I definitely love this phone.I used to be a hardcore Nokia fan, and I owned an iTouch for two years. If people complain about iPhone because of at&t 3G connections and the rate plan, then in my case I don't have those problems. No matter what, even if Nexus 1 is NOT a phone (imagine it's an Android version of iTouch), it's still way more better.
Months ago, my Nokia E71 began to shatter apart. I searched online for an unlocked phone, and I first considered iPhone. But the price is a joke for factory-unlocked ones. Yes I know. I can jail break them, but after the huge disappointment from E71's shattering,unsteady UI,I feel very uneasy about this idea.
I cross iPhone off my list.
Nokia, definitely NO. After using Nokia for a whole decade, for the first time, I felt betrayed. HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT. E71 would reboot automatically, anytime, in any situation. It would reboot in the middle of a phone call, or when I press any button, when I searched for contacts……I constantly had to take out the battery, or even reset the phone every several weeks. One day it completely stopped working.
I'm not interested in Windows Mobile either. I used a WM phone several years ago, and it was not a good experience.
As for Palm, I don't have many good options with unlocked ones. I need a GSM phone to use it in Asia or Europe, which means that I can't purchase from Sprint or Verizon and unlock them later.
Blackberry? I'm definitely not a professional.I don't want to purchase the BB data plan, if wifi is available everywhere on campus.I'd use just BB as a PHONE, making calls and sending SMS, for $500. Definitely not worth it.
Then I looked into Android.I thought it was cool, because I used Google products a lot. I heard really nice comments from people who purchase Motorola Droid,but Droid is on Verizon (I need GSM phones). There's an unlocked version, but I think it's over-priced. It looks too serious to me, and the processor is not the fastest. Besides, even if Google releases the newest Android, you have to wait for Motorola to update its own UI, which may take weeks, or even months.
So I choose Nexus 1. Now I feel really really happy for my right decision.
Sometimes you'd never feel you are losing something, unless you're offered another option. That's exactly how I feel right now.
I used my iTouch happily for two years. Since I'm a
college student and free Wifi is offered everywhere on campus, I use my iTouch not only as a music player. I download music and movies, I play games, I surf online for news and everything else, I check my emails every thirty minutes, I check temperature and Google maps all the time, I log in facebook and twitter constantly, I use Skype to make international calls, and I shop and sell. I thought it was almost perfect, even if apps would shut down automatically when running, and battery drained away fast. However, my feelings changed.
When I first tried to log into a website two years ago, I was surprised that Flash is not supported. But it seemed okay then, because iTouch exceeded my expectation already. I thought, maybe Apple needed some time to make it better. One year later, when I purchased 3.0 version OS, and found out still no Flash, I began to feel irritated. But again I didn't totally lose my hope. My respect for Apple remained based on my good experience with all its products…I like my iPod mini,video,two classics,nano,shuttle(1 gen, 2 gen, 3 gen, 4 gen)and iTouch. Early this year, Steve Jobs announced that OS 4.0 is on the way, and people began to wonder, is it possible that SJ finally agrees to work with Adobe?
Are you kidding me?
Days ago, Apple not only announced that Flash is still not available for OS4.0, but also forbids all its app developers from writing app programs using Flash. Developers can only use languages approved by Apple. Isn't that ridiculous?! Apple may have some unhappiness with Adobe, but we customers suffer and we pay. I don't like big brother making unreasonable decisions for me and ignore my protest. Not at all.
Here goes cool things about N1.
Android is an open-source platform, meaning little limitation on developers from google's part. This may attract attack from some people, like those who worry about virus and malevolent apps. But you can avoid them by reading comments before downloading apps, and stay alert(you can use safari to access porn as well Steve Jobs!!!). Iphone users may claim that their phones don't have to worry about those problems at all because Apple takes care of them beforehand. Well, that literally means iphone users are also deprived of freedom plus the rights to make decisions about what is right and what is wrong. Nothing to feel proud of. Then iphone users may sniff at this “freedom”—What's the use of it? We already have everything.
Oh you are so wrong.
1.Let's say you want to read some news. But if you are a person like me who want to hear different views on the same matter and generally feel interested in US, world, politics, economics, business, entertainment and sports, you might end up with ten apps: new york times, cnn, washington post, time, business week, yahoo news, wall street journal, bing, usa today, to name a few. You may also pay extra money to get better coverage. But with N1, there's an auto-refresh NEWS gadget on the screen. When you touch the headline, you will enter an app where all kinds of topics from various sources appear. I was thrilled when I found this out.
Together with this gadget, you will get info on live weather. You don't need to download weather apps. It's already there. Drag it anywhere you want.
