User Reviews: Keith Woo, Day Two hands on with the Nexus One
Our new biggest fan in Malaysia, Keith Woo, has been putting his complementary Nexus One through it’s paces. Following up on his first day with the phone, here’s his impressions from Day Two with the device:
Nice, battery lasted the whole of yesterday with average use of the phone. Today I put it through a little more thorough testing with wifi and 3G. Been 6 or 7 hours and battery is at 50%. Decided to plug it into the laptop for charging. I realize the phone charges pretty quick, like you can literally see the numbers move up before as you watch. Haha.
Exploring the phone further today made me really impressed with the algorithm intergration Google has thought of with the phone. With the entire world going the Google Way, it’s kinda hard to say that they’re not out for world domination. I’m liking it though.
I mean, the Nexus is a perfect example of this. Perfect synchronization with Gmail, auto loads my Picasa pictures, syncs my Google Calendar, amazing resonance with the Google Servers for Google goggles, translator, maps, sky and so on. And all done with a few finger taps. Everything else was automated and flawless. Gmail + Facebook + Contact intergration was beautifully sharp.
Today’s test was also a little more along the lines of applications I felt. Considering I’m not an iPhone user, I was very impressed by the endless apps in the Android Market. Though I found it quite funny that all I could search for were free apps. But I’m not complaining, it’s not like I’m really going to buy any apps I think. I’ve downloaded a whole bunch of apps, yet to go through all of them thouroughly. But I like the idea of the Open Source, unlike the bottleneck Apple has. Open Source means we’ll get a whole bunch of crap, but it’ll also mean more people will be willing to dive into it. More collaboration, more apps, more happy Androiders.
Yet, I’ve had an issue or two so far. I’m finding it pretty hard to adjust to the keyboard. Perhaps this is due to my HTC Touch HD background with WinMo and pressure screens. I keep pressing the wrong spots and stuff. This might take some time to unlearn and relearn I guess. The Nexus screen is extremely sensitive though. Once or twice I managed to press a “key” without actually touching the screen. And the Back, Menu, Home, Search buttons above the trackball could use some calibirations to be more accurate. Having to press the top half can get a little tricky for other people.
Navigation was the other issue. I do wish I had turn-by-turn navigation outside of the US. I can’t even find a way to install Garmin or some other GPS device. GPS is something I kinda rely alot on, and with weak Mobile Internet signals outside the town, this might get tricky in the long run. But that remains to be seen I suppose. Need to figure this one out faster than the keyboard at this point.
These two aside, everything is pretty nifty, notifications are superb, intergration is rock solid. And the speech recognition is a blast to play with.
