I took advantage of the free Nexus S at Best Buy yesterday. I’ve had an Iphone 3G for the last 3 years so it was a big upgrade for me even though the Nexus S is about 8 months old already. Granted if I had an Iphone 4 instead I probably wouldn’t have done this switch, but since I was still on a 3G, running IOS 3. something still (because of being jailbroken and unlocked) I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out the Android platform virtually risk free. I figured if I don’t like it I have 30 days to return the phone and go back to my old phone, in which case I’d probably wait for the next iphone. If I do end up liking it, I’ve upgraded to a great phone for free, so I couldn’t pass it up.
First impressions having only had it for one day:
- It’s big, quite a bit bigger than my 3G which in itself is pretty big
- Hardware is great, fast and responsive
-UI is going to take some getting used to, not as intuitive as IOS but I am enjoying learning about it. My friend just showed me about the widgets, I think it would have taken me a while to figure them out otherwise.
-Apps for android are different than the iphone ones – for whatever reason they don’t look or act the same as they do in iphone.
- I haven’t plugged it into my computer yet, but one of my concerns is that it won’t be as easy as the iphone. With the Iphone you just plug it in and Itunes and Iphoto take care of everything. I do like that everything syncs with google on its own, so this may be a non-issue, but we’ll have to check it out here the next few days.
- takes about 4 rings on the caller’s side for my phone to start ringing. I’ll have to look into this more, but I guess my callers will have to be patient for now.
-I like the non-obtrusive notifications, although I think I’ve gotten used to getting a text message –like notification for my apps on the iphone. We’ll have to see how this goes.
-Camera(s) are great. The 3g had a pretty crappy camera yet I still enjoyed using it, The Nexus S has two good cameras so I’m sure I’ll enjoy them a lot more.
- I am having problems with the orientation of the pictures though. I’ve gotten used to shooting in portrait mode, however with the new phone if I upload those to Facebook or Tumblr they show up sideways. I’ll have to get this figured out asap.
This post has gotten a bit longer than I thought it would, so I think I’ll end it here, and keep posting things I like and don’t like in the next few days/weeks and see how my Android experiment ends. I knew it would be different from IOS and would take getting used to so I’m going into this with an open mind. So far I’m not regretting my decision.