2.Wallpaper is lovely.I'm using the live grass wallpaper. When I realized that the background sky darkened at night and became bright blue again during daytime, all I could manage was a big “wow”.If you want to save battery, you can use pictures taken by the camera or saved on your phone. You can pick up whatever you want, and change whenever you feel bored.
3.Language!When I bought E71, I was so angry to find out that Chinese was not supported on a smartphone, because “it's US version.We are sorry about not being able to provide further assistance”. Web pages therefore would not display Chinese characters, nor would Korean, Japanese, Arabic, blabalblablabla. Is such a phone still “smart” and worth more than $300? Nokia simply refuses to provide further assistance because it's a US version! I guess it would be a perfect world for Nokia and other BIG manufacturers, if people on this planet speak only English, read only English,need only English, and cherish only English.
I like iphone in terms of the language support. I don't need extra apps (nor would Apple allow you to, I guess 
)to show and input those languages mentioned above. BUT,at least in the case of Chinese, Apple sucks. It's the worst input method I've ever used.Slow,outdated,unresponsive.
For N1, you have no problem with displaying contents in multiple languages. Even though N1 doesn't support, for instance, simplified Chinese IME right out of the box, you can just go to Android Market, and download Google pinyin or Sogou, which are awesome
–>
IMEs being used on PCs and Macs. You can sinc those apps from time to time when new phrases come out.
4.Voice support: if you get tired of using touch screen to write SMS, or you don't have spare hands while driving/walking/shopping, you can “speak” your messages. You can also speak your directions and drive home.I haven't tried the latter yet since I don't have a car, but speaking SMS works great, as long as you speak clearly and use little abbreviation.
5.Camera is 5MP,quality is good. I didn't have an iPhone (itouch has no camera), so I have no idea about how iphone works. But I don't expect amazing photos from a phone camera right from the start. I think this camera is fair enough for facebook and random pics.
6.Calendar on desktop! When I downgraded my laptop from windows vista to xp, the only things that I missed about vista are sticky note, desktop clock and calendar. Now, I have the freedom to customize my cell phone “desktops”. I add a gadget on one screen with updated daily schedule,a gadget with to-do-list,and another gadget with random notes of reminder. I toss away my thick planner, finally. For iphone, I find those to-do-list apps are really awkward to use. They are way too complicated. All I want is a simple piece of note, so that I can write what I plan to do each day. ALSO I WANT MY NOTE RIGHT THERE WHEN I USE MY PHONE INSTEAD OF FLIPPING THOROUGH DOZENS OF APPS AND THEN OPEN THE RIGHT ONE.
7.I don't like the fact that I can't easily export my music from my ipods after purchasing them from iTunes. With N1, I can transfer music to and from a SD card, which is expandable to 36GB. (Right now, Google has problem with Android 2.1 recognizing 32GB microSDHC, but they are working on it already)4GB card is included in the original phone, you can buy extra ones if you need more space, in contrast to iphone, what you buy is what you get and if you want bigger space you have to buy a new phone.
8.Battery. Yes, if you use N1 heavily, for sure you would especially when you just got the phone and found it amazing, but aha you can have multiple batteries and exchange the drained one with a charged one! However, with iPhone……Hopefully you see what I mean. (My iTouch is getting worse and worse in terms of battery life.I'll let it retire after I transfer all my music to the microSDHC tonight.)
9.Apps are definitely enough. If you play games heavily, why not get a game console? I find pandora, online bankings, Jewels, amazon, color note, google translator, webster dictionary,fring(for yahoo and msn messenger),paypal,and multiple Chinese apps(!!!). I spent less than ten minutes to find those apps, download and install them. They work pretty good, FOR FREE. After two years of apple's app store, I'm pretty sure about what I need, and I'm able to find all of them in Android's market.
10.calling and texting: calling is also a highlight of N1, because it has two microphones. One at the back of the phone that takes in all the background noise, and the regular one you'd expect on a phone. If you use N1, you get the nice feature–noise cancellation.This meets my physics geek nature right there (I'm a physics major).It's like the multiple filters I use in research and it feels so neat, at least to me. Of course, you get really good call quality, especially in noisy environments. The sound from the phone is crisp and loud. I have no problem of hearing the other end in crowded mall.
11.carrier: I know many people don't quite like iphones partly because of the 3G coverage of AT&T. I like my iTouch and I thought iphone should be that good as well, but my iphone-hater friend told me that's because “itouch is not a phone,and iphone is an at&t phone”. She got stuck with at&t for two years and finally got herself out of that contract. She is waiting for N1 on Verizon (she's not excited about the HTC incredible, which I will explain later).
