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Ugly, Buggy, Slow

sixarm.com

48 pointsjph51 comments

I spend quality time with many phones. I've had a good amount of time to mess with nearly every flagship Android phone out there. I normally use an iPhone 4, but obtained a Nexus S. It's fantastic.

- Noticeable faster than the Nexus One/Droid Incredible/Droid X/myTouch 4G, perhaps due to 2.3 or the hardware, who knows. The one thing it makes clear to me is that not all 1 ghz Android devices are the same, or even similar in performance. Android and apps seem to be taking Apple's lead and tapping the GPU and other coprocessors more and more.

- It's a very attractive device to me, but I like minimalist design. It doesn't feel cheap at all, but I can see how people used to the iPhone 4 could feel that way.

- The curved screen isn't really a selling point, but it's a nice aesthetic and it fits your face better when on a call.

- I think that technically, it's thicker than the iPhone 4, but it seems thinner to me, perhaps due to the rounded edges.

- The display is beautiful. The Retina display doesn't compare at all. The NS's colors are beautiful and the added 0.5" screen size really helps. As an aside, the screen seems closer in size to the iPhone as opposed to a 4.3" device like the Droid X or Evo. - It doesn't feel cheap to me at all, but I can see where other people used to the iPhone 4 are coming from.

- The Android keyboard is still far behind the iPhone's. Far. Fortunately, I have the Swype Beta and it works great on the Nexus S. I think Swype blows away everything else, including the iPhone keyboard. It's hard convincing my brain that Swype doesn't count as a killer app.

- I have not experienced any lag whatsoever. The thing is a rocket.

- No AT&T 3G sucks, but I'm rarely out of wifi range and don't listen to streaming media on the go. I save on battery life (3G uses more power). That said, if an AT&T 3G version came out, I'd Ebay this in a heartbeat and get it, if only for infrequent tethering.

- Google Maps/Navigation works wonderfully on EDGE due to the new vector-based scheme. Formerly, on other devices, EDGE couldn't always keep up in Google Nav, so I'd be driving across a blank screen.

- No LED for notification. This probably won't bug iOS users a lot, but it'd be nice to have. Many people suggest NoLED as an alternative, but I found it inelegant and uninstalled it.

- Text input on Android is still a mess. How you copy/paste or select text, or in some cases type depends on the app you're in. It's not even sane across Google apps.

- The camera photos are adequate. You can take a good picture of an 8.5x11" piece of paper and read all the text. It's not as good as the iPhone 4, though. Autofocus could improve slightly. The camera (and video camera) perform pretty well in low light.

- I like that the search button is usually contextual in the app you're in.

- Google Maps. The iPhone currently cannot compete at all.

- Overall I'm left with the impression that this is a more capable device than the iPhone. I can do a whole lot more with it.

- Battery life is very good. Not quite as good as what I get with the iPhone 4 but very close. It's very good, unlike the mytouch 4g, Evo, Incredible, etc.

- According to a Google engineer's tweet, this device is not capable of 720p video. The SoC isn't capable, and there wasn't enough room on the board to add a media processor. If I find the direct link, I'll update this post. The 480p video is very smooth, and I assume 30fps. It's very smooth, unlike the crappy 20-25fps of many other Android devices.

- Again, no AT&T 3G like the T-Mobile Vibrant is oddly capable of. I'm using my AT&T micro-SIM is a DIY adapter, but I've also tried an AT&T SIM from an Android device. The Vibrant's trick ain't working here.

- As of now, NFC is completely useless. You can turn it off, much like wifi, its a checkbox in the settings. Yeah sure, NFC will be on every phone in a year, but I have no desire to further integrate myself with advertisers, and at a time when I'm considering using cash instead of my debit card, e-payments aren't all that attractive either. At some point, I hope some interesting hacker/maker projects bubble up to make this useful.

- At this point, it's not clear to me how NFC tags are better than QR codes. I can post or reproduce QR codes anywhere, even on the web. I don't have to be at a specific physical location to scan it. For now, I'll just stick with QR codes.

I'd be happy to answer any questions people have, drop me a reply.

