I got mine in the mail earlier this week. There’s not much to it, but it’s pretty slick.
(click the photo above to see more photographs of the Google Nexus One dock on my Flickr account… photos taken with my iPhone 
)
February 26, 2010
The Google Nexus One dock
Switching to Google’s Nexus One from the iPhone (ROUGH NOTES)
Now if I make the time to do it, I intend to write a cohesive review of my two week switch to the Google Nexus One.
In the meanwhile, here are my notes from twitter. For context, I switched from the iPhone, which I’ve used since the day it launched in 2007:
- Feels good to be back in Delhi, catching up on email at the moment. Using Nexus One (with multitouch) while I’m here — I like it!
- Using the Google Nexus One on Airtel in India http://bit.ly/9aDLSr
- One of the things N1 could do better is text entry and editing. Predictive isn’t as good, and I miss iPhone cursor locator.
- When my Nexus One is plugged into 240V here in India, it feels like a charge is trickling into my hand from the back… weird.
- I like the way the browser on the nexus one/android zooms to a column of text. It works.
- Keeping track of cell phone numbers for family in Delhi is a pain.
- The nexus one needs auto brightness adjustment. Screen’s barely readable in daylight.
- Can the nexus one email multiple photos on a single email? Doesn’t look like it.
- I really like how voicemail just isn’t very common here in India. Few people have voicemail on their phones.
- People who use their cell phones as their primary cameras… it makes me sad.
- No multi touch in the nexus one’s pdf viewer app.
- Wish there was a way to switch the from address when composing a message on the nexus one/android. Is there?
- Cool — my iPhone’s ear bud headphones + mic work with the Nexus One.
- While the Android / Nexus One’s touch keyboard works, the iPhone’s is better.
- Nexus One’s trackball is interesting. Too often an up scroll leads to my touching bottom of the glass (ie home button)
- I wish Nexus One/Android had an easier way to turn wifi on and off. Has to be an elegant way to layer quick settings into phone ui.
- Nexus One / Android’s browser needs to prevent double periods when I’m entering a URL (happens when I use the .com button). iPhone does it.
- I’ve had to re-program to lookup names by first name instead of last name on the Nexus One. One of my many iPhone-user habits.
- I CAN JUST DRAG ANY MP3 FROM MY COMPUTER TO MY ANDROID NEXUS ONE? NO ITUNES SYNC? OMG. IPHONE=FAIL.
- Ha, Nexus One uses last accessed Gmail account as ‘from’ address when you share a photo by email. Random.
- Gmail client in Android on my Nexus One needs a “more details” for mail header so I can not only see date of email but also time.
- Search on Nexus One / Android is messed. When you refine a search, keyboard takes you to field on bottom of page. Happened to me 3-4 times.
- I wish bookmarks were closer at hand in browser on Nexus One. Oh wait… clicking star does the trick. Thought it was like star in chrome.
- The Gmail client on Android / Nexus One is awesome. For Google Apps and Gmail users, no better mobile email client.
- No native iPhone ‘Notes’ equivalent on Nexus One, but no biggie — I loaded Evernote app and it works (and is better).
- While it’s much better than I saw on the Droid and G1, Android on my Nexus One is still susceptible to random freezes/stalls.
- I don’t miss a lot app-wise on my Nexus One. Facebook app is way inferior to the iPhone FB app. Certainly seems to be less there.
- PS dear Nexus One, please stop changing app to apparently! I really mean app! Then again, unlike iPhone, you don’t misspell my name Rajesh.
- Just ordered the Nexus One dock (had to logmein to a PC in the States and order it from there to get around geo-restrictions – wack!)
- Back on my iPhone. Feels more polished. Miss having a period on the keyboard without hitting shift.
- Return to iPhone means return at AT&T. 6 failed calls in a row. Yay!
As an aside, Matt Cutts posted some notes on “Leaving the iPhone” and I agreed with some of what he had to say. Read what his post if you’re looking for another perspective (though keep in mind that he does work for Google).
Summary of my iPhone to Nexus One switch: The Nexus One matches the iPhone in almost all areas and even beats in it some other areas. But it lacks the iPhone’s software polish and that last 5-10% of simplicity, so I’d only selectively recommend it to family members. But it’s a great phone and, personally, I’d love to use it exclusively (I don’t because it’s hard to switch carriers here in the U.S.)
February 23, 2010
Will Apple TV become more iPhone-like? Yes, definitely.
Every so often, people remember the Apple TV and ask, “What’s Apple doing in the living room?”. The latest is a TiPb post, “Should Apple TV Switch to the iPhone OS?“.
My take: it’s obvious to me that eventually Apple is going to make a strong play in the living room. Eventually what we’ve seen happen for phones, what we’re about to see happen in “tablet PCs” (with the iPad) will repeat itself in the living room.
Great hardware + base OS with great usability + platform for 3rd party app dev & distribution
At SnapStream, it was the absence of this platform + device for the living room that lead us away from our consumer PC DVR software and lead us to, instead, focus on our TV search solution for businessess/organizations.
