My Decisions to LEAVE Nexus One

After using the Nexus One for 7 days I came to a conclusion on whether Nexus One is suitable for me. That was several weeks ago, My Transformation to Nexus One, and based on the title of this post you can guess what my conclusions are. I will attempt to explain my position in this post.

First and foremost, I do agree that Google’s Nexus One is one of if not the best Android phone in the market; at the moment. This is mainly due to the version of Android OS (2.1.x) it is using; 2 versions ahead of any other released Android phone in the market at the time of this writing. For the Nexus One there are no other layer above Android’s UI to obscure the user experience as Google had intended, this latter point may be an advantage to some and a disadvantage to others. As Google is not famous for developing the best User Interface.

Being a Macintosh user, one of my main reasons for not liking the N1 is its poor integration with the Mac. I rely on various applications and tools on my Mac every day. iTunes to manage the music and podcasts I listen to every day. Contact information for everyone I know and in touch with are stored in my AddressBook application. My photos are organized in iPhoto.

Using the N1 I cannot sychronize the play count of songs, making the Smart Playlists I have in iTunes useless. As I have Smart Playlists that automatically gather songs that I had not listen to in the past 2 days. Making the need for a large music storage device unecessary. It also does not sychronize the position within the podcasts I listen to, making it difficult for me to get through all the podcasts I need to. Neither of these issues can be resolved by the Mac application DoubleTwist, which I use to synchronize the music between the N1 and my Mac.

For contacts information the fields in Google Contact are much less detailed than the ones in my AddressBook application on my Mac. Google Contacts doesn’t separate First and Las names of contacts, or have the number of additional fields that AddressBook offers. Fortunately there is SpanningSync on the Mac to help mange this.

For some reasons DoubleTwist was not able to synchronize the photo albums in iPhoto with the N1. So any photos I need from iPhoto onto the N1 will require first mounting the N1 via USB as an attached drive, then drag the desired photos into the appropriate folder on the N1.

As you can see I had to use various “workarounds” to accomplish my day to day tasks on my “mobile personal device”, currently the N1. Which I did not have to do when that was the iPhone.

Aside from the above there are also some general user experiences that I do not like about the N1, which makes my use of the N1 clumbersome.

For over two years we were waiting for Apple to introduce Copy & Paste; that they invented on the Macintosh over 24 years ago, to the iPhone. When it finally arrived it quirky became part of my daily use of the iPhone. On the N1 there is Copy & Paste but these features are not available when you needed it most. Like copying an URL or phone number from a SMS or email. The N1 will not even allow you to copy text within the builtin browser.

My conclusions about the three platforms of smartphones: Windows Phone (aka. “Windows Mobile”), iPhone and Android are as follow.

For Windows Phone the user must think and learn the way Microsoft do thing on the phone.

For the iPhone, Apple considers all the different ways of performing various tasks on the phone and think for the user so the user can focus on the task at hand.

For Android phones, Google wants to be as flexible as possible, and does not want to restrict it’s users so they just don’t think and allow the user to customize the phone the way they want. To accomplish the task the users want.

My opinion is that the N1 is not suitable for the layman users and is more suitable for the technical types. I am definitely a technical person, although when I use my “mobile device” I do not want to deal with the technical aspect of the device, but just focus on the tasks I want to accomplish. The iPhone allows me to forget about the technologies and focus on the tasks.

This is why I am selling my Nexus One. If you do not agree with me and like to purchase a barely used N1 please let me know.

3 Replies to “My Decisions to LEAVE Nexus One”

  1. Vinko, welcome back to the iPhone! Actually I expect N1 is not easy to use for normal non-techie person. What we want for our mobile device is it can allow us to do what we think it should be done, in a fast and simple way. I hate the need to navigate to somewhere else in-order to accomplishes certain task, that's no good. We already more than enough for that in Microsoft Windows OS for several years, I never go back to that kind of 'hell' again. Apple stuff just works!

  2. Great post! That's the same experience when I tried out my wife's HTC Hero last year. It offered me lots of options and customizations. But I just felt it's more than enough for a general user. As you said, we just want to focus on the task instead of the technologies. So, what end up was my wife switched back to iPhone 3GS after using the Hero for two weeks. She said she just used to the elegant user interface and its simplicity. Never go back to Android.

  3. You can use your smart playlists just fine, at least with Windows. There is an app called iSyncr, which let's me sync play counts with iTunes. However, it looks like the Mac version does not support play count syncing yet.

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