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January 14, 2010

Nexus One ()

by fluffy at 11:42 PM
Because I just can't resist temptation for pretty shiny things, I have already upgraded from the myTouch 3G (aka HTC Magic) to the Google Nexus One (aka Google Nexus One). Yeah, it was expensive, but whatever.

I'll just keep it brief here since there's been plenty of other people reviewing it too.

The positive points:

  • Many of the issues with the myTouch 3G are gone. Plenty of RAM and CPU means that even with the extra eyecandy and so on, the device stays responsive most of the time (there's still occasional bursts of lag but they're on the order of around half a second, as opposed to the myTouch which could often be unresponsive for as much as a whole minute)
  • The UI is really shiny. A lot of stuff has been updated and tuned and refined and is just generally better.
  • The built-in IMAP client is way the hell better. There's a unified inbox (with per-account color coding which works extremely well), it's fast and responsive, and just generally great.
  • The web browser is also much improved. The keyboard finally gets next/prev buttons for form entry (rather than a catch-all "done" that sometimes goes to the next field but usually submits the incomplete form)
  • The OS supports multitouch! Or at least, Dolphin Browser does a good job of faking it somehow. None of the built-in apps use it.
  • The dock connector promises to make for some very nice future charging cradles.
  • The first-party weather+news widget is very nice, much better than any of the battery-sucking CPU-chewing third-party widgets I had tried.
  • 5 launcher screens means I don't need folders to organize my apps (for now)
  • Sound quality on headphones is way better than on the myTouch. It's still nowhere near as good as my iPod Classic, but at least it will do in a pinch without making me feel like there's sand in my ears. It also doesn't seem to have the floating sample rate issue over A2DP that the myTouch had.
  • Tactile feedback on the touch buttons almost makes up for the fact they are no longer physical buttons. Almost.
  • It actually stays connected to WiFi without me babysitting the connection!
  • Battery life is about as good as the myTouch...
The negative points:
  • ...which means I still have to recharge it daily.
  • The calendar app still sucks (especially the date and time pickers!), although it's improved.
  • Still no built-in Exchange ActiveSync for calendars (there is ActiveSync for email but I don't care about that) so I still have to sync Outlook to Google which causes weird issues
  • The external speaker isn't as loud as the myTouch, so I'll need to come up with a better alarm clock sound than Bell Chime
  • Just when all my devices were using USB Mini for everything, making it so I only ever needed a single USB Mini cable with me in order to use or charge any one device, along comes USB Micro...
The WTF points:
  • Okay, I get why there is this nice unified "easy access" app which offers clock, calendar, alarms, music playback, weather, and a few other things. But why is that app called "Clock?" And it has some weird behavior if you use the pattern unlock (as I do); if you lock the screen while "Clock" is running, then when you unlock, it's in that app, until you try to use any of its widgets, which is when it shows the unlock screen. If you're not running that app in the foreground, there is (apparently) no way to get to it from the unlock screen. It would be really nice if there were an option to go into that app after unlock if you locked it from the home screen, but there doesn't seem to be an option for that (or any options for it at all, really).
  • I have mixed feelings about Google releasing an awesome first-party phone that they were developing in secret while partners were working to get awesome third-party phones out. I am sure that many of your development partners are more than a little ticked off right now, especially since Google's platform enhancements were basically hidden from the partners and always released only when "done," meaning that the other platform consumers were (and likely will forever be) a few steps behind the bleeding edge. I thought this was supposed to be an open platform for the future, guys.
Regarding battery life: basically, I get a good full day (i.e. 16 hours) of use out of this device, with screen brightness at the lowest level (which is still pretty bright thanks to the wonderful AMOLED screen), WiFi, GPS, and GMail sync oh, and Bluetooth off. According to the power management screen, my power usage breaks down as:
  • Cell standby: 35%
  • Display: 33%
  • Phone idle: 8%
  • Maps: 7% (certainly one of the more everything-intensive apps that I use a lot)
  • Android System: 6%
  • MuniAlerts: 5% (apparently mostly due to GPS, which is a bit disturbing — over the past day it's used 11 seconds of CPU time, and 8 minutes 26 seconds of GPS connectivity; I must bother Ross about this)
  • WiFi: 2%
  • Android OS: 2%
  • Browser: 2%
In any case, the largest draw is just cell standby. I suspect that if I were to turn off 3G, that number would drop quite a lot, and i'd get a whole 24 hours of useful time. Then if I never had the display active, that would approximately double to 48 hours. So, if it were just sitting in my pocket doing nothing except being an EDGE dumbphone, I'd only have to charge it every other day.

