Last week I posted here about my plan to spend the month using an Android phone, a Nexus S, instead of my iPhone 4.

I’ve jotted down here my thoughts after the first week. Bear in mind that these are impressions after seven days of use, and it’s quite possible that these views may change over the coming weeks. This is about regular daily use, not side by side testing.

Set Up

Considering that this is a Google phone and I use a whole bunch of Google services, such as Gmail, Calendar and Docs it’s no surprise that getting them all set up was incredibly easy. A couple of minutes after entering my ID and password and all my important data was synced to the phone.

I then spent a couple of hours looking through the apps on my iPhone and finding suitable replacements on Android. This was a two part process, because I also took the time to remove what was installed on the iPhone that I hadn’t used for a long time. Once the cull of unused apps was complete, it was pretty straightforward to find what I needed. As expected, in most cases the app was available on Android anyway (Evernote, Twitter, BBC News, etc.) and where it wasn’t I was easily able to find a suitable replacement (such as a planner for the London Underground). The only app that I didn’t add to the Nexus S was Docs To Go, partly because I didn’t want to pay for something I may not use very long, but mostly because on iOS I use it with Google Docs and Android already has a Docs app that does a better job.

Finding my Way Around

Although iOS and Android are quite different in many ways, there are enough similarities to make getting around pretty easy. Elsewhere, it was intuitive enough to work out what to do.

The most notable difference to get used to is that iOS apps usually keep their navigation on screen all the time (back buttons in the header are the norm) whereas Android has a dedicated back button. I want to spend more time thinking about the differences in convention between the two OSs, so I’ll write more about this later in the month.

Flash

The decision to give Android a go hadn’t changed my general feeling that HTML5 should be preferred to Flash for video, so I was initially disappointed to find that the iPlayer app required Flash. Still, I decided to give it a go, and as I watched a couple of shows it almost felt like a guilty pleasure! Quality was excellent, there was no lag (for reference, I was on wifi) the phone didn’t overheat or crash and I’m fairly sure that god didn’t kill any kittens just because I used Flash.

The Handset

Most of the other comments I have it this point may be more related to the handset than the OS, although sometimes it’s hard to completely separate them.

Screen – When I told a friend of mine about this experiment, he said that he couldn’t use another handset because the screen always looked blurry compared to the iPhone 4′s retina display, and I was a little worried about this before the Nexus S arrived. I needn’t have worried though; side by side the iPhone screen is definitely crisper, but in regular use I have no complaints about the screen on the Nexus S. In fact the extra real estate (4″ against the iPhone’s 3.5″) more than makes up for any difference in resolution.

Build Quality and Design – There’s no denying that the iPhone 4 is a thing of beauty, but the Nexus S is no ugly duckling either. I guess that really comes down to personal taste, so I’m not going to dwell on it now. One thing I must mention is that the iPhone 4 seems to be built like a tank; it’s been in my pocket or bag without a case for a year, been dropped about a dozen times and it doesn’t have a mark on it. The Nexus S doesn’t feel as robust to me, probably because it’s bodywork is plastic, but I guess the flip side is that any damage is easier and cheaper to repair! At the moment I’m waiting for a decent case.

Calls and Coverage – Without a doubt the Nexus S wins here. Despite all of the other things it does so well, for me the iPhone 4 has always been terrible as a phone. The Nexus S picks up a signal where the iPhone can’t, and I actually receive calls. One problem I’ve had with the iPhone from day one is that even when I do appear to have a signal, it often didn’t ring when people called, and I would then get a voicemail notification followed by a missed call message! It’s worth noting that the SIM card in the Nexus S is the one from my iPhone (in an adaptor to make it fit).

Battery Life – I’m reserving judgement on this for now, although I think the iPhone may be better. The reason I’m leaving this for the moment is that the Nexus S is my new toy, so it is getting used more than it would usually. It’s also worth noting that the iPhone does have a great battery, but I was only able to get the calendar app to work with Google Calendar by switching on push notifications, so it wasn’t that great.