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(More customer reviews)This phone combine above average promise with above average frustration. It's great because it does a lot of what my laptop used to do. Its ability to synchronize Google contacts, e-mail, and calendar are a lifesaver when traveling. This specifications are impressive: GPS, WiFi, bluetooth, internal compass, ambient light sensor, and autofocus-capable camera/video. When I first got it, it ran Android 1.5, an old version with many annoying problems, such as an unusable YouTube app, and battery-wasting default settings. Adjusting the default settings helped with battery life, and after a long wait, the Android 2.1 update arrived, which made some things better (e.g. YouTube) but other things worse. Most glaringly, the phone became noticeably slower just after the update. It was never zippy to begin with, but is now downright irritating, even with a task killer that I use constantly.
This phone reminds me of my first experience years ago with Windows 95. Then, as now, that was the product to compete with Apple, but it had a lot of rough edges, just like Android does at the moment.
Here are my detailed observations, starting first with the good things:
1. If you use gmail and Google calendar, Android will synchronize your life. If you add contacts on your phone, they show up on your gmail account within a few seconds, and vice versa. If you add calender items online, they show up on the phone, and vice versa. It just works. All phones should be this easy.
2. The GPS is downright amazing, much better than my older HTC phone. It finds satellites quickly, even indoors when I'm not particularly close to a window.
3. The ambient light sensor automatically adjusts screen brightness, like the iphone. It works well most of the time.
4. The Android Market, while still lagging behind the iPhone app store, is catching up fast. OK, now for the frustrating parts.
1. It's slow. Under Android 1.5, simple things like typing sometimes had noticeable delays. After updating to the latest version 2.1, the phone has gotten slower still. Without task killers, I would have thrown the phone against a wall by now. The camera application seems to particularly bog the phone down, so I kill it whenever I'm not using it.
2. Typing. This phone has one of the increasingly common "capacitive" touchscreens (like the iphone). If you're already used to this, you know what you're in for. But if you're used to the older "stylus" type screens, get ready for several days of fat fingers. The screen responds only to the fleshy pad of the finger, not a stylus or fingernail. Your fingers will feel like giant marshmallows on the tiny on-screen keyboard. It was much slower than the stylus on my old phone.
3. Settings are often hard to find, and buried deep within menus. For example, to turn off dialpad tones, you have to exit out of the phone application, then go to "Settings", then "Sound and Display", then scroll to "Dialer Keypad Tone". It took days to figure this out, and the setting really ought to be placed in the phone app itself.
4. Battery life is middling with default factory settings. It gets better if you turn off "always-on" in the wireless settings, but then the phone no longer downloads mail in the background, and you'll have to sync manually. These things aren't obvious - you have to figure them out by reading forums and seeing what other people have tried.
5. Slightly arrogant user community. A lot of Android early-adopters are techies. While setting up my phone, one "helpful" comment I got from another Android user went along the lines of telling me to reprogram the operating system, and that " ... if you don't want to flash your own custom roms, then get an iphone". OK, aside from voiding my warranty, what did I just pay hundreds of $$$ for? If Google and Sprint's highly paid engineers couldn't make things work, why should I have to?In summary, Android currently feels like a work in progress, and the processor on this phone is already outdated. After lots of fiddles and tweaks, and reading lots of forums, this phone became very useful, but still frustratingly slow.
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