As a point of disagreement, coming from the Nexus One, other than the comment about the phone feeling a bit cheap due to the plastic body, everything else on the phone seems fantastic.

The screen is beautiful, responsive, and I don't see any fishbowl effects. The curve of the screen is actually really nice because it both makes it easier to reach the top of the screen and makes it noticeably more comfortable when making calls. The colors on the screen are amazing: the black notification bar even matches the black housing so well that it literally looks like the notification icons are displayed on the plastic shell rather than the screen itself.

To me, the Nexus S is noticeably faster than the Nexus One, in both software and network speed, and I rarely notice any jitters. I've made plenty of calls with the phone already and have never had the dialog error he describes. All of the hardware buttons work perfectly fine for me, so if he does indeed have a broken phone, that shouldn't be a knock against the Nexus S itself, only Samsung. And how is lacking tech support (which is par for the course with Google-designed phones) being listed under "buggy"?

Agreed. I'm very impressed with the screen, and haven't had any problems with the buttons. I had been trying out a myTouch (also Android-based) and like the Nexus S a lot better.

>And how is lacking tech support (which is par for the course with Google-designed phones) being listed under "buggy"?

It increases the impact of the bugs.

It does? I think you'll have better luck reporting bugs and getting them resolved with the Nexus S than you would with say a Verizon Droid X where you've got to 1) figure out WHO you report the bug to as an end user, and 2) ensure it makes its way through the hall of fingerpointing so that it will get to an engineer who can fix it.

It might be a defective phone. Plastic housings almost always have a cheap feel no matter how well they are built. I recently got a droid x which has a metal housing which is actually kind of nice as it just feels well built.

This article is amateur hour. Let me show you...

This is one of the examples given why the nexus s is "Ugly":

"The software has a pervasive lime green and flourescent orange color theme. Some people may like this; I personally prefer more subtle colors and will change the theme."

And here is one on why it is "Buggy":

"Tech support is non-existent so far. T-Mobile doesn't support this phone because it's a Best Buy exclusive, but Best Buy just says "you'll need to ask Google"."

And finally one of the reasons it is "Slow":

"T-Mobile says my Nexus S needs service to fix the broken Home button, which means mailing the phone to Google and waiting for Google to mail back a replacement phone. This could take several days or more, which is much slower than a normal same-day in-store T-Mobile replacement."

What do you mean it's amateurish?

Writing style != the importance and truth value of points made. So is he wrong or not?

Btw, color theme, look and feel, tech support, service: all of them important.

There's not enough here to draw your own conclusions about the phone -- it is simply a personal reaction and reads as such. Better reviews are more detailed, and balance the pros and cons to make a recommendation one way or the other.

I've read a lot of reviews of tech. Basically, if the device breaks down during the review that is what gets written. Then it's up to the PR or someone in the company to get a replacement out right now. This is how it is at Consumer reports, Engadget or NYT.

I agree with the 'amateurish'. There simply is no logic that goes:

1. I don't like the colors, so the device is ugly.

2. Tech support is bad, so the product is buggy.

3. Getting a replacement takes days, so the product is slow.

All of them are valid things to mention, but not under those headers. #2 and #3 could go under a separate heading "support is poor", #1 should be a personal note that would gain more power if the review mentioned that 8 out of 10 people agreed with that (while mentioning their age group, gender, etc). As it is it is just anecdotal, just like the famous 'iPod ... Lame' remark was.

I have one main point that bothers me about 99% of multitouch phones they're making these days (and the reviewer says this is present on the Nexus S too): they still haven't figured out scrolling properly. How can it be that my first iPhone had stellar scrolling with no real slowdown, and so many years later no competitor product seems to have nailed it also?

This is absolutely my #1 complaint about android after going from an iPhone to a nexus one. Even though the hardware is probably 4x more powerful than my old iPhone, the scrolling still manages to be significantly slower and less accurate. With the iPhone the illusion is complete - that your finger is connected to something physical that you can move effortlessly. With android you are acutely aware that you are working with a rough approximation of something physical. It may or may not behave as you intend.

I assume Apple got there first and filed as many patents as they could.

That hasn't stopped Google from adding multi-touch.

Another thing that bothers me is that many (expensive) phones feel like being made from cheap plastic.

