While iPhone was a breakthrough device, and my reason for getting the Nexus One was Apple shenanigans, iPhone is by no means perfect, or more importantly, perfect for me. Here is my short list of where iPhone falls short for me and I wonder if Nexus One will do better.
1. I spend a lot of time at friends' and family members' homes near where I live. At one place, I get great reception outside, but nothing unless I'm close to the front window inside. I'll be using the same SIM card to do the comparison, and I would not be totally surprised if the result is different with the Nexus One. I'm not at all knowledgeable about wireless frequencies and their idiosyncrasies, but I know that the construction of the friend's home is very similar to that of my own home, and I get 5 bars outside there.
2. Can I find some interesting Android app on an independent website, download it, and side install it on Nexus One. How much work is involved? Can I do it directly from the phone, or do I need to cable up to my latptop?
3. Does Nexus One have voice recognition for dialing? Is it as easy to invoke as the iPhone's? How well does it recognize my strong 6th generation native Californian accent? iPhone does about 4/5 times. If it mis-recognizes a command, is it easy to cancel even if you're driving? The iPhone misrecognizes my sisters' name quite often and I end up dialing a different "Jen" who is a business contact that I'd just purge from address book except I do talk to her every few months or so. If I'm driving (where VR is supposed to make things safer for me), sometimes it's a bitch to cancel the call. I've ended up just powering the iPhone off because it wasn't safe to look to find the "end call" button.
Those are my first three issues that I'll specifically focus on. Can anyone think of any other super obvious tests?
How about the Google buzz interface?
ReplyDeleteI've owned an iPhone for 5 months and really like Gogogle buzz except I need to log into Gmail everytime I want to use it when facebook and twitter have easy to use apps that allow me to fb & tweet easier and faster.
Wow. I feel totally dated and like I haven't kept up with what's been on the front page of every tech blog every day this year. I know nothing about Google Buzz yet. However, they appear to have a web app for iPhone:
ReplyDeletehttp://buzz.google.com
You can bookmark that on your home screen and use as an app in your iPhone. For Android, there is a widget. Will add it to my list of things to report on tomorrow.
-Brad
Predicitve text. Don't bother suggesting word when i'm one letter away from completion.
ReplyDeleteHarry, One good thing about Android is that even the keyboard is replaceable on a system wide basis. Browsing the Marketplace, I found one that even expands abbreviations for you, e.g. "idk" becomes "I don't know". Here's an article that talks about all sorts of replacement keyboards for Android.
ReplyDeletehttp://androidandme.com/2009/11/applications/swype-keyboard-coming-to-android-in-2010/
iPhone doesn't have that capability at all.