Here's a
totally different perspective for you.
I've been wary of Google for years, I guess I'm kind of a privacy nut (to think there's even a term for that nowadays
). Nevertheless, here I am. Why?
I've been a very satisfied Palm user for many years; for a period I also used Psion. Now, PalmOS does a
lot of things right, as does Psion's Epoc OS. That basically translates to having few but nigh-on
perfect apps on a device with very little memory and a slow processor -- and still having oodles of space and snappy response (there's a lot of good to be said about event-driven real-time operating systems). Seriously, neither the iPhone nor Android can compare with a Palm Tungsten T3, a Psion Series5 (my brother used (up) a number of those over a span of over a decade) or a Revo.
Especially not after a couple of days, when the smart phones are long out of battery but the older devices still have plenty of juice. Those things keep power for up to a fortnight! Add to that that I've been doing some development for the Palm platform, and you have a happy person. Well,
had...
So why am I here? Well, the old devices
are after all slowly dying from normal wear and tear, and Palm just up and pulled the carpet out from under a living community. So I gotta go someplace else. Don't particularly want to, but
gotta.
So where do I turn? Apple is right out with its proprietary platform (you basically need a Mac to write software for it), and so is WinMo and Symbian (requires you to run Windows). OpenMoko? Maybe in five years. So that means that Android is pretty much the only thing left. I think that Android as a platform is promising, and it's definitely a plus that its Eclipse plugin and the documentation is quite nice.
I don't particularly crave connectedness, either. I'm just fine with doing a USB sync every now and then, and generally working off of the device and its onboard data. Now, it seems I need a data plan (I have
no idea what tier I should go for), and all my data will be going back and forth all the doggamned time. Still, it's either this, or going back to my old pocket book and mini pencil, apparently.
So, after much squirming about, I caved in and got myself a Google account. And I must admit it's very nice, although I'm still uncomfortable with the ramifications of it. And I do expect to be disappointed with the phone, in particular battery life and the quality of what I consider the core applications, namely the address book and calendar.
I don't have a phone yet; I'm holding my breath for the Samsung Galaxy, but I'm beginning to be
very blue in the face.
Gimmegimmegimme!!!