Just Became a Gingerbread Man - My Nexus S Upgrade

I received an unexpected gift yesterday, the latest and greatest "pure Android" phone, the Google Nexus S and its interesting curved screen. When it was announced a few weeks back I wasn't sure if I was going to upgrade or not - I had planned to drop by a local Best Buy to check out a demo unit. But receiving a freebie certainly solved that dilemma for me...and boy, now that I've used it a bit I would have gladly paid for the upgrade myself.

Probably the biggest improvement is the overall speed of the device. My Nexus One was and still is no slouch in this regard, but the Nexus S puts it to shame in just about every way. I'm not sure if it's the upgraded hardware or the optimizations that were made in the latest Android version (Gingerbread) that made the big difference - probably a combination of both. But routine tasks such as web browsing and downloading/installing applications are much faster than ever before.

The other major improvement is the substantial increase in the amount of available "Internal Storage". The Nexus S ships with 16GB of flash memory and devotes a portion of that to "internal storage", which hold apps and app-related data; and the bulk of it to external "USB Storage" - this is in lieu of allowing for a user-replaceable SD card. Some people have griped about the lack of an SD slot, but 16GB is quite a bit of storage and so I don't think this is a very big deal. But what's really nice about this is that the amount of internal storage the Nexus S sets aside (~1GB) is so generous that I never have to worry about overloading my device with apps and running into the dreaded "low memory" errors. On the Nexus One I always tried to always stay above 20MB of free memory so that I didn't run into this problem, but after setting up the Nexus S and installing the exact same set of apps it showed me that I still had over 800MB of internal memory available. So now I can go on my merry way and start installing new apps with reckless abandon again!

Some of the other niceties on the Nexus S are:

• The Super AMOLED screen is not only gorgeous but actually usable in bright sunlight. This was one of my biggest gripes with the Nexus One's screen, especially when attempting to shoot daytime photos and videos.
• The call quality through the headset seems to be stellar, better than on the Nexus One.
• Real (vs. quasi) multi-touch capability allows me to take advantage of some of the newer apps such as the uber-cool Google Maps V5 with its 3D rendering.
• The new Gingerbread keyboard works better and is more user-friendly than the prior Froyo version, though probably still not in the same league as the iPhone 4.
• Built-in support for 3rd-part VoIP (SIP) providers - this is useful mostly for geeks like me, but now I don't have to install a separate SIP application when needing to do Wi-Fi calling while traveling overseas or if I'm in a bad reception area.
• Near Field Communication (NFC) support. This is the first device I'm aware of that supports NFC, so we'll wait and see how useful this will be over time.
• Oh, did I say the Nexus S is fast? :-)

Okay, now a few Nexus S downsides:

• The omission of an LED light and a trackball/trackpad - the latter is not a big deal to me since the only time I ever used the Nexus One's trackball was when I needed to position the cursor within a block of text - Gingerbread handles this pretty well now without that need for it. I do, however, miss not having the LED notification as it was a very useful way of letting me know when I received an email or text without having to turn on the screen.
• Because it uses a plastic vs. metal backing it doesn't feel quite as solid as the Nexus One, but I don't find this as bothersome as some of the other reviewers. Also, taking off the back cover in order to get to the battery or SIM card takes more work than on the Nexus One.
• Lack of 4G support - This is the major reason why I would not have purchased the phone on my own. Though 4G availability on T-Mobile is not yet widespread, it would have been nice to include this support in order to make the device more future-proof. On the other hand, 3G speeds are pretty good and noticeably faster than on the Nexus One, and I guess not having 4G saves me the $15/month that T-Mobile inexplicably dings their customers for using that service.

Overall I'm very happy with the device and will definitely hold onto it for awhile.

I'm Loving my Froyo

Being the Android fanboy that I am, I was eager to install the latest and greatest 2.2 release (aka Froyo) that just became available over the weekend onto my Nexus One. After several days of playing around with the release I have to say that there are some really nice new features and enhancements, but most of them are relatively small and so I wouldn't say the release is a "must have" for everybody. However, for those techno-geeks like me it is a worthwhile upgrade. Among some of the niceties are:

• Built-in tethering support: This is the feature I've been eagerly anticipating. You can now configure your Android device to be a MiFi and save yourself the 50 bucks a month you're currently spending with your carrier. You can also tether to your device via USB, and if you're using Windows 7 then it just plain works without your having to install additional software or drivers...and no cheesy Dial-Up Networking config either.
• The home screen has a few subtle but useful changes. Shortcuts to the phone and browser apps now appear on the lower section of each home screen, making it easier to launch both apps without having to search for their specific icons. The search bar has also been enhanced to allow you to limit your searches to just websites, applications or contacts.
• Voice search appears to be quite a bit more accurate than before. You also now have the ability to select several different languages/dialects for voice search.
• Battery life seems to have improved a bit as well, although it's hard to quantify.
• The entire OS seems a bit more responsive than before. I've read some benchmark reports indicating that Froyo is up to 5 times faster than Eclair (2.1). I'm certainly not seeing a 5x improvement, but nonetheless the speed improvement is noticeable and appreciated.
• You now have the option to auto-update any of your downloaded/purchased apps when new versions become available.
• For those like me who are rapidly turning grey, the Gmail app finally supports scalable fonts. Why you can't use pinch-to-zoom across all apps is still beyond me, though...come on Google.
• Flash support: Finally! And it seems to work pretty well as best as I can tell.
• I also found out about this send-to-phone Chrome extension and Android app that let's you instantly send a web page or Google Map from your PC to your Android device, a la Jack Bauer on 24. Very cool indeed!