Tagged: G1

Google Nexus One Review.

Many of you probably know about this. I purchased Google Nexus One for my own birthday gift. I ordered on January 6th midnight and received on January 7thin the morning. I know it has been almost a month and I will pretty much write What I felt having this phone.

Hardware

The design doesn’t look that well built and well fitted from pictures but wait until you hold one on your hands, it’ll definitely change your mind. Yes it is not sexy as iPhone but how it mixed with slight curve at the top and bottom makes phone a lot easier to hold and two color mixed together makes this phone feel like a sharp and elegant style. Also the finish of the hardware is scratch proof and not slippery so when I hold the phone it feels just perfect to me. Also it is a bit thiner than iPhone and little less heavier in weight. It makes me totally comfortable holding it around and using it.

3.7-inch AMOLED display is stunning. 480×800 displays  pictures, websites, map, movies, and everything else crispy clear. I love the screen. A lot brighter and more clear than iPhone 3G I had or any other phones I had before. Many were saying reds and oranges are over-saturated but I personally haven’t notice it much. Only issue  with the display is direct sunlight. Unless I set it to the maximum brightness it is not usable. Unfortunately that’s how any AMOLED displays are but it isn’t that terrible. Touch screen isn’t as good as iPhone though. Still does everything fine w/out multi-touch (now with update you can do multi-touch in few apps), but around bottom four soft keys it has some sensitivity problem and especially when I’m typing lack of multi-touch kills it.

Camera is a lot better than I thought too. I remember when I had G1, Camera app took forever to work and focus. With Nexus One, android takes picture slowly is an old news. With 5-megapixel camera with LED flash light, you can take sharp picture almost every where. Don’t forget, it is still a camera inside cellphone. Do not expect DSLR quality pictures with it!

Built in speaker is a joke… It is so quite sometimes I don’t hear the phone rings or in the car using speaker phone is not a smart decision to do.

Software (with update 1)

Nexus One is now running Android 2.1 update-1. It officially released yesterday, Feb. 2nd, and enhanced few features. I’ll post what has been included this update later.

There are not much to talk about it to me. I used G1 back in 2009 January, even before cupcake has been released. So to me, this is almost spanking new Operating System to me but compare to my friends’ and co-worker’s Droid it isn’t too new other than Nexus One works a lot more snappier and faster.

Few things I really like is home screen now i have five homescreen compare to 3 before. Car Home works pretty nice but it seems like draining a lot of battery if i use it. Google voice implement is golden! Dynamic wallpapers are cool but honestly i don’t really use it. Do you remember how you used to drag up to see all the apps you have? Now there’s a section you just touch it and all your apps shows up. To me one nice visual touch is how it scrolls up and down so smoothly with all those apps stacking up on top or bottom.

I love how gallery works. It automatically searches all the pictures you have on android and shows. Movie clips plays right away from gallery too w/out any application. One thing I can’t tolerate is music player. Coming from iPhone UI for iPod was way superior. Not even a competition. I wonder if Google will work on this some time soon!.

Honestly I don’t really care about multi-touch. Actually a lot of multi-touch has been implemented after quick update 1. Except only one area that I really enjoy multi-touch; THE VIRTUAL KEYBOARD. This is probably what I miss about iPhone. With multi-touch support with smart system they have that guesses what I’m typing, iPhone’s virtual keyboard was golden. With Android, although now i got used to type slower for accuracy, if I type little bit fast then often I see lots of misspellings. Google, would you please implement this and improve virtual keyboard?

Battery Life

First few days I thought battery was kind of weak but after few days it rocks. I use it more often than iPhone 3G I had and it lasts a lot longer. I typically can use 13~14 hours of little bit heavy uses such as 2~3 hrs of music listening, 2~3 hrs of browsing, 30+ minutes of talk, 30~50 texts, and frequent checking my google reader, twitter, and Facebook. BUT you definitely have to plug it in every night!

My favorite Apps

I really didn’t use that many apps on iPhone either but here are few lists of my favorite apps on Android

  • OliveTree BibleReader (Although iPhone version was a lot better)
  • TweetCaster (I think so far it is the best twitter app on android)
  • Greed (Google Reader)
  • Google Voice
  • Documents to Go
  • Goggles
  • WordPress
  • Evernote
  • AK Notepad
  • Astro filemanager
  • USA Today

AT&T vs. T-Mobile

Well, it seems like there will be a AT&T version of Nexus One will be out sometime near future but still to people who are wondering. I used my first 2 weeks with AT&T and now I’m with T-Mobile. The phone is perfectly usable with AT&T’s EDGE network. Web browsing is extremely slow but map, car home, email, twitter, and Facebook except picture are perfectly fine. Then why did I switch to T-Mobile? It is a lot more reliable network in my opinion in Chicago land area. I don’t get drop calls anymore, I get signals about everywhere I go and actually can make calls and browse (which I wasn’t able to do with AT&T often in downtown and many other areas). More than anything, you have to choose based upon how good service you can get.

Conclusion

Honestly this is the closest to what I’ve been looking for in smartphone. Since Treo 600, I went through good number of smartphones; Palm Treo 600, 650, 755, 800w, BlackBerry Curve, Bold, iPhone 3G, G1, Sony Xperia X1a, and Palm Pre. Of course this is not the perfect phone. I don’t believe there will be any phone that will be perfect to every one on earth. Simply we are all unique and it is impossible to fullfil everyone’s desire and wish lists. User experience point of view this was by far the most satisfying to me.