12.Google family' when you purchase N1,you get more than a phone. You have access to a much better version of Gmail on a phone (almost all the functions, but you do have to adjust settings using computers, for example, multiple email accounts), Youtube, Googe doc, Picasa, Google talk(which is brilliant), Google voice (you don't even need skype anymore to make international phone calls), Google maps, Google Goggle,etc. You may have access to some of those apps on iPhones, but they are definitely much better on a Google phone, simplify for they are Google's! This excellent combination of google apps makes the experience of using N1 much much better. (If you don't use google's products a lot, it wouldn't make much difference…)
13.UI update or N1.
I chose GOOGLE nexus one over other htc high-end android phones that have the same hardware performance,
simply because of the software.I don't think a 1gb processor,512MB RAM, 512MB ROM,AMOLED 480 x 854 pixels capacitive touchscreen would be outdated in two years(but that's my guess).Now, this hardware spec hits the top notch, and in several years most likely it is still the mainstream. (The phone is snappy)
When I decided to buy N1, HTC's desire is already out there, with the everything the same plus an extra Sense (HTS's UI), which adds great things to Android. But if a new Android update is released, you have to wait for HTC to update its Sense, which becomes a major problem for some manufactures currently. Droid,N1 and several freshly released Android phones are running 2.1 version, while those models released just a couple of months ago are still running 1.5,1.6, or 2.0.However, 2.1 is a huge improvement over previous ones, for it adds multi-touch. Motorola just updated its own UI. Millions of Droid users had the 2.1 version, weeks after 2.1 was officially released. BUT, with N1,I don't need to worry about this at all. Because it's only Android, and Google is directly behind it. When Google has some new treat, N1 has it immediately, and you have it.
Those are cool things about N1 I find after using it for just one day. I will keep it updated.
04/25/10
Update 1:
After using the phone for several days and thinking over differences between itouch and N1,I'd like add several things more.
Things I'd like to say first are:
1.No phone is perfect.I'd say it's quite common for people who don't like iphone to say good things about 'iphone-killers', and for people who dislike android to praise iphones. Every reviewer is biased, to different extent.
2.If you want every specific function one phone has on another one, that's impossible. Why not simply get that phone?
3.Be patient. Patience is one of the most essential quality humans should possess. You don't like something.Okay, that's quite normal. You toss the phone away and curse the stupid Google/HTC.That's not good/productive.Why not tell them explicitly? Customer feedback is always useful.I emailed some launching errors for an app yesterday and got feedback from the product team this morning. Problem solved.
And some new thoughts on nexus one:
1.A lot more useful apps than I expected. For example, I found an app enabling you to take pictures using different modes. Paranoid, fish-eye,etc. A lot more fun! Also this is a good news bcoz I almost bought a pink lomo last week…Number of apps is still small compared to what apple puts in its store.Nonetheless,I believe things will get better. As far as the necessary apps, it's plenty enough, you might just got puzzled about which one to choose. But as for games, not too many options. I don't know what kind of effects Apple's decision to put up more fight with Adobe would have on developments of apps, but no matter what, I guess it's not an encouraging sign to developers, at least not so psychologically.
2.Touch screen requests more patience and 'skill'. I admit at this point, itouch is more decent. It's not like N1 not being responsive, it's more like N1 not being…predictive. Sometimes things will get messed up if I use my left fingers to choose items, especially if I lie down on my back. But right finger is alright, no issue right now.
BUT!!!!!!Even if it messes up sometimes, it's still better than iphone: you can't even lie down with an iphone!Iphone doesn't give you the option to turn down landscape mode, while N1 does. So I never need to worry about what kind of angle I have to keep on bed if I want to use my device.
Also the addition of trackball at N1 is quite useful, after several days' of use. In some situations, trackball makes more sense, for example, if you want to scroll down pages in Android market. If you use your fingers, you might open some apps by accident, which is also quite common for apple's products. But for N1, you can just use the trackball, and it's quite convenient.
The problem with touchscreen can be annoying when you try to type on bed with both fingers. But it'd be weird anyway, because it's already impossible to hold the phone. I'd suggest use your left hand to hold the phone and use right hand to type. Or just get up and support yourself.
Good things about having problems with UI: your concern will be easier to solve with Android/Google. It's open source and you are using an unlocked phone with the original Android. Rumor says that Google will release Android 2.2 in May and Nexus is for sure the first phone to get the new features.
3. Battery life: if you use your phone a lot, like I do in the first several days,you should get a spare battery from Google. It's $25.
Tags:
updates,
news
