@symesc: I just switched from an iPhone to a N1 for the same reason. An inferior phone for a dozen reasons- but a switch I plan to stick with, for now.
My hopes and expectations for Android on the N1 were about here (holds hand 12 inches off of desk).
After two days with it I honestly had a headache. It just didn't work the way I thought it would, after having spent the better part of 3 years on iPod Touch and iPhone. Maybe the headache was my brain creating new neural pathways? Regardless, my opinion was here (hand 6 inches off of desk).
This was my trough of disillusionment. I even cheated. I turned on my now-SIM-less iPhone and checked my twitter feed. I felt dirty. Used.
Then something clicked. First I was finding things I could do with Android that I couldn't do with iPhone. Things like downloading 20mb+ podcasts without connecting to my Mac. Things like finding apps like AppBrain that create meaningful recommendations for me. Things like putting widgets on the screen instead of just icons. And the ease of multitasking? Sigh. My impression of this platform is now here (hand 24 inches above desk).
This is not to say there aren't issues. My battery life is terrible and I'm actively experimenting with ways to change this. Overall the Android platform is "scruffier" than iPhone, and by that I mean moving from one app to the next can be jarring from a usability perspective.
But that's part of what I like about Android. If the iPhone is like the suburbs, rows and rows of consistent housing and 2.2 children, Android is like living downtown where the action is. Sure it's dangerous. And now I wouldn't want to have my wife and kids down there after hours. They have iPhones and iPods. Safer that way.
But I'm not going back the burbs. In fact, I gave my iPhone away to a buddy who had his stolen. I don't miss it.
If Apple delivers something equally as compelling to my inner geek, great, I'll get one. Until then, I have never been happier with my phone.
Don't get me wrong, there things I prefer, even over a jailbroken iPhone- especially the notifications system. That's genius, IMHO.
My trough is the Facebook app- I went from making a few photo posts a day, mostly of my kid, to one or two over the last two weeks. Never bothered to update Feacebook until I got an iPhone- it's rough enough on Android that I've stopped.
1. the navigation app is better than what you can get on iPhone (use it almost every day) 2. Native Google Voice App 3. 5 megapixel camera phone (for me this was the threshold where I never carry a separate digital camera anymore, 5MP is enough for facebook) 4. I can use t-mobile instead of AT&T
Given the software isn't quite as good, these 4 features make it about a tie with the iPhone in my opinion. The fact Apple is irritating me lately makes the N1 a win.
I was impressed by the iPhone's camera, but that's only because I was coming from an HTC Mogul, which had a horrible 2MP camera.
That I can (mostly) do what I want with my N1 without relying on a jailbreak is what makes the N1 a win, overwhelmingly. That said, it is ironic and frustrating that your warranty is voided when you unlock your bootloader, a part of rooting a N1. It doesn't matter if there is dust under the screen, they see the "unlocked" icon and turn down warranty requests.
At least, they were- I'd love to hear that things have changed... Unless that changes I won't be rooting my N1, and I'm glad I didn't do that first thing- I just had to send my two week old N1 in for a swap to HTC because of dust under the screen. :/
Of course, your mileage may vary. :-)
I heard the same thing from several other people about the N1. I ended up buying it anyway - I really needed a smartphone, and I'd never been quite willing to go for the iPhone, mainly because of what my friends told me about their monthly bills (I like to prepay on a fixed-rate plan and not have to think about it).
So I was pleasantly surprised to find how easy everything was, apparently because it was all new for me. battery life was the only thing that upset me at first, but after juggling setting a bit I'm happy with that. Haven't had a problem with the other things, other than the flaky touch sensing - I'm pretty sure this is a software problem, because when I run into it (once ever 2-3 days) I've gotten into the habit of sleeping and waking the phone with the top button, which seems to fix it.
The poster above is right about it being a little 'scruffy' in terms of not having a completely smooth user experience...but like him, I'm OK with that because I like having a pocket computer rather than an appliance. It reminds me of the home computer v. game console debate in the 80s, actually, with Android as in the role of MSX.
Could you elaborate on that? Everybody I know who has an N1 loves it...
1) Lack of an integrated mail tool. I really don't care so much about POP/IMAP folder integration but why do I need two email apps, one for Gmail and one for IMAP. The stock IMAP client sucks for that matter and I've had a lot better luck with Jesse Vincent's K9Mail fork off the core mail app.
2) The pull down notification bar seems clunky. On one hand it's nice to see at a glance all the things that happened on my phone while I wasn't using it. However when "you have unread mail" or "missed call" is mixed in with "XYZ song is playing" it gets sort of muddled.
3) Deleting an app is quite possibly the most unintuitive thing on the whole phone. If you're used to just hitting an "X" on the home screen from the iPhone you're in for a disappointment.
