Writing

Does the Nexus One have a nice camera?  Yes, it does.  My current mobile (Pantech Duo) has a shitty camera.  Even the cheap clamshell phone that I had prior to this one took better pictures.

As one does when one (or at least me) has a new camera to play with I ran around taking a lot of photos.  The plants, the house, the cats… lots of photos of the cats.  Mostly because they can’t really complain about the paparazzi treatment, all they can do is ignore me or walk away.

Merlin sitting on my desk chair

Dogwood blossoms

Lilac

Merlin at the window

They aren’t great photos, but they are fun photos.

There are more at my flickr site.

Don’t think, however, that if I got a Nexus One that I would abandon the DSLR.  Because I wouldn’t.  But I probably would start to take and post more photos on a daily basis because the Nexus One makes it so easy and quick to do so.

So I have had the Nexus One for a few days and have played with it extensively.

The touch screen is very nice and quite sensitive.  There is a trackball underneath the screen for people who are anti-touchscreen, but I never needed to use it.  Actually the touchscreen was so  sensitive  that I occasionally accidentally selected things when I was only trying to “flick” the screen in order to scroll it.

There is some nice feedback  when you touch-select something one of the function buttons below the screen – a nice little buzz beneath your finger to let you know that you hit the target.

The screen does have multi-touch capability (standard now, I suppose) and you can use several fingers to pinch or spread whatever you are looking at to either shrink or expand it.

The touch screen keyboard which I was so concerned about (I felt that I would be much more comfortable with a physical keyboard, which is why I was looking initially at the Droid) was not a problem at all.  It took me less then five minutes to get used to it.  The predictive typing was also a nice feature, though it did take me a little while to get used to it.

The apps.  I liked the apps.  I could get very very used to using a lot of apps.  Some apps I especially liked (that I need to remember for when I get an app phone of my very own):

• FxCamera: All kinds of seriously cool camera filters that mimic classic polaroid, holga, and diana cameras and their effects
• Aldiko: eReader and access to all sorts of browsable/downloadable libraries of free and public domain books.  Free books!  That I can read on the phone!  Can it really get any better then that?
• ColorNote: It should not surprise anyone at all that I found an app for to-do lists
• flickr by pixelpipe: upload photos right from the phone to flickr

Honestly, my only complaint would be about the lifespan of the battery, which was woefully short.  I had to plug it in to recharge over night, and it needed to spend a long time during the day powering off of my laptop.  Of course, I was playing with it almost constantly, so I am not sure how loudly to complain about the limited battery life.

Oh, the screen… I also have a complaint about how the screen looks when you are out using the phone in bright sunlight.  Basically the glare reflected off of the shiny, shiny screen overwhelms everything and it is tough to see what you are doing.  This is not a unique problem… it is shared by pretty much everything with a screen (laptops, kindles, GameBoys, etc…) and the people who want to use them outdoors.

Verdict:  Yes, please!

Really, it has been a while since I got this excited about any kind of new tech gadget.  I looked at the iPhone and while I thought that it was really interesting, I didn’t feel any drive to go out and get one (of course, I also didn’t get a chance to play with one for several days either).  I liked the Kindle a lot (I did get to play with one of those for a few days) and I want a Kindle, and I know that I will get one eventually, but I never felt the urge to run out and grab one.  This phone?  I want to run out and get one.

I think that the Nexus One is a great multi-tasker, I think that the user experience is great, and that it is a very simple and intuititive device to use.  I think that I could use some of the camera apps to really invigorate my photography and that they will give me the opportunity (and excuse) to do a lot more of the playing around and exploring that I wouldn’t necessarily do with my DSLR, because the DSLR is so much more of a serious tool.  I think that if I had this phone I would never again need to look at a purse and think “but can I fit a book in it?”.

Do I really have to wait until my AT&T contract expires in late July?  I don’t know if I want to wait more then three more months.  If the penalty fee isn’t too high, I might look into breaking my contract early.

I have in my possession a Nexus One.

I have been thinking about (more like planning on, really) upgrading my current phone considerably when my AT&T mobile contract is up in July and taking advantage of the “new contract discount” on a new phone.  (Because I am thrifty like that.)

I had had my eye on the Motorola Droid.  (Which would mean that I would need to dump AT&T in favor of Verizon and port my current phone number from the one mobile carrier to the other.)

One of my co-workers, who runs the mobile working group at work, told me that I should consider Google’s Nexus One.  He has a very nice “library” of mobile devices that he uses for testing/developing mobile applications.  Including a Nexus One.  Which he gave to me to try out.

It is mine for the rest of the week.  I can set it up with my Google account, add apps, and in short act like it is my own phone for the rest of the week.  At the end of the week, I will restore it to its factory settings and give it back.

All I have to do in exchange is write up a review of it for him.