My First Day as an Android Owner
I've been a happy iPhone user for about a year but I just bought an Android phone yesterday and I like it a lot. I decided to buy an HTC MyTouch on T-Mobile in order to use the Operating System. Here are my thoughts on it after my first 24 hours.
Many of us have high hopes for Android. It's not as polished, as popular, maybe not even as good as the iPhone so far - but if I had to choose between them right now...I might pick Android. Below are some thoughts about the hardware, the learning curve, the App Market and Augmented Reality apps in particular. I've also included one paragraph about the cost. Bottom line: Android is pretty cool and I'm really excited to have a phone that's more open than the iPhone.
The Hardware
Many people say that they don't want to buy an Android phone until the HTC Hero comes out in six weeks because the handsets are so bad. I bought a MyTouch, the most recently released Android handset, and am happy enough with it so far. I think I even like the small size better than the big brick of an iPhone I've also got in my pocket.
The Learning Curve
The iPhone is very easy to learn to use. The Nokia N95 that I tested some time ago was frustrating enough for me that I decided I hated it within hours. Android appears to be somewhere in between, speaking as an iPhone user. It takes a little time to get used to the controls and features; but that's ok - it's a computer, after all.
Multi-app Processing
One of the best things about Android is its ability to do more than one thing at a time. Listening to Last.fm while checking my email? That's cool. More interesting than literal simultaneous use of multiple apps at once though is the system's ability to watch for new email, new tweets, completed downloads or other activity in the background and notify you while you're using other apps.
Live dashboard widgets and the pulldown list of notifications fall into this same category. Those make a big difference in creating a very different user experience than what you get with an iPhone. I've got a URL bar/google search box/google voice search box, an analog clock display and a widget showing me the next item coming up on my Google Calendar - all on the front page of my phone. That makes the phone useful even with minimal interactions. Little things like that can make a very big difference.
The App Market
The Android App Market isn't as big as the iPhone app store and you won't find many apps like Pandora, Facebook or Tweetie there. The Android App Market is easy enough to use, though, and is wide open. There's no lengthy, arbitrary and anti-competitive approval process like there is in iTunes. That's really important.
Right now there are too few Android users compared to iPhone users for many developers to build apps for Android. (Though at least one report says that the number of Android developers is growing fast.)There are a whole lot of apps in the Android store none the less. Android hasn't solved the problem of discovering the best new apps any better than Apple has. It's hard to know after one day how the Android Market compares to the iPhone App Store. It may be a matter of supporting Android on principle but prefering the experience of the iPhone app ecosystem.
The Android Market is about to undergo a radical transformation, though. Check out this video below that was just posted to the official Android Blog.
Augmented Reality
I bought this phone in large part to use the new class of technologies called Augmented Reality (AR). These are tools that display a set of data on top of your otherwise naked view of the world around you. So far the AR apps I tried out were a little disapointing.
These are early days of AR but the dream of pointing my phone at a row of businesses on the street and seeing information about them displayed on top of my camera view of those buildings - that's still just a dream.
So far I've tried out two AR apps on Android, Layar and Wikitude. I'll be writing in-depth reviews of both over the next few days but I will say this for now. Both clearly have a lot of potential, both have a lot of obstacles to being useful and neither is a good excuse for pointing my phone in the direction of women in the coffee shop where I'm testing the apps out. If I'm not careful I'm going to get punched sometime soon.
I think these AR apps and I are going to need to meet half-way; I need to learn how to use them effectively and they need to improve. More on that later.
Cost
I chose to buy this phone with a 1 year contract, making the sticker price for the handset $299. By only committing to 1 year though, I may save myself almost $700 by not paying for data and voice through a second year. I split that $299 into three payments, too, since I just paid my quarterly taxes and because T-Mobile made it easy to do. I selected unlimited data and the minimum voice plan (300 minutes per month) because I mostly want this phone to use and test apps. After tax and a small monthly insurance payment I'm paying $65 per month for the service.
I canceled my $60/month Verizon EVDO service, intend on tethering my other phone, and thus am out just the price of the handset plus an extra $5 every month. More than worth it to me.