So I'm inclined to believe that many phone makers are just clueless imitators.

The Samsung Captivate (AT&T's Galaxy S) is very well made and still very thin.

Another thing that bothers me is that many (expensive) phones feel like being made from cheap plastic.

That's because they are made from cheap plastic.

I'd really love to know why on earth they don't use better materials on all of their high-end phones.

I mean, sometimes they get it right and use a nice rubberized material. And then they blow it again, like on the Galaxy S where the plastic back-over is a harsh insult to the otherwise excellent hardware.

Is that rubberized plastic really so much more expensive?

You don't need to reach to the expensive glass or metal to make a phone feel less like a kids toy!

I don't understand why they make phones like the Samsung Captivate out of slippery smooth plastic. Phones are for holding not for squirting out like a bar of soap.

No GPU acceleration.

Actually i haven't seen any scrolling performance issues on Nexus S so far.

"they still haven't figured out scrolling properly"

Probably because 'proper scrolling' isn't something you can log a job ticket in trac to get addressed by a developer at some point.

It's likely so tied into OS performance that it has to exist at very nearly the top of the hierarchy of goals/needs.

I'm sure it does at Apple... it's a reflection of their DNA.

I'm convinced that the overriding factor in there not being Flash on iOS is because when they were making the first gen iPhone, they would not have been able to get the browser to scroll 'snappily' if they entertained the notion of including the plugin.

I agree with what you said, but that makes me rephrase my question to: so why isn't it on other companies DNA yet? I mean, it's not like the model isn't working at Cupertino. If you're going to imitate something, at least imitate the things that make people trust a device.

  * no slowdowns
  * consistent UI
  * simplicity/flexibility

I'm curious as to whether the Windows Phone 7 devices scroll smoothly, in many ways their phone team seems to be working closer to the Apple-way than the Google-way.

Windows 7 uses the GPU for its interface, so I'm guessing it is smoother than Android.

They are smoother indeed - I was very surprised when I first tried one out a few weeks ago.

I was just fumbling with a Windows Phone 7 and I must say, I’m really, really impressed. Everything is extremely polished, the aesthetics are crisp and fresh and it’s damn fast. It feels like a typical modern smartphone, yet it is clear from the first moment you turn it on that it is quite unlike an iPhone or Android phone. (Funny enough, the only thing I didn’t quite like is its behavior when you reach the end of a list. It’s springy but lacks the enthusiastic bounciness of the iPhone.)

It was clearly developed with an eye for detail, not the list with features. I often think that Android is exactly the other way around. (I can’t blame Google, though. I’m not even sure whether what Google is doing is wrong in any way. I happen to prefer small details to a huge list of features but that’s just me. I don’t know what the majority of people want.)

Microsoft deserves to be lauded for its mobile OS efforts. The sad news for Microsoft is that even though I like Windows Phone 7 a lot I probably won’t buy one any time soon. The ecosystem just doesn’t feel right (yet?).

Unfortunately, this kind of dedication to polish requires authoritative leadership. Someone has to be willing to say "no, I will not ship it in this condition". And, that feedback has to happen throughout the development process, not just at the end.

Jobs' autocratic leadership has many flaws, but it also makes this kind of gatekeeping possible. I can't think of another major corporation in the mobile space that has a single decision maker who is both involved in development decisions as well as go-to-market timing.

It's because android does not take advantage of the GPU to render the scrolling effect. The iPhone does. This was a design decision early on, and has caused plenty of ire.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914

Another reason this was a poor decision is that since the phone has to use the main CPU to render the scrolling effect, the battery drains very quickly while scrolling through a webpage. Scrolling around on webpages for around 20 minutes usually drains my battery 25% or more on my HTC EVO.

Rumor is that android will use the GPU for its UI in honeycomb, and looking at the tablet they were showing off, the effects and scrolling looked very fluid.

Re: the battery drain Is the EVO that much of a power hog? How much of that do you think battery usage is just the screen vs. the scrolling effect?

On my HTC Incredible, I can scroll through webpages / browse the web for many hours, provided I'm connected to wifi. On 3G, definitely a little less.

