It's been awhile since I last wrote about an Android phone. My last post was about my move from a 3G iPhone to the Sprint HTC Hero with Google. The experience was seamless and though I did miss the App Store initially, the Android OS proved to be a great experience. Now, about only 2 months since I wrote about the Hero, I am now writing about the Nexus One. To back up a little bit, I actually cancelled out my Sprint service without having to pay any early termination fees. I can explain how I did this later. I was able to get my hands on an unlocked Nexus One. I decided to get it unlocked and sign up for a TMobile 'no contract' monthly plan with 500 minutes and unlimited data/text/web for $60 a month. Its not as good as the Everything plan with Sprint, but it will have to do for now.
I'll be breaking this review up into 2 parts. The first part, I will discuss my overall impressions on the phone as well as the battery life.
Overall Thoughts:
People are comparing the Nexus One aesthetically to the iPhone and most are saying that the iPhone is a better looking phone. Now, I am in no way biased and I do like the look of the iPhone. I think Apple made a great device. On the other hand, the Nexus One is a smartphone made by HTC. Google may have had a hand in the development, but HTC at the end of the day is HTC. They are probably the only smartphone manufacturer that has some of the most nicest looking phones period! So far, I have had the Nexus One (N1 for short) for about a week now almost. The thing most people are talking about is of course the 1ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. This phone really moves. Everything you do, whatever task you call up, the phone just reacts. I have seen no lag at all. I think a processor of this power will be the standard for smartphones in 2010, hopefully. Another great feature of the N1 is the Google integration. All your Google accounts sync up without any issues. This here is what set's Android apart from the iPhone. Unless Apple has something up their sleeve for this June when they release the next iPhone, Android is the winner till then. I actually have a feeling that Apple will open up their OS somewhat, or make some drastic change to their UI to keep up with Android.
One of my favorite UI pieces are most notably the notification slider in Android. I've talked about this before and it is definitely the one thing that drew me to Android. The iPhone does not have anything like this. Another feature, that is part of the 2.1 OS, is the ability to tap a contacts picture in the contacts screen; which from there, will pop up a small window displaying key actions such as: view contact, call contact, chat in google talk, or view facebook profile. The Android OS is partly to thank for this feature. This type of integration should be standard. It allows for less back and fourth between various other screens. I'm not going to talk about how great the Google Maps Navigation is in this post. We all know Google has now set the standard for any portable maps device. Since Eclair 2.1 has Google Maps Navigation, you can say goodbye to your Tom Tom.
Battery Life:
Now that I have covered my thoughts on the N1 itself, it's time we talk battery life. After reading many posts online, I have seen some mixed reviews. Just to get to the point, if you use this phone day in and day out, you will probably go through your battery fairly quickly. I did a more real world test when it came seeing how long my battery would last. Since most of us work during the day, we probably aren't on our phones for the full 8 to 10 hours or so each work day. Before I begin, I'd like to note that my N1 is setup as such below to allow for low battery consumption. See below:
My optimal settings after using the N1 for 1 week:
From 630am to 7pm I have wifi OFF. I turn it on after 7pm when I am home.
I keep bluetooth OFF during the day.
I leave GPS ON all day.
I leave sync on for all mail folders.
I leave my twitter and facebook to update every 30 minutes.
I have brightness off or at the lowest level. The screen is still pretty bright. :)
During the day, I probably use the phone for about 30 minutes to 1 hour in all. This includes about 20-30 minutes of music during the train ride to work. With all this and the settings the way they are, I have been getting about 15 hours of battery life until the phone dies. I think for a smartphone with all the features that it has, this is truly amazing. To get through the entire day with enough juice, is amazing.
That's it for now. I'll write the second half of this post in a few weeks.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Monday, November 16, 2009
My iPhone to Android Review
My Move from iPhone to Android
First of all, let me tell you that I was a hardcore iPhone user prior to the month of October 2009. Also, this post is not biased in anyway at all. I really just felt that people should know the differences between an iPhone and Android phone, coming from an iPhone fanboy. I think this would also help people understand why I switched, if you even care. Again, let me start off by saying, I was a hardcore iPhone fanboy. I got the first generation iPhone when it came out and moved on to the iPhone 3G last year. I can say that in my time of having an iPhone, it was the best phone I had at the time. Of course the Smartphone landscape has much changed since then. Having known about the Android OS and the new phones coming out, I decided to do some research and see what else was out there. Mind you, I have been with ATT for about 7 years or so. And the last 2 years with an iPhone, the service has been okay. Not the best, but then again not the worst either. I ran into the usual issues with AT&T – spotty 3g service and dropped calls. I probably had 2-3 dropped calls daily and my 3g would switch from edge and 3g back.
After a full month of research on Android, I decided it was time to switch providers and move on. I did some research and noticed Sprint was launching the HTC Hero in October. I saw articles and videos of this phone a few months back and was immediately hooked. Long story short, October came around and I ended up switching to Sprint. I actually got out of my AT&T contract early to switch. If you don’t know, AT&T’s early termination fees are reduced each month by $5. So I only had to pay $100 to leave AT&T, which is not bad.
