Merry Xmas Nexicans!
I'm loving my Nexus for the most part. Screen is beautiful and I'm getting good battery life and reception so far (besides Verizon's hiccups a couple days ago).
There are definitely a few things that could be improved on Google's end, though.
They really should have kept the menu and search keys where they are as permanent buttons next to home and back. It's dumb and unintuitive to have to hunt around each app and look for the moving 3 little dots or magnifying glass icon. I know that there are softkey mods for this, but frankly it's embarrassingly bad design out of the factory when I'm trying to show people like my parents how to use the phone "try to find the 3 little dots" or "go to the top left to go back to the first screen of the app where they keep the search icon" (google maps especially)
Now this next one is a huge annoyance - no way to show/hide the keyboard manually. Without a permanent menu button, there is no way to force the keyboard on/off. Not a feature i'm happy to give up coming from GingerBread. Related to this, you can't just hold search to initiate a voice search. That one little nice universal search button should replace that whole Google Search banner at the top of the stock launcher.
Finally, the stock browser, while offering good performance, is completely unintuitive. Dolphin Browser HD is ridiculously better in terms of accessing tabs and favorites.
Now, as I said, I really love the phone and I'm not trying to troll. It's just that some of these little things go a long way in people's enjoyment of interacting with the device. I'm perfectly happy to root, ROM, mod and flash my way to the setup I like with 3rd party launchers, softkey mods, 3rd party keyboards, but for people like my parents who get this phone, the oversights on Google's part definitely are a bit of a hindrance.
What do you guys and gals think?
I'm loving my Nexus for the most part. Screen is beautiful and I'm getting good battery life and reception so far (besides Verizon's hiccups a couple days ago).
There are definitely a few things that could be improved on Google's end, though.
They really should have kept the menu and search keys where they are as permanent buttons next to home and back. It's dumb and unintuitive to have to hunt around each app and look for the moving 3 little dots or magnifying glass icon. I know that there are softkey mods for this, but frankly it's embarrassingly bad design out of the factory when I'm trying to show people like my parents how to use the phone "try to find the 3 little dots" or "go to the top left to go back to the first screen of the app where they keep the search icon" (google maps especially)
Now this next one is a huge annoyance - no way to show/hide the keyboard manually. Without a permanent menu button, there is no way to force the keyboard on/off. Not a feature i'm happy to give up coming from GingerBread. Related to this, you can't just hold search to initiate a voice search. That one little nice universal search button should replace that whole Google Search banner at the top of the stock launcher.
Finally, the stock browser, while offering good performance, is completely unintuitive. Dolphin Browser HD is ridiculously better in terms of accessing tabs and favorites.
Now, as I said, I really love the phone and I'm not trying to troll. It's just that some of these little things go a long way in people's enjoyment of interacting with the device. I'm perfectly happy to root, ROM, mod and flash my way to the setup I like with 3rd party launchers, softkey mods, 3rd party keyboards, but for people like my parents who get this phone, the oversights on Google's part definitely are a bit of a hindrance.
What do you guys and gals think?