Mike Wilks' Blog

I ordered a Nexus One during the announcement event and I’ve had it a couple of days now. I got it to replace my iPhone 3G (not S) which is looking slightly long in the tooth now. Initial thoughts:

Positives

• It is blazing fast compared to the iPhone 3G.
• The screen is much crisper and colours pop more.
• The gMail client is infinitely better than the mail on the iPhone.
• No more 10Mb download limit on podcasts over 3G !
• Voip over 3G with Sipdroid and localphone.com is a killer app. That said SipDroid doesn’t seem to like localphone direct so I need to configure pbxes.org which will hopefully give better results.

Negatives

• I really miss 1Password – hopefully there is an Android version before too long.
• Multi-touch is not there on the standard apps. Not a huge thing but muscle memory keeps trying to do it.
• Bookmark sync with safari is going to take some getting used to not having. That said Crossmarks mobile site as a replacement is working pretty well so far.

I’m currently on the O2 Simplicity for iPhone tariff so I thought I better tell them I no longer had an iPhone. In theory the normal Simplicity tariff has more minutes and texts than the iPhone one but in reality I never get anywhere near using them.  Calling O2 just led to confusion. Once I got across what I wanted to do they initially told me that I should move to Simplicity 20 – but only if I was sure I wasn’t going back to iPhone. Eventually after he struggled with the system for 5 minutes while I was on hold he advised me to leave it as is. If there’s any come back about me being on the wrong tariff I might need to request they listen to the tape!

The phone is unlocked so I guess I need to look through the Sim only deals out there. O2 is not a great signal where I live but does seem to be properly unlimited data (at least they have never complained). I spend at least as much time away from home as at home so I can just about live with 3 bars of 2G at home. Vodafone is a much better 2G signal (in fact we can see the 2G only tower) but has a pathetic 500Mb limit as does Orange. That said at least I could just about get a 3G signal on Orange at home. I really do not understand how they are allowed to advertise 500Mb as unlimited. 3 and T-Mobile are complete non-starters as there is no signal at home. Decisions decisions, my Vodafone 3G data contract is up in a couple of months just to complicate things, the Mifi I use in theory means I need less phone data when I travel.

More updates as I live with the phone a bit longer.

A decent Skype application on the iPhone would be the killer App, bar none. Whilst there is still no official Skype client for the iPhone there are a number of third party applications which have various levels of Skype functionality.
All of the clients out there have two very annoying restrictions which, for me, reduce the proposition of Skype on the iPhone. What’s worse there is nothing even an official iPhone App from Skype can do about them.

1. None of the applications will allow you to make Skype calls over anything other than Wifi. I wonder how much influence the network carriers have had over this apparent Apple imposed restriction.
2. Apps cannot run in the background on the iPhone so even if you are at home or in another place where you have constant wifi you will still miss inbound calls unless you have one of the Apps open at all time. To be honest though if you are at home you may as well have Skype open on your Mac or PC.

The iPhone Skype capable applications I can find include:

• Fring
• IM+ for Skype
• Nimbuzz
• TruPhone

Functionally their coverage is not the same, the table below shows the major differences. IM+ for Skype is not compared here because it works in a different way, described below.

[TABLE=4]

IM+ for Skype is different because it uses a callback model where you enter your mobile number and Skype calls you (at a cost) even for outbound calls. This is the same model as the Skype Mobile Lite products and makes little sense to me. The only use I can see for it is for making international calls where the cost of the Skype mobile call is less than the cost of the international call you want to make. If you are on a subscription then the Skype To Go functionality seems like an easier and cheaper alternative.

Of these clients Truphone seems to have the best call quality, with Fring being very laggy and Nimbuzz being somewhere in between. Right now there is no perfect Skype client for the iPhone, sad but true. I don’t have great hopes for the much hyped (and little officially confirmed) Skype client because of the inherent iPhone restrictions and the fact that their other mobile clients are so restricted.

If you jailbreak your iPhone then things get a little better. There is an application to work around the wifi only restriction as well as one to let you run apps in the background. My iPhone isn’t jailbroken so I am stuck with these restrictions, rumour has it they kill your battery anyway.