For now I'm having enough fun getting to know Android that I don't even want to pick up my iPhone to use it. The first day using any software is very different from what it's like day-in and day-out after extended use, but first impressions are important to make note of. My first impressions of this Android phone are good and so far I'm glad I bought it.
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You should held out for the hero but then again you wouldn't of been able to enjoy the default android experience.
I would love to see android on an iphone like device.
I love the way you can customize the screen and apple needs to learn from this. Here is my phone screen http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/74678/phone/device.png
You should check out the bar code reading shopping apps, not quite AR but still useful.
I have the G1 and love it. I think it's easy to understand right away. And I love that you can easily multi-task on it,just as you wrote. As for apps, I suggest pingdroid or pixel pipe, twitdroid, one of the ebook readers, fbook, craigslist, brightroid for brightkite if you use it, fourdroid for foursquare (though it still sucks basically), flycast, qik, skype, i like sms popup, where (which is awesome - yelp, phonebox, cinema, etc)....Of course I'm trying out Layar and Wikitude as well.
I'm a happy G1 user, too, except that I had to buy a honking big replacement battery so that I could last a day or two without charging (I understand, though, that iPhones and Pres have similar issues). And, big difference, I have an iPod that I listen to music on. I don't love the G1 hardware - a little slow; could use a bigger screen, faster processor, standard audio jack. But I love Android, and I think you hit the big points. My gamble was that Google would think about what's important when you use a smartphone - knowing that you have new email or an available wifi network without being bothered by the notification (my HUGEST complaint about WinMo, which wouldn't let me turn off need-to-be-dismissed wifi available alerts (open or not), which I encounter every five seconds where I work, in downtown Oakland, CA.
The notification system simply rocks, the phone is so customizable that I have all of my favorite apps on my main screen, second favorite and tools on additional screens, Wife's cell right at my fingertips, I never have to tap much to get to what I need. I'm nearing a year with my phone, and my sincere hope is that, by 10/10, when I'm up for the cheapest upgrade, there's much better hardware witha keyboard (I wouldn't trade the G1 for the MyTouch - love the keyboard). But I have no need for an iPhone, and if I did switch, I'd miss as much as I'd appreciate about it.
Plus - great apps that do everything I want, and I have yet to pay for one. The Market is no help for finding them, though.
I'd be interested to see you try eBook reading apps on it, particularly FBReader and Aldiko, both of which can do ePub.
http://www.gamaray.com/
Gamaray is a free augmented reality browser for Android devices that uses the compass and GPS to place virtual 3D objects over the camera preview screen. The application finds, downloads, and interacts with these virtual objects using a web service called a "dimension". The platform is open, allowing anyone with web development skills to publish their geo-located content.
Congratulations for your happy day.
Welcome aboard, Marshall! I respect you a lot more now as I got sick from the Apple fanboys running the other top blogs. Android may not have the bells and whistles of iPhone at this moment, but it's a more solid platform and has a brighter future and not only on mobile devices.
Love Android on HTC Magic (Australia). Never used iPhone though, so can't compare.
I'm a happy owner (3 weeks) of the HTC Magic off Vodafone and so far loving it. You pretty much took the words right out of my mouth. Agree fully on the multi-app processing, have the same augmented reality apps and cost was the most important thing with functionality to me. The iPhone is horribly expensive and when I saw the deal with the Magic, I grabbed at the opportunity.
Besides Layar and Wikitude, there are few more AR applications on Android. (It's quite easy to create an AR app for Android, the code that does basic preview show and recognition, and 2D rendering on top is just around 2k lines of Java code, 3D scene rendering adds ~200 more lines). One of newer AR apps for Android is http://vivifypicture.com, which we've recently submitted to ADC2. Unlike Layar and Wikitude this is tabletop AR so there is no need to point a mobile on someone at cofee shop.
Hey Marshall, interesting to see you jump on the Android bandwagon. I've had the HTC Magic (myTouch) for a while now and think it's a pretty decent phone. Android itself is easy to use for sure but feels, as you said, kinda unpolished, especially many of the third-party apps. I think one of Apple's strengths is its UI guidelines and developer tools that impose a more polished and unified look, plus the culture of iPhone developers (mac users) demands more style.
