I’ve just received my Nexus One from Google, fairly prompt delivery – I ordered during the press conference and it was dispatched a few days after by DHL International (Better than City Link!) which then took only three days to ship internationally.
A bit of background, this is an upgrade from an HTC Hero which is a brilliant, brilliant phone – but just a little slow in places. I’m hoping the Nexus One’s significantly beefier hardware will sort out this minor annoyance while keeping all the same awesome awesomeness.
The phone is great, everything works really nicely. The main reason for this post is a rant about lack of Sense UI in the Nexus. I didn’t realise how much HTC had added to the Android platform and I miss it now that i’ve made the jump. Just briefly here are a few things that I miss on the Nexus that are actually because of HTC’s great work and not part of the Android stock platform (which I had imagined they were):
- Keyboard, HTC’s keyboard is far superior to the standard Android one (i.e. the one that came with the Nexus) – and there aren’t that many available on the market.
- Where are all my widgets? I want a full page mail widget, a-la Hero – but there’s nothing to be found on the Nexus as standard, or in the Market. I’d also like a full page (google) calendar widget, same story.
- The top bar looks rubbish compared to HTC’s sleek black look, the default Android one is a little bit Elementary school, lots of big blocks and friendly letters with little thought about how attractive it looks.
- When dialing, HTC have an amazing system which allows you to type numbers to find names, e.g. to call ‘Henri’ I could start typing on the dialer ‘32 (H-E)’ and all matching contacts would appear, it was really fast finding contacts and a pleasure to use. At the minute I have to scroll my entire (400+) contacts list to find names, and THAT is annoying.
Everything else really nice at the moment, it’s definitely given me the speedboost I was looking for and i’m still an Android advocate, i’m just disappointed that a lot of what I thought Android is, was actually HTC’s Sense UI which I don’t think I can get hold of on my Nexus.