. I’m not sure why this is the case, but sometimes I do have to use the trackball for this purpose. Well, it’s usually a combination of using my finger to get to like, 1 character away, then move the trackball a little. Kind of annoying, but presumably this is something I can overcome with skill.

One of the things that occupies my mind is power management. I’ve run the phone through my routines two days now. The first day I kept the phone on variable power, and at the end of the day it was getting to around 20% power left. That’s pretty okay. Day 2 I kept the screen at lowest brightness, and manually turn it to max when I watch videos (problem solved with skill, again), and turn it down after I’m done. I ended the day with just shy of 50% power. That’s good enough for me!

Looking at older posts on the Google support forums, lol, that was certainly a problem for G1 users. I think as long as you are aware of the power management aspect (especially there are more than a few apps that have background services going for them, and not leaving stray apps loaded–properly exit them) the N1′s battery life is just fine.

There needs more “exit” features on apps. The only one I’ve truly seen with it is this file manager app that I have just to unrar/unzip downloads. Maybe there’s an app for this.

And my prediction is pretty much right–every app I want basically exist, and then some. Can’t speak for quality (and some are paid only), but that’s something I can deal with. I guess from a usability perspective, that speak volumes for the Android platform, and it is still rapidly growing. Granted I am not a big power user, but I do my share of tinkering…

So yes, there are a lot of apps. The app store is definitely a bright spot on the Android experience if you’re already hooked up with Google shopping. As you would if you bought a N1 from them…

I don’t remember how much I talked about accessories previously, but this is one weak spot for the N1. It’s only until early March/late February did the main stay of N1 accessories came out. We’re talking about skins, cases, shells, car chargers, 3rd party batteries, 3rd party docks and the first party dock, and what have you, are now available. They still haven’t came up with a headphone adapter that incorporates the play/pause/answer/hangup/next/back control that your comes-with OEM headbuds have, and I need that. Touch phones are PITA to use on the go without tactile buttons…

Oh, right, the screen. Gorgeous as always, but fares much worse under direct daylight…mainly because of finger grease and glare. Nothing a microfiber cloth can’t fix. Pixels? That controversy is kind of silly, but it’s also kind of a big deal. Depends on how deep you read into it. A big problem with that is most people, even pouring over Ars’ thorough write-up, won’t understand exactly how that AMOLED subpixel system works, nor what the ultimate effects are. Honestly the system maps to a 800×480 hardware, so it’s 800×480 to me. Even if the display does not render pixel-perfect 800×480 pixels, it doesn’t matter so much.

At this rate, there’ll be a part 3.

I think Apple has done a great job building its own software echosystem, so if living inside of that bubble is your most comfortable place–and it is a very nice place–then few things will ever beat out the iPhone experience even just in theory. However if you are echosystem-agnostic like I am, or just have the slightest anti-Apple or anti-iPhone inclination as I am (well, I just hate iTunes for Windows namely), then I think the Nexus One is the better choice.

At least after a day of use.

Let me just address all the key points of my Nexus One experience as they are:

3G: I am using AT&T and I live in NJ. I work in Midtown. I commute via NJ Transit. Sufficed to say reception is actually great. I get anywhere from 2 to 4 (max) bars of 3G coverage between home and work. At work I get also anywhere between 1 to 4 bars 3G, and 4 bars at my desk (most important!). I do notice the 3G bar likes to wildly vary at times, which is a bit of a reoccurring theme for this phone. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories (as far as anecdotes from real life people) about ATT 3G, and seen how it is on the iPhone over the past year from others who has it. I’ve not seen any of that so far, on this phone.

3G part 2 – Web: I’m generally impressed. Partly because of the good reception, but things load quite fast, as far as websites and downloads go. I pulled a couple podcasts at work today and they went down in seconds. The default browser is zippy, I even pulled up JP sites pretty fast. I use Google Reader and that is generally fast enough, but I ran into a couple hiccups today.

