mobile

The third week of using Android instead of iPhone is over, and it’s been largely uneventful. I think it’s taken this long to settle into the Nexus S just being my phone and using it normally, rather than it feeling like an experiment all of the time. That’s really helped prove to me the value of doing this. The only way to really understand an alternative to your current platform of choice, is to use actually use it. This isn’t something that you can experience by playing with phones in the shop, or by reading about someone else’s experience (even mine!).

I started this experiment for a couple of very specific reasons. The first was so that I could understand the Android user experience so that I could better design apps for it as a platform. The second was to give some thought to whether iOS or Android had any intrinsic advantage when it came to learning specific activity. The first is still a work in progress, and I’ve already learned a great deal. The second question I think I’ve already answered for myself; much like the old adage about cameras, the best device for learning is the one you have with you. It needs a little more thought, and that’s another post to be written once this four week experiment is complete.

I did say it was a largely uneventful week, but that wasn’t to say there was nothing significant to report. This week, I had the opportunity (which I took) to buy an HP Touchpad; you may be familiar with this as the WebOS powered device that HP launched and quickly cancelled earlier this year. Some enterprising souls have ported Android to run on it, and although it’s only an early alpha, I’ve been surprised how stable it is. Watch this space for more updates on this too!

My second week of Android usage is over, and it’s still a positive experience. Here are a few highlights.

I love the Share Menu! If you’ve never used Android, this is a global feature that allows you to share something from one app to another. It’s contextual, so only relevant apps show up in the menu. Selecting a link on a web page gives the option to share that link to my blog via the WordPress app, to Twitter using any of the Twitter apps I have installed, to my to do list in Remember the Milk, to email, Evernote or into a text message; and that’s just a few examples.

As a Google+ user, I like the fact that I can set that app to automatically upload all of my photos and videos as they’re taken. You can choose whether they’re automatically shared or not, and I’ve chosen the not option. This integration with Google’s services, like the interface differences between Android and iOS, is another topic that needs it’s own post to do it justice. I’ll cover them both when I get to the end of this four week experiment.

The biggest find of the last week for me has been Swype. It wouldn’t be exaggerating to say this has transformed the way I use a phone. Text input on mobile screens has always been painful, but Swype’s gesture recognition approach has completely changed that. I’m amazed by how quickly I can input big chunks of text, and suddenly my phone has become a useful note taking device! I did find that once you start to trust its ability to convert your gestures to text, you just relax and really pick up the pace. This was a similar experience to getting used to iOS’s automatic spell correction. Mind you, neither of them are perfect so proofreading is still required!

The most significant change in my own behaviour has been quite unexpected; I’ve almost completely stopped using my iPad. Previously, it was used daily for reading my RSS feeds, general surfing and anything internet related when I was sat on the couch after work. I’m now using the Nexus S instead. As I mentioned at the start of the four weeks, there is undoubtedly going to be some element of novelty and that may be a factor here, but there’s more to it than that. The large screen on the Nexus S and the easier input afforded by Swype make it, for me at least, a more usable all round device than the iPhone. It’s also fair to say that the iOS5 update seems to have made my iPad slower and buggy…

Regarding the phone itself – Battery life has been acceptable, but can’t compete with the iPhone 4. It does continue to outperform the iPhone in its ability to actually make and receive calls! I’ve also noticed that despite heavy usage, the screen on the Nexus S stays much cleaner than the iPhone. I probably wipe the Nexus screen one a day, whereas with the iPhone it was after almost every use. I don’t know if that’s to do with the quality of the screens or something to do with me!

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.