Still, while charging daily might seem a bit silly, in reality this thing is way more powerful than my first several laptops combined (and its display is higher resolution than most of them, too...) so it's hard to be too critical of it. Just make sure you have a USB Micro cable available and you'll be fine.

I wonder if there's any USB Type B (or Mini B) to USB Micro adapters on the market... that would be worth keeping on my keychain .

Comments

#12768 markpasc 01/15/2010 09:14 am Clock qua clock
Isn't Clock the app that's for pretending it's a desk clock when it's in a dock? That might be why it's called “Clock” (which is at least an explanation, if not a reason).
#12769 fluffy 01/15/2010 10:13 am
Oh, that would make sense. I wonder if that's what the third pin on the Nexus One charging contact is for.

Meanwhile, today I'm giving running-without-3G a try, and see how that affects battery life. So far, cellphone standby has taken 92% of the battery, but I haven't done much with the phone either.
#12773 fluffy 01/15/2010 11:42 pm
So, today I had 3G turned off, and only about 20% of the battery was used. Admittedly, I didn't use the phone quite as much today as I did yesterday, but the difference is staggering.

On the other hand, the few times I did use mobile data, it was aggravatingly slow. It would be nice if there were a 3G toggle on the quick power toggle strip widget, or a way to have it only switch on 3G for user-initiated data sessions (as opposed to background sync or whatever).
#12795 fluffy 01/20/2010 07:52 pm
Yep, with 3G on, cell standby takes about 35% of the battery. With it off, it takes about 2%. Although I suspect that the battery use percentage isn't particularly accurate since that should only account for an uptime increase of 50%, not 300%.
#12798 HeuristicsInc 01/21/2010 08:24 am
maybe there is an application that controls settings differently in different places... e.g. when you're home, connect to the wireless router and disable 3g, when you're not there activate it...
-bill
#12799 fluffy 01/21/2010 08:27 am
There are a few which do things like toggling WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. based on GPS coordinates, but I don't think Android OS provides a toggle API for 3G specifically, since all of the fast switcher widgets I see just put you on the applicable system preferences screen (so it takes two clicks instead of one and can't be automated or whatever).

The lack of a 3G toggle API is pretty glaring and puzzling, seeing as how 3G seems to constantly take much more power than many things that do have API toggles; there definitely are toggle APIs for wifi, data sync, GPS, screen brightness, and bluetooth - sure, at any given moment with active use they take more power than 3G but in the background they don't seem to take much at all).

It might be that this is part of the "3G bugs" I keep hearing people warn me about on the Nexus, though, since supposedly it only switches to 3G during an active data connection, which means it shouldn't take any more power in standby than 2G does. Hopefully they'll get this sorted in the next firmware.

For now, I'm fine with just keeping 3G off except for the times that I need faster mobile data, since it's not much of a pain to turn it back on temporarily, and the 3G GSM coverage around here isn't really that amazing anyway.
#12820 fluffy 01/28/2010 04:36 pm Re: Clock qua clock
markpasc:
Isn't Clock the app that's for pretending it's a desk clock when it's in a dock? That might be why it's called “Clock” (which is at least an explanation, if not a reason).
And now that the dock is available, yes, this is exactly what it does. Still a silly name for the app though, and somewhat strange lock-screen behavior.
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