Web part 2: I actually tried the New Opera browser as well, but it was somehow slower than the default browser when I pulled it up just to try. It’s not any serious indictment though, since I didn’t measure it scientifically.

Apps: All the apps I need are there, at least off the top of my head. And free. Anything else I can pull down from the web. Like there’s this paid app for NJ Transit bus/train schedule, but lol wut. NY MTA has a free app that pulls down the subway and bus maps for you. I don’t game much, so that’s not a real concern for me (…yet). I think if there was an Android version of Bisei Tokei, then I’ll be all set. That said, I am sure once I spend more time I’ll find apps I sort of need/want, that are missing. But at the same time I haven’t had a good look at what’s out there yet, so maybe what I will think up later will be found by spent more time finding whatever I will think up, lol. For example, like a good remote desktop client…

Overall User Interface: This is what bugs me the most about reviews from people coming out of iPhone-land, because most of them probably have not had the intimate time with a device similar to an iPhone, so there’s a bit of a first-impressed-duckling effect. But one thing that I can agree with them is that the UI can be more polished. I’m all thumbs when it comes to capacitive devices on both iPhone and everything else. The N1 is the same. Generally I was able to figure out everything with the minimal amount of reading. I didn’t even watch all the youtube videos they had online. But it was slightly more annoying to use than I like. It’s as if it’s not enough to just be intuitive. Some icons should be bigger, the way things are layered should make more sense as far as switching between running apps go. The “media/’my stuff’” section isn’t too hard once you get the hang of it (and the gallery could use more filenames). The problem is, though, there is still too much learning-by-trial-and-error at the end. For someone like me, it’s no big deal–in fact I expect something similar if I were to take up an iPhone, so as a matter of comparing it to the iPhone, I can’t say conclusively. As far as a value thing, it’s nothing to really worry about as it is something you’ll get used to if it is your first smartphone with a touch screen (like it is for me).

Screen: 480×800 AMOLED. ‘nuf said. iPhone doesn’t even come close I think. I watched some anime off it today. Color accuracy is slightly better on the iPhone display but man, the Nexus One kicks ass in every other visual aspect. I can’t really speak enough good about this display.

Call quality: Good enough. Speakers are on the weak side but they do just fine. I think the noise reduction thing kind of works.

Minor irritations: There are a lot of little things that sort of irritates me about the phone so far, so I’ll list them–like there are too many menus to navigate. Like how auto-dimming isn’t turned off when you’re watching a video (so brightness changes on the fly if you’re watching something next to the window on a vehicle). Like how the keys could be space a tad better. Like how bluetooth support is…really bare bones. Like how the adapter it comes with is the only way to control music forward/backwards. Like how the trackball is mostly useless yet takes up so much space. Like how the search key is also mostly useless except for being there for me to hit on accidentally (can I config those?). Like how the Gallery app needs filenames in the top level file view so I can tell episode 45 from 46 as the thumbnails tell me not very much. The desktop shortcut icons are just too small I think.

Camera: It’s good. Autofocus, 5mp, flash, how can you lose. I’m no photog. But I think it beats the iPhone hands down, and you can already do a lot with that crappy one.

Data portability: This is one of those minor irritations, but there really needs be a more convenient way to stash data from PC to phone. And I’m not talking about a sync thing. Right now you can treat it like a USB drive, but that’s if you got that cable handy. You could always rip out the memory card and do it that way, but that’s a lot of work (and you need a microSD reader). I had problems to get bluetooth to work. I can stash files on the cloud, but it’s annoying to put videos up there. Maybe one of the apps will solve this problem (by using cloud-style storage) but it looks like the usb device method has to be it. Oh, I guess that also goes to the problem how once you “disconnect” it from the PC, you have to physically unplug the cable and plug it back in to get the PC to re-detect it. Not the phone’s fault but it’s yet another irritation.

