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.

I installed Chrome like most techies have, just to have a play. I waited until the EULA issue had been resolved but, to be honest, this was more because I was busy rather than because the EULA particularly worried me.

Pros:

• It’s quick
• It looks pretty
• It really makes the migration from Firefox seamless
• It’s not IE

Cons:

• There is no way currently to synch bookmarks between machines (Google used to have a plug-in for Firefox so maybe we’ll see something like that). I currently use Foxmarks in Firefox.
• I can’t install it on a work machine.

This list of pros and cons will probably expand as I use Chrome more. Right now I am using it every now and again rather than trying to replace Firefox, it will be that way until there is a solution to syncing bookmarks.