... and I can't put it down.
This isn't my first experience with a smart phone, I've gone though various models of Blackberries and have had a Blackberry pretty much since the first models that had dot matrix displays, all the way up to the 8800. I also provide support on iPhones at work, but this is my first experience with an android phone.
I'm sure a lot of what I have to say here is common to all androids and to LG Optimus one models as well, but I'm impressed and hopefully others looking for a reasonably priced android with a cheap monthly rate (and no contracts) will find this helpful.
First off, the screen is great, although a little small, it's bright, crisp and colors are vibrant. This is one of the best looking screens I have ever seen on a mobile device outside of an iPhone. Text is very clear and easy to read, though I'm blessed with excellent eyesight and small text doesn't bother me. I'm sure the quick zooming in would be handy for those with eyesight problems.
The device it's self feels pretty snappy, there is some slight lag with pinch-zooming large web pages or large images, but it's nothing too distracting.
The various animated effects aren't quite as "fancy" as they are on an iPhone, but the functionality is there and the phone has never been too laggy for me to complete any tasks.
The camera is decent and functional, and seems to take pretty good pictures in optimal lighting conditions. There is a lot lot of noise in low light, but this has been my experience with most cameras on phones. The auto focus works well. As far as video, I have only tried it a few times in less than optimal lighting conditions but the video quality, while not great, isn't horrible either. It's good enough for youtube clips or catching something funny your kids or pets did.
The 3G is adequate, not quite as fast as I would like it to be, but quick enough to update maps when using it in navigation mode. Web pages load noticeably slower when on 3G verses WiFi, but I'm sure that's to be expected. I end up using the phone at home and work a lot, so most of the time I'm using WiFi, and the 3G is fast enough to do a quick web search or run google maps when I'm away from an access point.
The GPS is spot on, something I'm impressed with since the GPS always seemed a little off on the Blackberries I've had. On this thing, I can tell what side of the road I'm on by looking at the map, and I was showing it off to a buddy the other day and when we loaded up google maps in satellite view it showed my location icon right on his house (not the back yard or driveway, like I said, spot on).
Battery life so far has been okay at best, if there was a short fall with this phone, this would be it. I use the phone heavily at work as my primary means of communication be it though e-mail, text, IMs, and actual phone calls, and the battery is usually on 50% before lunch time. I've started keeping a charger in my office. I did recently get rid of the "Beautiful Widgets" clock I was using on my homescreen and switched to "Fancy Widgets" which seems to have improved battery life somewhat and sped the phone up some.
Which brings me to another point, the phone, while it does feel snappy and quick, can easily be slowed down and made laggy if you have too many resource intensive widgets running at once, or a very graphically intensive live wallpaper. You do have to be careful with your system resources as it's doesn't have the fastest CPU in the world.
It kind of reminds me of when I had a netbook I used to use a lot, I could run windows 7 on it, I could use most productivity applications, but I couldn't run anything too resource intensive or have a ton of programs open at once. This phone feels the same way. You are fine as long as you keep an eye on your system resources and don't go crazy with CPU hogging wallpapers or widgets.
I'm still getting used to using the on-screen keyboard, I'm a big guy, I fat-finger a lot and switched from swipe to the default android keyboard because key-presses seem more accurate and I like the way the auto-suggest works better on the default keyboard. If I put the phone in landscape mode I can type on it every bit as fast as I can on a physical keyboard.
I've tried a few games on it, and while Angry Birds feels like it's running too slow and lags a lot, I did find a racing game in the market called "Return Zero" that runs reasonably well is fun enough to waste some time with while I'm waiting for a computer to finish re-imaging or I'm running a virus scan (I'm an IT technician).
As far as android it's self, I like it, it feels very much like a computer operating system more than an operating system that's on a phone, and even more so when coupled with one of the various file managers avalable in the market, as well as the productivity apps. It's fairly intuitive and easy to use once you figure out how a lot of the little control idiosyncrasies work (tapping, holding, sliding and so on) Plus I love the speech recognition, that seems to work reasonably well.
I almost forgot to mention, it functions pretty well as a phone too, there have been no complaints of noise or not being able to hear me when using the phone, and callers on the other end sound clear.
The device it's self feels solid, seems polished and there is nothing cheap feeling about it, the weight is even perfect (a friend of my said it felt "good" in his hand, like a well balanced pistol).
Sound quality though headphones is great too, this thing has pretty much replaced my MP3 Player, GPS, and Netbook all in one fell swoop.