Here's my review of the device... http://www.last100.com/2009/07/02/review-htc-magic-google-ion-t-mobile-mytouch-3g/
I'm actually using it as a second phone (a kind of web tablet) with a data tariff only at about $8 per month! Gotta love the mobile competition in the UK.
The success of Android depends from Samsung.
If Samsung adopts Android as their Smart phone platform, the market is big.
Else Android will be forgotten like Sony Betamax and Philips Video2000: superior technology and benefits for the user, but no market uptake.
Google has power on the Internet, but not in the retail stores that are dominated by Samsung (Microwave ovens, LCD screens, Portables, mobile phones, refrigerators, ...you name it - Samsung has it at a fair price).
Congrats on your new phone Marshall. I also have the G1. I like how I'm always connected. Always on Facebook and using Babbler for photos and videos upload. These are some of my favorite apps in no particular order. Maps, OI Notepad, Mytopia Texas Hold'em, Shazam, TuneWiki, AnyCut, BonsaiBlast,
Be sure to tune in at
http://www.androidapps.com/
http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/?category.id=Android
http://www.androidcommunity.com/
Not sure if I'm going with the Hero next or Nokia Maemo N900
Welcome to Android! I got my phone a week or two ago and love it.
If you're the type, hacking and replacing the ROM on this phone is very easy and really for me has resolved some of the performance issues. The quality of apps is going up week by week, in my opinion and everyone I've met loves this phone.
Try Google Sky Maps for a 'WOW' factor.
The only thing that really hurts (in that iPhone people will brag that they don't have this problem) is that after a while the phone really slows down and you find out that you have to manage the phone like a computer and shut apps down. And even at it's fastest scrolling still isn't as fast as it is on the iPhone. But it really is a close second when compared to the iPhone and there really are benefits to Android phones over the iPhone . . . especially for power users.
I'm also an Apple owner and recently bought an HTC Magic in order to learn about Android. I spent two weeks learning about app development on this platform, writing a niche app, and got it published in the Market. And that says a lot about the appeal of Android: it's far more appealing as a dev platform (for me) than Apple's where I have no guarantee that my app will be approved, let alone quickly.
One more thing - I far prefer text input in Android: the spelling correction is there, like with Apple, but there are multiple word suggestions, which leads (for me) to faster and more accurate text input. It's also possible to install several different on-screen keyboards and one of them - TouchPal - has features that I'm now so used to that I miss them when using my iPod Touch (e.g. Swipe up on a key for caps, swipe down for numbers). And that leads me to the final point: the barriers to innovation are lower on Android.
Great article. Please keep us updated!
Congrats on your new phone. Have the HTC Magic for 2 months now. Aside from multiple keyboards, the phone can handle multiple dialers, multiple SMS applications, and many other things. The choice is right there on your fingertips.
I am getting concerned over security thought. One downloaded widget erased my native android calendar appointments (it spared my google appointments). Another application made it impossible for me to connect to the internet, although I used it properly. One application switches Wifi on and off, without informing you. Another distroyed the contents of the SDcard of one user.
Another topic is how applications in beta stage (full of bugs) are allowed to be published. It is getting annoying downloading, using for a few days, discovering the bug, writing to the developer, unistalling.... Even the popular Astrid stopped sounding alarms after one month of use.
I am really hoping for a serious, mature android platform someday. One where the $600 phone will have Bluetooth for filetransfer, native filemanager, todo-list and notes!
Welcome aboard - I went all out for Android a couple months back. (I had my own Damascus road event w/Apple, though, back in 1992, when I decided to do my design work on Windows boxes instead of Macs because I could buy a pile of software and a printer and scanner on top of the computer for the same price.)
I wrote a post right after getting the myTouch about "augmented reality" that's very similar to your reactions, here. Ultimately, the best AR apps using the digital compass on Android aren't technically AR - Sky Map and the Android implementation of Street View. Those are certainly two of the big things that sold me anyway, and in a much stronger manner, both augment my reality.
Anyway, that's here: http://bennylava.robertnlee.com/?p=3026
Have fun. Oh, and definitely root the phone - it's easy, it's not the same as jailbreaking, you can just slap the original myTouch image back on if you've got to return for service, and after you move your apps to a fast SD card, your life will never be the same.
I'm a happy G1 user too.