Import/export: The setup process for this phone is a cinch. I can’t express this enough. I spent about 30 minutes setting up my dad’s dumb phone. Which is about 20 minutes more than it took me to set up my Nexus One. From my old phone, I copied over the stuff on my old phone’s (SE W580i) memory card (which was actually a Micro M2), which included a vcard backup of my old phone’s contacts. I then imported that data to the N1 after I was done doing the initial setup/google account synch. Flawless victory it was. Well. One thing–it took me a while to figure out the wallpaper has to be 960×800 in size. Partly because I didn’t realize the wallpaper scrolls with the different desktops until way later.

ATT Wireless Part 2: Googling on the Nexus One support forums, you will see that AT&T is trying to charge $30/mo for this phone’s unlimited data plan. Sensible I suppose, but a lot of the reps you talk to will just add the $10 or $15 plan for you. I’m fine with whichever (and obviously cheaper is better), but I hope they straighten this out.

That’s a lot for day one. And I didn’t even get to the exciting stuff besides that AMOLED screen. That thing is awesome I tell ya.

In other news, I’ve been F5-monkeying Fedex’s site to track the progress of my next-day delivery. It began FRIDAY and it’s still ongoing. What a fraud. I know you work Saturdays Fedex! Plus I had to call since I’m sure the guy responsible for next-day deliveries doesn’t know where I live.

Inside the package contains a 3G 850/1900/2100 MHz HTC Nexus One, (sister phone to the HTC Desire). Those are AT&T Wireless bands. It’s also a whopping $560, unlocked without contract.

And to think just a year ago, they were parting with Developer versions of the HTC G1 for $400. No, wait, that doesn’t make me feel better.

There is a lot to getting a phone to work properly on a robust wireless network. Doing the whole unlocked phone boogie has taught me a couple things:

1. It isn’t obvious as to how to sign up for a plan for such a phone if you didn’t already have one previously, in as such you could simply swap over your SIM card. ATT last week had to come up on the fly a policy for N1 users. As in, “UR PAYIN 30 BUXX” and they will bump up your 10- or 15-dollar data plan once they find you out.

2. Google is kind of lawl with their message board. I think it’s kind of cool though, just time consuming to farm out all the information I want.

3. Man, I’m still excited about exciting personal electronics.

4. I didn’t know ATTW 3G covers most of NJ. I guess I can test to see if that 3G bug that plagued TMO N1s affect me.

5. Time to read up on apps.

This post so will have a part two.

It’s got a VGA screen, A2DP, 3G and quad band, Wifi, 3 megapixel camera with autofocus… it’s really the best touch screen phone on the market right now. it even comes with 4gb internal flash memory with microSD slot. Gah.

Very helpful I thought, even if it panned the Wall Street analysts for their American-centric perspective, perhaps unsubstantively so.

The matter was regarding the international grey market on the supply of iPhones in Apple stores. There are a few interesting tidbits.

Apple stores are short on iPhones because of one or more of the below factors:

1. There’s a massive drain of iPhones to developing mobile phone markets (10000-15000 units a week) worldwide.

2. Apple’s internal accounting accounts for AT&T-possessed iPhones as sold ones, where as the ones inside Apple stores, unsold, are unsold.

3. Apple is probably going to release a new phone in mid-year, which explains the ramp down in production

I felt like sharing because it’s so rare to see a helpful blog comment on a widely-read website. But there you have it.

1. new version 2.5 – not bad, if you didn’t notice I’m running that on this blog right now. After all this is going to be partly experimental in that regard so I can consider if I should migrate to my other, more “serious business” blogs. Omonomono is still running 2.2.3… I’m sort of glad not switching to 2.3 because 2.5 really makes 2.3 outdated. In fact besides the google analytic plugin and the comment editor plugin, 2.5 comes with all you really need–namely a useful media management function is added since 2.3.

2. I got hacked on Friday. It has nothing to do with my site as much as my ISP was just haxxorzed on a root level. This is the second time it has happened in the past 4 years, which is pretty lousy. It coincided with the NYIAS and upgrading to 2.5. Made it kind of easy I guess.

