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Nexus 4/Android — first impressions
Mar. 8th, 2013 02:48 amSo, two days using my new nexus 4. How am I finding it? To utterly pare it down, the answer is that I'm finding the use of the phone, the OS and suchlike, much smoother, faster to do the things I want to do, but I'm missing the quality apps of the iPhone.
The Good: I've actually adjusted to android far faster than I was expecting; I assumed there'd be more of an adjustment period, and whilst the gesture typing looked cool, I expected a while during which I found it hard to use, due to finding it annoying when I tried it a few times in phone shops.
I'm currently typing this on my phone and doing so quickly and easily — much quicker and less effort than the iPhone keyboard despite me having three and a half years experience of that. I'm certainly occasionally mistyping, sometimes not spotting mistakes until several words later (like the fact I've just noticed I had 'topping' not 'typing' as the third word in this paragraph). It's not perfect; the cursor placing is less good (though I think I've just discovered the not immediately intuitive secret to that, grabbing the blue cursor insert itself for fine placing), it requires a bit more thought for longer and complicated words add you need to have more of an idea where you're going right from the start of the word and it took me three tries to get the word 'perfect' correct just now, but overall, it's much better.
Beyond that, the OS just plain *does* more. The back and app switching buttons, the two finger gestures, widgets, lots of things. One of the issues with Apple is that they're so worried about overwhelming their less technical users that they don't make enough use of what technology can do — for ages I found it annoying that a phone with good multitouch capabilities did fuck all with them except zoom and some specific accessibility options for usage with visual impairments. The Nexus feels like it's doing a lot more with what is got than the iPhone did.
The Bad: Firstly, the office assists to lack a basic preloaded notes/text app. What the fuck is with that? Due to internet issues and wanting to have somewhere to save this when in done, I'm currently writing this in Dropbox's text editor app (as I was having internet issues, and Google drive won't let me make a new file when not connected). I know Google is done of the cloud but that seems a very conspicuous lack.
Just generally, there seems to be more choice in terms of simple apps, but when you're after more complicated ones bringing things together and doing so in a professional fashion, Apple seems to do better. Currently I'm most missing my 'actually watch the dice clatter around the screen' diceroller app, and my carefully chosen suite of seven or so London transport apps.
So, yeah. I'm glad I've switched, and am hoping I can get the apps to do what I want over the next few days and weeks.
Speaking of which, I'd appreciate any suggestions people can offer on the following:
— A simple notepad app that syncs to Dropbox, but can save it's notes offline for when I don't have access to the internet.
— A decent diceroller app that has dice bouncing around in it, not just 'press a button, a numerical result appears on table'
—A good PDF reader for when I start reading gaming rulebooks on here.
— Good London transport apps. I've currently got busmapper and National Rail, which are good at their respective transport types, but I want something that brings all the options together. so far I've tried London Transport Pro, and I'm not fond of it.
— Any other 'this is really handy!'suggestions people have.
The Good: I've actually adjusted to android far faster than I was expecting; I assumed there'd be more of an adjustment period, and whilst the gesture typing looked cool, I expected a while during which I found it hard to use, due to finding it annoying when I tried it a few times in phone shops.
I'm currently typing this on my phone and doing so quickly and easily — much quicker and less effort than the iPhone keyboard despite me having three and a half years experience of that. I'm certainly occasionally mistyping, sometimes not spotting mistakes until several words later (like the fact I've just noticed I had 'topping' not 'typing' as the third word in this paragraph). It's not perfect; the cursor placing is less good (though I think I've just discovered the not immediately intuitive secret to that, grabbing the blue cursor insert itself for fine placing), it requires a bit more thought for longer and complicated words add you need to have more of an idea where you're going right from the start of the word and it took me three tries to get the word 'perfect' correct just now, but overall, it's much better.
Beyond that, the OS just plain *does* more. The back and app switching buttons, the two finger gestures, widgets, lots of things. One of the issues with Apple is that they're so worried about overwhelming their less technical users that they don't make enough use of what technology can do — for ages I found it annoying that a phone with good multitouch capabilities did fuck all with them except zoom and some specific accessibility options for usage with visual impairments. The Nexus feels like it's doing a lot more with what is got than the iPhone did.
The Bad: Firstly, the office assists to lack a basic preloaded notes/text app. What the fuck is with that? Due to internet issues and wanting to have somewhere to save this when in done, I'm currently writing this in Dropbox's text editor app (as I was having internet issues, and Google drive won't let me make a new file when not connected). I know Google is done of the cloud but that seems a very conspicuous lack.
Just generally, there seems to be more choice in terms of simple apps, but when you're after more complicated ones bringing things together and doing so in a professional fashion, Apple seems to do better. Currently I'm most missing my 'actually watch the dice clatter around the screen' diceroller app, and my carefully chosen suite of seven or so London transport apps.
So, yeah. I'm glad I've switched, and am hoping I can get the apps to do what I want over the next few days and weeks.
Speaking of which, I'd appreciate any suggestions people can offer on the following:
— A simple notepad app that syncs to Dropbox, but can save it's notes offline for when I don't have access to the internet.
— A decent diceroller app that has dice bouncing around in it, not just 'press a button, a numerical result appears on table'
—A good PDF reader for when I start reading gaming rulebooks on here.
— Good London transport apps. I've currently got busmapper and National Rail, which are good at their respective transport types, but I want something that brings all the options together. so far I've tried London Transport Pro, and I'm not fond of it.
— Any other 'this is really handy!'suggestions people have.