None of these are dealbreakers for me and in general I am still very satisfied with my N1. However it seems to me that Android is still very much a platform for hackers. For example, Android has a running process list with an option to kill tasks on the phone. Not so on the iPhone, because the OS developers clearly decided their users shouldn't even have to think about this.
Android does not have this. There are third party applications that do task management, however the word "placebo" applies to most advocates of them, and user task management should never be necessary. If the system needs resources it dehydrates tasks and terminates them, and this is a cardinal foundation of the platform.
The new iPhone multitasking system works in a very similar manner to how Android has always worked, it should be mentioned.
>Lack of an integrated mail tool. I really don't care so much about POP/IMAP folder integration but why do I need two email apps, one for Gmail and one for IMAP.
Because the gmail app has different features and functions?
> Deleting an app is quite possibly the most unintuitive thing on the whole phone.
Now this is just weird. The most obviously way to uninstall an app is to simply go into downloads (where you installed it) and pick uninstall. The second to go into applications in settings and uninstall.
Your gripes are seemingly that you've been mentally debilitated by using the iPhone, and now you use everything relative to how the iPhone works.
If I go to "Applications > Settings > Running Services" on a stock 2.1 Android phone I get a list of running tasks with their corresponding package names. Tapping one of them terminates the task. It's not "top" but it's still pretty close to a process manager.
A user shouldn't have to care that "com.google.process.gapps" is running "MailSyncAdapterService."
>Because the gmail app has different features and functions?
OK, that's fair, so merge them into one app and have it display gmail accounts in an enhanced manner. It simply seems counterintuitive to have two applications for the task of reading email.
That gives you get a list of running services. Further, in no way is a user ever directed to go there for any reason. You have no reason to ever go into that screen.
And I use it for this sort of thing frequently. Most services pull down battery life considerably.
It communicates with Exchange Web Services, just like every other Exchange integrating smartphone product. It isn't "scraping Outlook".
>And I use it for this sort of thing frequently.
I've never, ever touched it.
>Most services pull down battery life considerably.
Sure. How, exactly, have you measured this?
- GTalk
- Android Keyboard .
- BatteryLife
With these services up, my Droid loses maybe 40% of its battery life in a day (with minimal usage.)
While I sleep, it rarely consumes more than 10%. The counterexamples have been when I've left the Pandora Service running, as well as the Email Sync service.
So, I test it by enabling the service, changing nothing else about my usage, and watching my battery life take a nosedive.
And on the subject of what exactly it's doing, that's roughly the explanation I got from my friends on the Windows side. We have Exchange disabled outside the firewall, so my phone has to hit up OWA to get the data. Is Exchange Web Services an API available from OWA, but separate from the HTML? It's my understanding that my phone is in fact scraping the HTML.
Frequently in configurations, WebDAV access, Web Services access and ActiveSync are all enabled when OWA is enabled for the Exchange server. It is only in rare conditions when you will see OWA enabled and not one of the three.
The first week, I followed the party line- I didn't touch a task manager. And the first week I was seeing 20% of my battery drained by 10 AM in the morning while using it for under 15 minutes since I pulled it off the charger.
I never manage processes or services. I use apps and leave them and allow Android to manage the lifecycle.
Has the OS been fixed such that it monitors CPU and network radio usage by background processes? Task killing isn't done to reclaim the RAM (which, as you note, the OS handles itself), it's to ensure that poorly-written programs don't waste your battery without your control or knowledge.
iPhoneOS 4.0 gets around this by only allowing apps in the background to use a tightly defined set of APIs, the actual processing code of which is written entirely by Apple, so they have full control over their effect on battery life.
@ergo98: Please elaborate. Even if I concede that my problems with multitasking are imaginary, I'd love to find out how I can enable built-in support for Exchange calendaring, copy from emails, and make the N1's screen readable in bright sunlight... Believe me, I'd love to find out there was just a preference I missed!
(replying here because I can't reply to your comment directly)
The N1 has flaws, but many of your complaints are hilariously wrong. The fact that you give pronouncements on multitasking borders on comical, as you have no understanding about how Android's multitasking works.
I understand how Android's multitasking is supposed to work, but in my experience it isn't up to snuff. From your tone, I imagine you'd ask me to put up with a sluggish phone rather than doing something to deal with it. Maybe it'll get better in 2.2.
The iPhone 3GS is an inferior phone for a dozen reasons. In fact it could be called crippled.
Which limitations would those be?
>but an objective user would be hard pressed to call it inferior
It is absolutely inferior in at least a dozen ways. It is superior in a variety of other ways (polish), however I am simply using the same phrasing that you used relative to the N1.