3. Guh. So in the midst of all that the wordpress tinymce plugin decided to bork on me because somehow gzip is configured oddly. So that took me 20 minute to track down and change. You can read about it here if you ever run into the problem in versions 2.0-2.3 that the tinymce plugin isn’t showing your editor buttons. That is, after you figured out it wasn’t your browser being weird.

As an aside, my phone died on Friday, too, so I had to run out Sunday and got it replaced. It was under 30 days since I got the phone so the replacement was easy and painless–well, finding a store that would do it was the hard part. Used my W600 meanwhile. That was a great phone with good quality D:

If you didn’t know, my old phone was a SE W600i, which is the prototype, entry-level (except it’s lol not entry level price at the time) walkman phone. The fatal flaw to that phone wasn’t that no one likes swivel phones, but it had no memory expansion. Plus it was expensive for what it was.
Not sure it’s a good or a bad thing, but even if the SE phones are mostly locked in with the Sony Memory Stick(tm) format (which is more expensive than comparable SD micro stuff every other phone uses, and many cameras and whatever), the proprietary (lol not really) control of the Memory Stick enabled my W580i to support to up to 16gb of space. Compared to that, off-spec SD micro cards you can get from eBay or Verizon dealers only supports up to 4. And weirdly enough there are only a handful (and none that you can get with a carrier in the US) of phones can support the SDHC format (which goes up to 32gb on a SDHC micro). If you want to stay to standard spec (as off-spec SD micro cards can have compatibility problems) you’re limited to 2gb.

And 16gb is enough for most folks (even if it’s still a good $120 off eBay).

As a phone, both the W580 and W300 are similar, and they both get the job done. Compatibility between the two phones are high, and it was nice to be able to send my entire contact list via bluetooth to my new phone, with just a few key presses. The only real, notable difference between the two, I’d say, is that AT&T locked the W580i to a max of 300kb (or so) file size for any music you want to use as a ring tone. Not so on the W300.

As a video media player, you can actually play back mpeg-4 encodes with this phone, provided using the gp3 format (so use Super or something to convert your xvid or h264 video from AVI/MKV). There may be tweaks or hacks or a 3rd party solution to it, but the playback software for video is sorely lacking, and you cannot seek or even pause the video; and when you play back in landscape mode, you cannot remove the seek bar or the menu option. I guess it wasn’t meant to be (even if it’s capable hardware-wise).

In terms of quality, this phone definitely feels cheaper than my W600i. It’s lighter, which is good, but the keys are flimsier, and the outer shell is thinner. The screen covering is not as hard, either. SE phones, IMO, has better UI years ahead of what Motorola, Samsung or Nokia had to offer their customers. At least back in 2005. To that end the UI in the W600i was more or less the same as the one in W580i, with a few differences, mostly in the music playback software. The thing I miss the most from my old phone not found in the W580i was the lack of the spring-loaded “hold” trigger. It’s a little spring-loaded sliding switch on the side of the W300i which on being flicked, puts the phone on key lock. Like the W580 if you swivel the W300 it turns off key lock, but like slide phones, most of the time I don’t swivel or slide out the keys to use it, making locking/unlocking a little irritating. That switch was the most awesome hold/key lock thing I’ve seen on any pocket-sized electronics, hands down. I really miss it to see it go.

Still, the W580i made things up with features. First and foremost, it perfected the wireless walkman concept and fully converged it with the cell phone: Wireless stereo bluetooth, lots of space for music playback, sufficient UI support, and a large enough screen. The cellphone integration with the bluetooth stereo phones is great; when I get a call it will play the ring, but when I use the phone it won’t get confused with my microphone-less headphones and try to mix that up.

The down side about that is simply most people don’t have bluetooth enabled stereo headphones, and they’re really missing out on the convergence experience. Currently, stereo bluetooth headphones are expensive (and few are any good) and for casual users, not worth the step-up cost. A semi-passible set of headphones would run you $50 no problems, and that’s $50 more than what most people pay for their craptastic white iPod headphones.