This is my review of the phone and if you have any questions feel free to leave me comments!

Review: Palm Pre!!

Palm Pre

WARNING!!! This is try to be brief but not so brief… at same time not so extensive review. This is my own version of review after using one week and probably heavily comparison to iPhone since my current device is iPhone.

Introduction
Oh how long I’ve been waiting this phone! I’ve been a Palm Treo user since 600 in 2003 until this year January ditched both Treo and Sprint all together. Here’s all the smart phones I had. Treo 600 -> Treo 650 -> BlackBerry (not sure exact number.. I only had it for less than a week) -> Treo 755 -> Treo 800w -> iPhone. I believe since the end of 650′s life, about the time when they announced 700 there were many rumors of new OS for palm phones such as Nova and etc. After long years of waiting patiently, finally THE PHONE I was waiting so long came out.

The first impression
Sleek, clean, and fits perfectly well in my hands.  It feels a bit cheaper than it looks on picture due to plastic housing. Some might say it’s due to I’m used to iPhone’s metal housing, but none of previous Treos felt this weak and cheap except 800w. First glimpse of OS was really impressive and smooth too

Palm Pre

Hardware
Other than plasticky, weak, and little sharp on the bottom edge, it seems like pretty good built. Screen is sharp, bright, and touch screen is as good as iPhone or seems like it responses even better! Camera works great, taking great pictures and auto focus works well. I don’t know why it bothers to have flash though. More than anything, KEYBOARD!!! Did I say PHYSICAL KEYBOARD??? Oh how I miss physical keyboard. It was really sticky in the beginning but after few days it worked really great. I love how palm’s keyboard layout. @, “,”, “.” is right there to use without pressing any other button, and easy of accessing special characters, symbols, and numbers. great plus and something iPhone never can do. Oh and 3.5mm jack, I haven’t had a chance to test it as a music player but I have no doubt it’ll work well.

Keybaord

Applications
Given the fact that it’s been out for only little over a week, I’m surprised decent number of apps. Of course it is not even compare to iPhone apps, but I remember when I got G1 after about a year after launch, Android didn’t have much selections up to that point.
Internet Browser works fantastic, smooth and I felt it runs faster than mobile Safari. I loved how palm incorporated SMS and Instant Messengers all in one, just hoped it had more service offer than gTalk and AIM. Mail apps worked really well with actual PUSH capability. Also total integration of contacts from google was great, and real time sync worked out awesome. Give it a year, palm’s app store will be filled with many great apps just like iPhone. Maybe minus great 3D games. who knows, they might get it all
IMG_3875

Conclusion
I love what palm did, but not Sprint. I had just hard time getting this phone (You can read it here) and consistent roaming at work made this phone almost none-usable.
But When it comes to the Phone only, I really wish it released to AT&T. I’d ditched iPhone right away. Yes lack of good apps makes me hesitate to jump right away but that’ll be fixed in few months. Having a sharper and better working touch screen and PHYSICAL keyboard is enough to make me jump. Maybe PHYSICAL KEYBOARD alone is worth enough. The brightest sight is this is the first phone with Web OS, which means more  phones will come out. Maybe I don’t have to wait till Sprint exclusive to end. All I can say is palm did it right this time and really well.

Pros
Touch Screen
Keyboard
OS
Camera

Cons
weak battery
somewhat clumsy and not so lugged built
Phone doesn’t feel like $600 phone
lack of apps
total pointless flash

My rating??
4/5

Windows Mobile 6.5, HTC Magic, and iPhone

As I’m reading Engadget feeds today I’m wondering more about my decision to get iPhone was too late..
Windows Mobile 6.5 looks astonishing. It seems a lot better from its preceder 6.1.   Honeycomb looking home menu, physical built in start button, and better mobile IE.

HTC Magic, probably will be released as G2 in state sides, that’s all I can say. Finally coming with Cupcake, a long waited, thinner than G1, and seems like all the things i wanted G1 are included!

Did I purchase iPhone at the end of its prime era? I know their product cycle is coming up and probably will release newer one soon too.. Even that fact makes me wonder even more if my iphone purchase was a bit too late or not.

Sigh, let’s just enjoy what I have.

AT&T and iPhone

After long years with Sprint, I finally departed from them and joined AT&T with iPhone. Yes I was considering many different options such as T-Mobile with G1, had it for about 10 days. such a great phone, or thinking about  trying Blackberry with Verizon.  After about a week having both G1 and iPhone I decided to go with iPhone due to better coverage by AT&T over T-Mobile

Guess what??

Despite the fact that AT&T has better coverage than T-Mobile, Now I’m a firm believer of T-Mobile has better coverage of 3G in greater chicago land area. Yes my iPhone’s 3G worked pretty well in my house, T-Mobile only had receptions at half of my house, but now I get EDGE a lot more often probably about 70% of the time when I use iPhone. Another downfall of it is I don’t get any 3G reception at work. At least G1 always had 3G at work :(

Yes you can argue with me why I don’t use WIFI. My answer to you is if i pay for extra $30 for internet service for my phone, i better use every penny of what I pay for it!

I just hope that AT&T will really work on their 3G coverage ASAP!