Category: android

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A few months with a Nexus 4

So, I’ve had a Nexus 4 for a while now … here’s some findings :

  1. The phone is symmetrical (or very close to it) – so I often pick it up the wrong way around – at least with an iPhone there was a button at the bottom which acts as an easy to feel guide so you can pick it up correctly in the dark. Adding a case to it helped.
  2. You need a bumper/case for it… mine cost £3 on Amazon or something … without one it’s too slippery/slides off everything.
  3. The battery life is both good and bad – while not in use, it lasts ages; but it has a big screen – so playing games or watching Netflix on it, will really kill the battery. I’m using Battery Widget Reborn – which does a great job at turning wifi/sound/gps etc all off overnight which helps a bit.
  4. I came to use the Nexus 4 from using an iPhone – my main like is widgets – having something that updates in real time on your desktop (why did the iOS weather app never display today’s symbol?) is great.
  5. I miss having a count of notification numbers next to the launch icons.
  6. I kind of miss iMessage – in so far, as I wish Google had something similar. At the moment there is gtalk, google plus chat (or something) …. which don’t seem to be totally integrated … and I have to supplement this with WhatsApp which not all that many people use (here’s hoping for Google Babble)
  7. I wish the Bluetooth integration was better – not being able to see track names etc on the £30 Sony MW600 thing I bought kind of sucks. I’m fairly sure that if my car was good enough to have a bluetooth capable radio, then I wouldn’t see any track names from it either :-/
  8. I like Navigation – I’ve used this a number of times and it does a good job. If only I could make it’s voice louder though. Perhaps this is why I need a car radio with blue teeth.
  9. I’ve not noticed that I’m missing any apps from iOS which aren’t available on Android – but I suspect I only regularly use ~10 (k9 mail, world war, twitter, whatsapp, bbc news, facebook, gallery, nagios, kashdroid, ZombieRun!).
  10. The screen is a little too big to use it with only one hand.
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Nexus 7 … after one week

I’ve had my Nexus 7 tablet thing for about a week now, here are some of my initial findings :

  1. I find myself turning the wifi/gps/bluetooth off to save battery life all the time – but using a widget makes this easy (under Settings -> Wifi you can tell it to put the Wifi to sleep when it’s in “standby”).
  2. I found the concept of having launch screens and the “Apps”/”Widget” sections a bit weird. After installing things, I expected them to show up on my home screen – but this wasn’t the case. Android stashes them
  3. It makes a good e-book reader 🙂 The £15 of “free” credit Google provided has been well received, and the bundled book reader works well for me.
  4. Live wallpapers – these look great – Paperland is nice to look at!
  5. Google Plus is really nice on the tablet form factor, especially when you’re on the “what’s hot” tab. Facebook’s app is just the normal smartphone app, but expanded – which looks rubbish. Therefore, Facebook–.
  6. It appears I’ve scratched the glass already; time to buy a jacket/cover thing for it :-/ (going to buy one of these )
  7. You need/want to use the MTP protocol to transfer files onto it – trying to this over Wifi (e.g. AirDroid (which is very good) ) is too slow to be practical.
  8. It takes a long time to charge over USB (~10 hours); It’s a lot quicker direct from the mains (an hour or two).