As I further looked into Sprint and their service, I heard a lot of negative reviews on their service. I can tell you that my experience the past month has been very positive. I’m not sure why I heard bad things about Sprint and their service. Since I was a new customer with Sprint, I signed up for their Employee Referral discount. (New subscribers, please contact me for more info on getting this particular rate plan). I am basically getting the $69.99/450 minute plan for $59.99 and it includes an extra 50 minutes, along with the following: Any Network Any Mobile unlimited and unlimited data/text/email/etc. You definitely cannot beat that. This is by far the best voice and data plan on the market right now. In my 1 month or so of usage, I have seen 3G speeds between 700kbs to 1.7Mbs. The 3G speeds are blazing fast, much faster than AT&T ever was.I am almost always on 3G data and very rarely on their Edge 1x counterpart. The voice quality on the Hero is amazingly clear. I am definitely not missing the iPhone’s voice quality. The iPhone felt as if your ears were plugged, which made it not so easy to hear the other party.
Now on to the iPhone and Android OS comparison. The iPhone is a really nifty phone. It's by far the easiest phone to use. Apple really made it easy for non tech users to pick up a phone, make calls and check emails. It doesn't get any easier than that. Now, having owned the iPhone for some time, I decided it would be cool to jailbreak. I did this and it was a night and day comparison to a non-jailbroken iPhone. The ability to change out my themes and install non-Apple approved applications, was great. You could practically change out everything from fonts, sms bubbles, themes and more. This was all fun and games, but after owning the HTC Hero for well over a month, a lot of this was already available out of the box – without hacking! For me, the best part of the HTC Hero and any Android phone is the notification tray and the Social networking features. The notification tray really sold me on the whole Android OS. I really like how everything from missed calls, texts, ims and emails show up in the notification tray. This is something that is really important to me and should have been on the iPhone from day one. Also, the ability to connect with all your contacts on Facebook and see their updates as they come in - really cool! Also, the physical buttons are really helpful too. Much better than the iPhone’s single home button. All Android phones have independent settings for each and every app you are in. To get into the settings, you just have to push the menu button and then hit settings. It's as simple as that!
I think that pretty much sums it up. I’ll be looking forward to seeing more Android phones in the next year.
Stay tuned for more Android related posts. If you want to know about anything else regarding Android, let me know and I'd be happy to write about it.
First of all, let me tell you that I was a hardcore iPhone user prior to the month of October 2009. Also, this post is not biased in anyway at all. I really just felt that people should know the differences between an iPhone and Android phone, coming from an iPhone fanboy. I think this would also help people understand why I switched, if you even care. Again, let me start off by saying, I was a hardcore iPhone fanboy. I got the first generation iPhone when it came out and moved on to the iPhone 3G last year. I can say that in my time of having an iPhone, it was the best phone I had at the time. Of course the Smartphone landscape has much changed since then. Having known about the Android OS and the new phones coming out, I decided to do some research and see what else was out there. Mind you, I have been with ATT for about 7 years or so. And the last 2 years with an iPhone, the service has been okay. Not the best, but then again not the worst either. I ran into the usual issues with AT&T – spotty 3g service and dropped calls. I probably had 2-3 dropped calls daily and my 3g would switch from edge and 3g back.
After a full month of research on Android, I decided it was time to switch providers and move on. I did some research and noticed Sprint was launching the HTC Hero in October. I saw articles and videos of this phone a few months back and was immediately hooked. Long story short, October came around and I ended up switching to Sprint. I actually got out of my AT&T contract early to switch. If you don’t know, AT&T’s early termination fees are reduced each month by $5. So I only had to pay $100 to leave AT&T, which is not bad.
As I further looked into Sprint and their service, I heard a lot of negative reviews on their service. I can tell you that my experience the past month has been very positive. I’m not sure why I heard bad things about Sprint and their service. Since I was a new customer with Sprint, I signed up for their Employee Referral discount. (New subscribers, please contact me for more info on getting this particular rate plan). I am basically getting the $69.99/450 minute plan for $59.99 and it includes an extra 50 minutes, along with the following: Any Network Any Mobile unlimited and unlimited data/text/email/etc. You definitely cannot beat that. This is by far the best voice and data plan on the market right now. In my 1 month or so of usage, I have seen 3G speeds between 700kbs to 1.7Mbs. The 3G speeds are blazing fast, much faster than AT&T ever was.I am almost always on 3G data and very rarely on their Edge 1x counterpart. The voice quality on the Hero is amazingly clear. I am definitely not missing the iPhone’s voice quality. The iPhone felt as if your ears were plugged, which made it not so easy to hear the other party.
Now on to the iPhone and Android OS comparison. The iPhone is a really nifty phone. It's by far the easiest phone to use. Apple really made it easy for non tech users to pick up a phone, make calls and check emails. It doesn't get any easier than that. Now, having owned the iPhone for some time, I decided it would be cool to jailbreak. I did this and it was a night and day comparison to a non-jailbroken iPhone. The ability to change out my themes and install non-Apple approved applications, was great. You could practically change out everything from fonts, sms bubbles, themes and more. This was all fun and games, but after owning the HTC Hero for well over a month, a lot of this was already available out of the box – without hacking! For me, the best part of the HTC Hero and any Android phone is the notification tray and the Social networking features. The notification tray really sold me on the whole Android OS. I really like how everything from missed calls, texts, ims and emails show up in the notification tray. This is something that is really important to me and should have been on the iPhone from day one. Also, the ability to connect with all your contacts on Facebook and see their updates as they come in - really cool! Also, the physical buttons are really helpful too. Much better than the iPhone’s single home button. All Android phones have independent settings for each and every app you are in. To get into the settings, you just have to push the menu button and then hit settings. It's as simple as that!
I think that pretty much sums it up. I’ll be looking forward to seeing more Android phones in the next year.
Stay tuned for more Android related posts. If you want to know about anything else regarding Android, let me know and I'd be happy to write about it.
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