gf-tech.com

A few months ago I got an itch. I needed a new toy. I had some money and I thought it was time to get myself a smartphone. I didn't want a run of the mill iPhone either. I was contemplating Google's Nexus One. At the time Google was selling an unlocked Nexus One directly. An unlocked phone was pretty tempting. The price tag was one drawback, as well as the ongoing cost of the data plan (I can't imagine owning a smartphone and not having a data plan). It dawned on me that the last PDA I bought was $600 and this phone was less than that.

I contacted a few people in town about their Nexus One and decided to make the leap and bought one. Waiting for it to be delivered was a little painful. Once I paid for it I wanted it right away.

The day I picked it up was great except for the fact that I was out at Keating and couldn't go get my SIM card. I turned it on and was amazed at the quality of the screen. The colors were amazing and the phone just felt great in my hand. Without the SIM card I could still use WiFi to browse the web and set up the phone.

After setting up my personal and work Google accounts the gmail app was suddenly populated with my email. It just worked. The contact list showed a merged set of contacts which was excellent.

Unfortunately the calendar app only shows my calendar from my main account, which is my personal account. The solution was to share my work calendar to my home account then I get all my calendar information in one place.

Overall the integration to Google services is excellent. This makes the time I spent over the past few years entering data into Google Contacts and Google Calendar definitely worthwhile.

When I got my SIM card I also signed up for a data plan. With the SIM card in place and my account updated, placing a call was my next test. So far I have been extremely happy with the call quality. Crisp and clear. The reception has been quite good as well. I was happy with my old phone's reception, but the Nexus One is much better.

So far I have found the phone extremely easy to use. Launching apps, installing new apps, making calls, and browsing the web were all easy to figure out.

There are a few nit picky things that I don't like though. First off is the battery life. The first couple days I had the phone I was playing with it a lot and needed a recharge partway through the day. Once I got used to the phone and used it less I could easily last the day on one battery. The screen usage sure drains the batter, but it is a gorgeous screen.

I also find the external speaker is a little on the quiet side. The ringer sound when the phone is in my pocket is almost too quiet and I have taken to always having it on ring + vibe. This means the speaker phone is also a little quiet. I might have to invest in a Bluetooth headset some day. Of course that will have an effect on the battery life too.

I am not a fan of the slide to unlock feature. It is rather awkward when trying to answer a call and many times I need to try answering two or three times before it actually works. Not cool.

The phone has a built in WiFi radio. It is supposed to automatically connect to familiar networks whenever it is in range. For some reason this doesn't work as advertised. Most of the time I have to manually connect to my home network, or to my work network. Since I don't know how much data I use per month I am reluctant to just always use the 3G connection. Also, WiFi seems a bit faster.

One odd thing is that I had one spontaneous reboot. I was watching a movie that I had recorded on the phone and mid playback it froze. It was stuck for a couple seconds then the screen went black and the phone rebooted.

The phone came installed with Android 2.1 on it. One of the features of Android is multitasking. I could be running multiple apps at a time. On 2.1 this was very limited. Once I got over two apps the phone became very sluggish and non responsive. The task manager I installed usually showed I didn't have much free memory.

Soon after I got the phone Android 2.2 was released through an over the air (OTA) update. Once I got the update I installed it and rebooted. What a difference. The basic phone functions were visibly faster. I could also run more applications and it wouldn't bog down the phone like it did in 2.1 Since 2.1 installed I have not seen my phone being sluggish at all.

After installing a number of apps I started getting warnings I was running out of space. When this happens, the Gmail app inexplicably stops working. It tells me the correct number of unread messages, but it does not show them. Once I delete some apps and make room, the Gmail app starts working again. Very odd. In 2.2 there is now the ability to install apps to the SD card, if the apps enable that feature. This is handy for allowing more apps to be installed. It would be extremely handy if I could just set up the phone to auto install to the SD card if it is supported, or to move all apps that support the feature to the SD card.

Android 2.2 has a great wireless hotspot feature. The Nexus One can act as a WiFi access point and uses the 3G connection to supply the Internet connection. I used this the other day to remote desktop to another computer. Worked like a charm and was very easy to set up.

I love this phone. No it isn't perfect, but I like that Android is a more open platform that Apple's iOS. I like that I can easily create apps and release them to the world. I love how well it integrates with Google's services. I am definitely happy I made the upgrade.