note: written from a nexus one mostly.
I have dragged myself to abandon my iPhone and use the Nexus One, freshly acquired (yes, acquired, not provided by Google). I am now absolutely certain of one thing, the iPhone will continue to rule for some time. Although the Nexus one has some brilliant features it does not make a single shadow on the iPhone and those who claim the opposite have not tried enough both phones
Google, if you will go one making phones like those, please just keep doing what you know to do best: Awesome search, Awesome cloud services like Gmail. Stop hardware.
I am listing below some observations i had
- The trackball is a stupid, useless feature, it does not serve to a single thing. The touch screen if it was accurate enough would call the termination of this extra-redondant piece of hardware
- At least they could have used the trackball to activate the home screen, like on the iPhone. No,...you have to each time, press the top button to get access to the unlock screen feature. STUPID
- The screen is gorgeous, but unreadable in daylight. iPhone wins big
- Gmail. Believe it or not, this is the worst part of the Nexus one. Whoever created that app is not using Gmail. One example: the reply button. you have to go down the email (good luck if long) to find it. It should have been made a key short cut.
- Keyboard: not accurate at all. I tried several substitute (swype and anykeyboardsoft) but nothing comes as close as the precision of the Iphone. The most terrible part of the keyboard: they space key is right above the home button of the Nexus One. with a normal finger 9/10 chances that you will espace your message being written in the middle without even noticing. Even by being carefull you won't get used to it. TOTALLY STUPID
- Calendar: pretty nice, but again total navigation nonsense, To move to a day to another you swipe sideways. But to move to one month to another in months view, you have to move up and down. WHY???/??
- Voice search: big fail/ does not work
- Multi touch: big fail. the iPhone is so ahead in terms of precision and responsiveness. With the left hand swiping simply does not work
- Camera: big win. Awesome
- Connection to a computer: What a nightmare, it took me 3 google search and 4 forums to find out how to access files from my computer.
- Apps: big fail. A minority are good. The rest has to be simply killed
- Phone: sound is good, but the speaker is placed in such a way you need to find the right position to hear what the other person says
- Multi Tasking: Elegant, big win. THE ONE thing i miss from the iPhone. I am sure it will come to the iPhone soon in some way.
Android will eventually get there, But it is not there yet. The Nexus one is a tiring device. the integration soft/hard is not good (enough). The iPhone with all its limitations is easy, fast and elegant. i prefer the 20% iPhone limitations to the 80% Google phone openness
So i am going back to my iPhone. Gladly.