Tag: iphone

First Day With the Google Nexus One

I’m in London this week, doing a series of team and community meetings. One of the fun things that have happen this week is the team all got brand-new Nexus One phones while we’re here.

I’m a pretty hardcore Blackberry user but when someone hands you a new, cool phone just begging to have a SIM card added to it, the Blackberry can wait. I’ve been using the Nexus for about a day now, and here’s some initial impressions:

Things I like about the Nexus One

The screen is gorgeous. The cameras is far better than the one on my Blackberry. The phone feels good when you hold it. Not too heavy, not too bulky.

Adding new apps – a breeze. There’s lots to choose from in the app store, including many popular apps like Urbanspoon, Shazam, Foursquare, and many others. I got a dozen apps onto the phone in short order. Definitely much closer to the iTunes Store experience than the pain of adding apps to my Blackberry.

And Flash Player 10.1 beta is looking pretty good. 🙂

Things I’m Not So Sure About

I’m spoiled by my Blackberry’s ability to go as much as three days without a charge, so having to charge more often is a bit of a bummer. Not a showstopper though.

The music client. I don’t see anything that will make me want to give up my iPod. (The Last.fm app is nice though)

Covering that gorgeous screen with very visible fingerprints.

The London weather hasn’t been very sunny today but even so using the screen in daylight is definitely a bit harder than using it indoors.

Given that this is is a Google product it’s probably inevitable, but the deep lock-in and integration with other Google products is annoying for those of us who are not hardcore Google users. I don’t use Picasa, gChat, or Google Contacts, for example, and if I want to really use the Nexus, they’re hard to avoid.

Things I Definitely Don’t Like

The built-in IMAP client is poor, making it tough for those of us who don’t run our email through Gmail. I expect there will be a third-party solution pretty soon though.

Comment spam in the app market reviews. Really annoying.

Trying to do the two-thumb typing I am used to on a real keyboard is really frustrating. My error rate is close to 100% when I try it on the Nexus. To be fair, though, this isn’t specific to the Nexus; I felt the same trying to use my iPod Touch’s keyboard as well. I’ve simply spent a lot of years using various Palm / Blackberry devices with real keyboards and it’s going to be very, very hard for me to let go of needing to feel real keys under my fingers and relearn how to type on a handheld. Typing with one finger, aided by the very nice auto complete feature, is much less painful. It’s just not very fast.

Things I Haven’t Figured Out Yet

The best way to synch data (contacts, etc) off either my desktop or my Blackberry. I need to research this some more. Being able to sync data from Facbook is interesting. Ideally I’d like to get my work info on it too, but Exchange support is a bit shaky so far.

All In All

I like the Nexus a lot more than I thought I would. I am not sure if I will be able to adjust to the lack of a real keyboard and I don’t love the Google-lock in, but other than that I’m pretty impressed.

And did I mention how nice the beta of Flash 10.1 looks on it? :p

Belated Thoughts on the iBrick

The Apple iPhone/ iBrick thing is starting to become old news. Since I’m happy waiting on the sidelines until a 3G iPhone comes out, I haven’t weighed in much, but there’s one or two things I do want to put out there.

I get that users want to hack their iPhones. It’s such an amazing device, and it would be even more perfect if you could only add [insert favorite missing application here]. It makes perfect sense. I’d be tempted to do it too, which is why I am deeply grateful I didn’t buy an iPhone.

What I don’t get is the outrage over Apple’s lockdown. It’s not like Apple encouraged developers to hack their phones and unlock their SIM cards, then turned around and went the other way. Apple was really clear from Day 1 that they expected software development to go via web apps, not installed apps. So why is anyone surprised when Apple started enforcing what they already said they were going to do? Did they really think that they’d let the “hackintosh” crew do whatever they wanted to the iPhone?

The fact that Apple was willing to go to the length of making hacked iPhones utterly unusable as phones strongly suggests to me that they’re doing it not just because of any Steve Jobs control freak tendencies, but because they have to in order to maintain the AT&T contract. And if they want to sell iPhones in the USA, that’s what they have to do. There is no getting onto the US wireless network without getting into bed with a telco. I don’t like it one bit, but it’s the way the industry is right now, and if you want to be in the game you cannot ignore reality.

I well remember when the Treo was first coming onto the market, hearing from some of the Handspring and Palm people about how utterly painful it was to get telcos to be willing to let it in. That was 5+ years ago, but somehow I suspect not all that much has changed.

At any rate, what I understand least of all is this: paying $100 to some 3rd-party outfit for an iPhone “unbricking” that will at best only work until the next Apple patch.

The phrase ‘”throwing your money away” comes to mind.

Update: Nice to see I’m not the only one weighing in this week.

iDay

I’m off to work. I’m taking a camera and plan to swing by an Apple store at lunchtime to check out the party. I may or may not post photos, depending on if I get any good ones.

UPDATE 3:25PM: I did get a couple of photos, including one of Steve Wozniak himself camping a line like the rest of us mere mortals. @Flickr.

To iPhone or not to iPhone?

As I write this, there’s roughly 73 hours left until the iPhone hits the streets. I still haven’t decided if I want to buy one or not, and if I do, I need to get serious about my line-camping plans.

I’m still on the fence, though.

A wave of reviews has hit the web this afternoon, and by and large they are highly positive. The virtual keyboard, considered by many to be a potential issue, sounds like it is a lot easier to use than expected. The biggest snafu seems to be the speed of the AT&T EDGE network itself, and sadly, it sounds like that’s not something that a software patch will be able to fix.

I want one, oh yes. But I don’t need one, and I do have a lot of other uses for the $600 or so an iPhone will cost me. Plus, for that much money, do I really want to live with slow data speed, when that’s one of the key features I’d be using the thing for?

Right now, I’d have to say no. If I am going to drop that kind of cash on a convergence device, I don’t want to spend the next 2 years cursing out my too-slow net access every time I use my iPhone.

And yet — I reserve the right to change my mind.