Jumping through the Nexus

Our cellphones are both slowly dying. My sister's Treo 680 lasted for about two years before it started glitching. My Blackberry Bold is less than two years old but it's starting to reboot several times a day which is incredibly annoying. So it's time to switch our phones.

I gave my sis my old HTC Touch Enhanced as a replacement but the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS is driving her nuts. She didn't like the WM 6.5 OS either, so I guess that phone's simply a no-go.

I purchased a Google Nexus One as a replacement phone. As we are going into times of financial constricture, I figured I'd better get a decent one as it has to last the next 2.5 years. My gut feel is that it won't but that's true of any phone I get these days - they just don't build them like the used to. Now that I have it (and a new provider to boot), I have to do some fancy talking to switch the plans with my old provider so that we can afford it. We can, if my numbers are correct. We just have to be careful.

My Blackberry's going to my sister. I'm going to hard reset the phone before giving it to her and hopefully that'll fix matters. She's not as heavy a user as I am nor does she use the phone for anything other than voice, SMS and the occasional game or two. I, on the other hand, have it loaded with apps that manage my social networking, to-do lists, call management...you get the idea. With a clean phone, my sis should be fine. It'd drive me nuts though, not having those apps.

I admit that I was torn between getting the iPhone 4 vs. an Android phone. The deciding factor for me was the mobile hotspot capability on Android 2.2 (FroYo). With it, I can go online with any WiFi-eanbled device like my aging first-generation iPod Touch that still has a lot of my PIM and productivity apps on it. I've had my Nexus One for a couple of days now and I have to admit, I'm kind of impressed by it. It's extremely responsive and I don't think I've run into any real lag yet. Browsing on it is a pleasure again - I don't get misclicks that plague me when I use Mobile Safari on my iPod Touch. It's pretty obvious that Android is a mature product and I would even say that it's quite polished. Case in point: when I talk on the phone, the screen goes blank but when I take it off my ear to look at something, it senses that and turns on the display again. I'm not sure if the iPhone has that feature too but wow, that's a pretty good design decision.

Also floating at the back of my mind is the fact that I can easily develop for it. I *hate* XCode with a passion so while I've fiddled with iPhone development, I've never really done much with it. Realistically though, I probably won't be a developer for very long given my current career goals but it's still nice to have that capability.

I've rarely just clicked with a phone before. I think the last one was with a Sony Ericsson T637 or perhaps my Nokia E61. I loved the form factor of the T637 and mobile browsing only became comfortable when I had my E61. For both these phones, I was really excited to get them and I think that enthusiasm covered a multitude of sins. In this case with the Nexus One, my choice was an uncharacteristically cold-blooded and practical choice. So I'm a little surprised that I'm really starting not just like it but love it.

I hope it'll last for the 2.5 years. There's some lean times ahead.