This isn't my first experience with a smart phone, I've gone though various models of Blackberries and have had a Blackberry pretty much since the first models that had dot matrix displays, all the way up to the 8800. I also provide support on iPhones at work, but this is my first experience with an android phone.
I'm sure a lot of what I have to say here is common to all androids and to LG Optimus one models as well, but I'm impressed and hopefully others looking for a reasonably priced android with a cheap monthly rate (and no contracts) will find this helpful.
First off, the screen is great, although a little small, it's bright, crisp and colors are vibrant. This is one of the best looking screens I have ever seen on a mobile device outside of an iPhone. Text is very clear and easy to read, though I'm blessed with excellent eyesight and small text doesn't bother me. I'm sure the quick zooming in would be handy for those with eyesight problems.
The device it's self feels pretty snappy, there is some slight lag with pinch-zooming large web pages or large images, but it's nothing too distracting.
The various animated effects aren't quite as "fancy" as they are on an iPhone, but the functionality is there and the phone has never been too laggy for me to complete any tasks.
The camera is decent and functional, and seems to take pretty good pictures in optimal lighting conditions. There is a lot lot of noise in low light, but this has been my experience with most cameras on phones. The auto focus works well. As far as video, I have only tried it a few times in less than optimal lighting conditions but the video quality, while not great, isn't horrible either. It's good enough for youtube clips or catching something funny your kids or pets did.
The 3G is adequate, not quite as fast as I would like it to be, but quick enough to update maps when using it in navigation mode. Web pages load noticeably slower when on 3G verses WiFi, but I'm sure that's to be expected. I end up using the phone at home and work a lot, so most of the time I'm using WiFi, and the 3G is fast enough to do a quick web search or run google maps when I'm away from an access point.
The GPS is spot on, something I'm impressed with since the GPS always seemed a little off on the Blackberries I've had. On this thing, I can tell what side of the road I'm on by looking at the map, and I was showing it off to a buddy the other day and when we loaded up google maps in satellite view it showed my location icon right on his house (not the back yard or driveway, like I said, spot on).
Battery life so far has been okay at best, if there was a short fall with this phone, this would be it. I use the phone heavily at work as my primary means of communication be it though e-mail, text, IMs, and actual phone calls, and the battery is usually on 50% before lunch time. I've started keeping a charger in my office. I did recently get rid of the "Beautiful Widgets" clock I was using on my homescreen and switched to "Fancy Widgets" which seems to have improved battery life somewhat and sped the phone up some.
Which brings me to another point, the phone, while it does feel snappy and quick, can easily be slowed down and made laggy if you have too many resource intensive widgets running at once, or a very graphically intensive live wallpaper. You do have to be careful with your system resources as it's doesn't have the fastest CPU in the world.
It kind of reminds me of when I had a netbook I used to use a lot, I could run windows 7 on it, I could use most productivity applications, but I couldn't run anything too resource intensive or have a ton of programs open at once. This phone feels the same way. You are fine as long as you keep an eye on your system resources and don't go crazy with CPU hogging wallpapers or widgets.
I'm still getting used to using the on-screen keyboard, I'm a big guy, I fat-finger a lot and switched from swipe to the default android keyboard because key-presses seem more accurate and I like the way the auto-suggest works better on the default keyboard. If I put the phone in landscape mode I can type on it every bit as fast as I can on a physical keyboard.
I've tried a few games on it, and while Angry Birds feels like it's running too slow and lags a lot, I did find a racing game in the market called "Return Zero" that runs reasonably well is fun enough to waste some time with while I'm waiting for a computer to finish re-imaging or I'm running a virus scan (I'm an IT technician).
As far as android it's self, I like it, it feels very much like a computer operating system more than an operating system that's on a phone, and even more so when coupled with one of the various file managers avalable in the market, as well as the productivity apps. It's fairly intuitive and easy to use once you figure out how a lot of the little control idiosyncrasies work (tapping, holding, sliding and so on) Plus I love the speech recognition, that seems to work reasonably well.
I almost forgot to mention, it functions pretty well as a phone too, there have been no complaints of noise or not being able to hear me when using the phone, and callers on the other end sound clear.
The device it's self feels solid, seems polished and there is nothing cheap feeling about it, the weight is even perfect (a friend of my said it felt "good" in his hand, like a well balanced pistol).
Sound quality though headphones is great too, this thing has pretty much replaced my MP3 Player, GPS, and Netbook all in one fell swoop.