Our thinking was, Until such a platform exists in the living room (and for a little while, we thought Microsoft’s Media Center Edition would be this platform, but IMO it never got there), it doesn’t make sense for us to try and build “apps” for the living room. Incidentally, creating this platform and device is what Boxee is trying to do.
Anyways, another question to consider is “when?” of this living room platform.
With smartphones, Apple released the iPhone in June 2007. The 1st Android phone (the G1) came out in October 2008 –16 months later.
Apple iPhone ————–time=16 months————-> Android*
(*Tmobile G1)
The iPad comes out in April 2010. I’m betting that Google, either through Android or Google Chrome, will release an iPad competitor in 2010, ie within 8 months of the iPad. IMO Google can’t afford to lose the kind of time they lost with the iPhone with “tablet computing” — time during which lots of people got hooked on the iPhone’s way of doing things.
iPad —time=~8 months —-> Google Tablet**
(**Android or Chrome OS)
So if the question is “When will Apple make an iPhone-like platform+device play in the living room?”, I think the trend above will continue, so I think we’ll see Apple and Google release their living room platforms close together — maybe Google will even beat Apple on this one.
February 20, 2010
Visit to the Guggenheim today
I visited Guggenheim in New York today for the first time (every time I’ve meant to visit in the past, I’ve been caught by their early weekday closing time of 5:45pm). Designed by US architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, the building looks kind of like a fanciful parking garage from the outside (my fellow Houstonians will know what I mean) and inside, you get from floor to floor via a continuous ramp that spirals upwards. What a cool building!
The exhibit I enjoyed the most was the “Contemplating the Void” exhibit (NYTimes review), where 200 artists and creative types came up with concepts on how to use the central “void” space of the Guggenheim museum… the open area at the center of the building that the inside ramp swirls up around. There were all kinds of wacky ideas in this exhibit. One of my favorites was the idea of an “art trap” where people would be able to climb into the walls surrounding the inside ramp of the building. There, they’d be held in openings in the wall that resembled medieval stocks, becoming part of the building, an art spectacle (a bunch of people in the walls, flailing their arms and legs!).
I wish Monty Python had been invited to submit a design. I’m thinking of the architect sketch.
The exhibit signage/copy (which I admit, I actually read) opened the exhibit describing the central void space of the building as original, bold and “threatening”. I felt like this was all a bit much. A building constructed around a large open space? They’ve been doing those in India* for a very long time — they’re called aangans.
The other exhibit that I enjoyed was Anish Kapoor’s Memory (Guggenheim museum website link). It’s an installation piece from the guy who did the shiny, mirrory silver you’re-not-allowed-to-photograph-it object in Chicago. The piece basically tries to say, “Think of memory like the story of the blind men and the elephant**.” At least that’s what I took away from it. Yeah, just go see it.
* Note: while this statement makes me sound like the archetypal everything-was-invented-in-India Uncle (“Beta, do you know where algebra was invented? That’s right…”), I assure you that I have not become that Uncle. Not yet anyways.
** Come to think of it, didn’t the story of the blind men and the elephant originate in India?
February 15, 2010
Driving up to Tsongo Lake in Sikkim
This photograph is over 10 years old now. My sister, Arti, and I caught a ride up to Tsongo Lake a little ways from Gangtok. It was a holiday in Gangtok so the driver (who we had hired) asked if it was OK to bring his nephew along. Great! we said.
I stuck my camera (a Nikon film camera) out the window of the Maruti/Suzuki van we were ascending the mountain in to take this photograph. That’s the drivers nephew sipping a coke looking down as we climb the mountain. What a great adverisement for Coke!
February 8, 2010
Using the Google Nexus One on Airtel in India
I’m in India right now and I’m using this trip to really test out the Nexus One I bought a few weeks ago. The quick summary, so far: the Nexus One is a great phone, I can do almost everything I can do on my iPhone with this thing.
The few times I had used used the Nexus One in the States, I never got past the differences between it and the iPhone. Plus I’m married to my AT&T phone number in the States. But now that I’m kind of forced to use it (the iPhone is a hassle to unlock and use in India), I’m pretty happy with it. Even the battery life isn’t that bad. Anyways, more on this later.
I wanted to document one setting thing I had to do to get data working on my Nexus One with my local provider (Airtel) in case it saves someone else some time. First of all it didn’t just work. So I went digging and found this thread where someone mentioned:
The N1 (and presumably Android) cannot handle a SIM card with multiple GPRS/data access points – which is what Airtel has – Mobile Office and Live!
So I manually setup an APN in Android (Settings -> Wireless -> Mobile -> APN) with the following settings:
Name: Airtel (I think you can put anything you want in here!)
APN: airtelgprs.com
Username: 123456
(And then the MCC and MNC were automatically set to 404 and 10 respectively, and the Authentication Type was set to “None” — I guess these were successfully read off of the SIM. Everything else was “