I don't notice any egregious problems on my HTC Incredible. Or, any scrolling problems at all actually.

Not only that, but no one has been able to nail the physics of it either. The elastic snap back at the top of lists (I'm not sure if Android has this, but the cheap Samsung phones do) is very unnatural, and slow.

Andriods don't use the elastic band effect. 2.3 apparently has a new effect where as you approach the end of a list, the background starts changing colour slightly. This continues as you try scrolling past the end. Anandtech says it's vaguely reminiscent of watching stressed plastic.

I care more what my phone does-- than whether or not it has a slightly lower framerate while scrolling lol.

Well, great for you. It does not invalidate the article conclusion, and I quote: "The Nexus S feels half-baked. It's not an iPhone-killer, and in my opinion it's not a must-have phone..."

I am going to change my HTC Hero soon and read lot's of reviews for new Android phones. Am I the only one who sees the title of this review plain WRONG?

Ugly? Does not seems to be ugly to me.

Buggy? 1st problem is with T Mobile, 2nd and 3rd are some bugs which every new OS release has(this is first Gingerbread phone), 4th problem is well - not a problem.

Slow? 1) Scrolling - perhaps software fix. 2) T-Mobile 3) 3G or 4G - when you buy the phone I suppose you know you are buying 3G phone, no?

If you've got your own opinions nobody is going to convince you otherwise :)

Personally I don't like the look and feel of Galaxy S, and I guess this phone is no different.

Well I would say 'significantly different' from the pictures I've seen. Same materials used though so you might have a point there.

Another review, which calls it "the best Android device available right now": http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/10/nexus-s-review/

Tech support is non-existent so far. T-Mobile doesn't support this phone because it's a Best Buy exclusive, but Best Buy just says "you'll need to ask Google".

This could be a really big problem for the phone - sounds like the same exact tech support woes that lots of Nexus One owners reported. In 2010 how do companies not realize how detrimental it is to the customer experience to not provide an easy, clear way to get support for a product?

The data speed is terribly slow compared to the other new T-Mobile phones like the MyTouch 4G. This is because the Nexus S uses the older, slower network (3G-speed HPSA) whereas the MyTouch 4G uses the newer, faster network (4G-speed HPSA+).

Don't you need to pay extra each month for T-Mobile's 4G/HPSA+?

No it is just apart of their network, if you are in the area that has it, you get it for free if your phone supports it.

As far as support, I agree it is an issue but not one for me. I love my Nexus One and have had no issues, but then again I am not a typical user and honestly without a more mainstream approach the Nexus phones aren't meant for regular users.

Samsung does not know how to make phones. I got burned bad on the Galaxy S and this one looks like a continuation of that line.

What was it that you didn't like about it?

For one the plastic casing was as cheap as you can get. I dropped my phone once while getting out of my car less then a foot off the ground and the thing looked like I threw it against the wall.

Second the gps did not work, this was not an uncommon issue, so uncommon that T-Mobile replaced my phone no questions asked for a G2.

Third the software they put on the phone, while not an issue for this phone, was slow, buggy and hard crashed my phone at least once a week. This coming from the G1, running community build roms, which hard crashed maybe twice in the 2 years I owned it.

Samsung was also notoriously slow in releasing the Froyo update for their phones

Correction: IS slow in releasing Froyo. Still don't have it for my Mesmerize.

Here's a fix for the GPS problem:

http://cellphonesignal.net/google-nexus-s-a-gps-system-leaks...

Thats interesting the Nexus S has the same issue. And while this fix put a band-aid on the problem it in no way fixed the issue at all. And sometimes it actually made it worse.

I think the product seems technically very good, but it has this weird cheap quality to it. I've noticed that HTC's phones feel and look more solid. I'm not sure why, maybe Samsung needs more investment in material sciences and design?

The only problem with the Galaxy S is the buggy software it was released with and the appalling length of time it took Samsung to get Froyo out the door. I'm running it with JPU Froyo and it's a lovely bit of kit.

I can't speak for the Nexus S but the Galaxy S is pretty splendid hardware.

I really wonder what your complaints are (about the hardware) because it's the most beautiful non-iPhone that I've seen to date.

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