Y’see, I’m not really an audiophile, but reason and logic dictates that where rubber meets the road, it’s where you want to make sure you’re “converting” the most of what you’ve got. What is lultastic is people who want high quality rips of music, but only to play back on an iPod with $10 headsets. That’s just a waste. So I use not-so-high quality (but just high enough) rips on A2DP with these nuts.

And these are some pretty darn good nuts. The iPod kit retails for $300, but since I don’t really have an iPod to myself I left the adapter (which is pretty small, by the way) alone and went for the headphone alone. It came in a very nice box that fits what you think $300 electronics should come in. There are some exchangable headphone tips and a carrying pouch, plus manuals (on a CD) and the charger cable.

Setting things up and pairing was easy (hold down the play/power button till it blinks). Charging only takes a couple hours. Controlling the playback from the headset is simple enough and it works. When you hold it down to turn it off it will also stop playback. The >>| and |<< keys just skips tracks, and does not fast forward or rewind a particular track; you have to use W580i’s control for that. The headphones also “go to sleep” after some time of inactivity and turns itself off.

The only drawback to the headphones–besides the way it looks–is that each time it’s playing something there’s a detectable amount of background “buzz.” It’s not loud enough to affect you, but it’s notable between when it’s not buzzing (such as when it’s inactive, but on) and when it is (such as there’s a silent part of the track). It’s most notable when you’re switching tracks, and the two tracks ends and starts with a lot of silence. Maybe it’s just how quiet it can be with these passive noise isolation in-ears.

Just for your information, my old setup was a pair of Shure E2C‘s, and those are pretty good for low-end (lol if $109 retail is low end) in-ears.

Like all in-ear drivers, bass response is weak on the Ety8s compared to even free iPod headphones (and, FWIW, the headphones that came with the W580i’s; but Sony tend to give you pretty good freebie headphones for their electronics). The treble response is there and it’s good, but clarity is not as great as my old Shure; however the low-mids are much more present and overall gives a richer sound. It also does isolation better, IMO.

As for the fit, I have a rather large head and the headphone cable went around my head just fine; the only thing that had to be adjusted was that I had to use a bigger earplug attachment for a more secure fit, as the cable will get caught on my skin or on my collar when I turn my head too much, and pulls one of the earbuds out. With a tighter fit that wasn’t a problem.

But not having to mess with wires was easily worth the additional cost I spent (which was well below MSRP, I assure you) on these. If you can get the kit without the iPod attachment and at a discount, go for it.

I’m happy about these purchases. The phone was cheap enough at this time of the year (as it’s near the end of the life cycle of these phones, I fear), and if you can get the headphones at a bargain price like I did, there’s no regret.

[edit: a few days later?] so my w580i has broken down. The problem started when the phone went into standby after keylocking it by the slider. It would be unresponsive and there was no way to power it off besides removing the battery. After forcing it to turn off, when pressing the on button it would keep on vibrating with nothing happening. We declared the phone dead and got it replaced. This phone was brand new, and less than 4 weeks old. Yeah, the quality of this phone is not the greatest.

Of course that might just because AMEX is pretty anal about online transactions (especially involving shady cellular equipment vendors I suspect) and there was a minor mixed up from our authorized dealer with names. But it should not take me over 2 hours on the phone (total, there were 3 calls made) and about 9 days of delay to get this done. At least they ship next day with DHL 2 day delivery (for free), so it’s speedy.

As an aside, the majority of income of US cellular carriers today is through “bonuses.” Last week Sprint announced their simply everything plan with some flair (contrasted with Verizon and AT&T’s announcements–both went pretty much quietly and ignored like they should as advertisement) because they’re cutting into the most lucrative part of their income–text messaging, data, and bonus features like “early” nights and weekends, and other nonsense cellular carriers charge.

I guess that explains why my employer is doing so well right now. Anyways, that’s my bit of consumer flag waving and retaliation. Free market ftw.