Anand's Google Nexus One Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 3, 2010 3:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Notifications: Better than Apple, Worse than Palm
When Apple introduced its notification system on the iPhone, I was pleased. If you’re using your phone and you get a SMS, a little bubble appears on the screen and you get to read/dismiss the SMS:
That was three years ago. The iPhone can do a lot more now and the notification system is beginning to show its age. It’s annoying if you’re trying to do something else with your phone and you keep getting notifications. And it doesn’t scale well to getting tons of notifications, you’re just shown the most recent with no indication of what came before it.
Palm improved on Apple’s system by claiming a line or two of screen real estate and displaying notifications at the bottom of the screen. It was far less intrusive than Apple’s method but still gave you the same functionality. If you wanted to see more, just tap the notification bar and you see more of the message. This works for IMs, text messages, etc...
Notifications on the Palm Pre at the Bottom
Google takes a similar approach to Palm, although you don’t lose any additional screen real estate. The upper left hand corner of the screen is reserved for notifications. It’s a part of the status bar so there’s no screen resizing at work. If you get a message, missed call, IM, or anything you get a preview in this corner. The entirety of any message is displayed here; if it can’t fit on a single line, the message appears piecemeal.
Notifications can build up over time. Here we have a missed call, USB connection message, debug mode message and Pandora running in the background all at the same time:
Kinda crowded, right? Here’s where it gets awkward. To see all of your notifications simply place your finger at the top of your screen and drag down. You’ll reveal all of your notifications in list form:
It feels awkward if you’re used to using any non-Android phone. It’s functional, it gets the job done, but it’s just a strange UI construct. In fact, Android is riddled with such things.
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coolVariable - Saturday, April 10, 2010 - link
Oh, STFU you fanboy.1. No calendar sync. Buggy Contact sync (e.g. contact pics, birthdays, ...). Buggy e-mail sync (just stops randomly). STFU since you have no clue what you are talking about.
3. A phone that can't even make calls. GREAT!!!! I don't fvcking care what the reason for the problem is. A $600 phone should be able to make a fvcking phone call!!!!!!
4. Love your little walled garden? Why don't you get an Apple phone if you are soooooo in love with a company locking down the functionality of your phone???????? Anand bad-mouthes Apple for its walled garden and ignores this "walled garden"???
5. Walled garden! Walled garden! Walled garden! Walled garden!
All of the above are pretty big problems with android per se and the Nexus One specifically!
It's pathetic that they weren't even mentioned during this review.
Not to mention the myriad of other (often cosmetic) problems and bugs with android (e.g. contact sort, etc).
And a tech-savy reviewer would have also mentioned the hypocrisy that you need to "jailbreak" android to do a lot of things. While that is fine, it pretty hypocritical that you can't "un-jailbreak" the Nexus One for a warranty exchange (something that is pretty easy to do with the iphone).
ruzveh - Sunday, April 11, 2010 - link
Anand nice article and m also looking fwd to buy one phone in near future from GoogleFrom my point of view is that 1GHz processor with 65nm is draining the battery life. Imagine if u insert 1GHz processor with 32nm (todays std) or even less will boost ur battery life almost double. I dont understand so called this chip company why not jumping onto 32nm bandwagon or to somewhat 25nm or even less?
i just feel these cos r wasting so called resources and time for money / profits. Dont they knw resources r limited and so purchasing power.
Thats secondary thing. Ohh what? r u thing i forgot to mention primary issue? lolz
Well its obvious.. Innovation in Battery power. What i hate in mobiles are speed and battery life for which i m ending up using my cell ph for only calls & ofcourse sms since past 8yrs 6630 and not willing to change untill they come up with good phones..
coming back to battery life i really dont understand why these cos r not doing something in batter life when there is lot of room for improvement in it like todays model feature only 1500mah battery power wheres a small pencil cell can go all the upto 3000mah or even more. We definitely want to see double the capacity then what they r featuring today.. Anand can u clear me on this prospect?
I am v much sure if v give proper attention in this area we can do wonders. Comon someone has to do something sooner or the later...
7.saturnine - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link
I don't understand the trend of putting as few physical buttons on a device as possible. How do you skip or pause music when the device is in your pocket? Pull it out, unlock the screen, find the music app & press the button? That is ridiculous.On my HTC Touch (WinMo6) it has hardly any buttons either, but at least one programmable physical button (that I have programmed to open the camera from any app I am in) & a directional pad/enter button. Sometimes I just like using the directional pad to go through menus & select something rather than moving my thumb all the way up the screen. Yes that sounds incredibly lazy, but aren't these devices all about ease of use, simplicity & speed? Programmable hardware buttons do just that. They are focusing too much on the aspect of a touch screen.
Affectionate-Bed-980 - Thursday, April 15, 2010 - link
This seems to be a forgotten thing. I spent 2 hrs playing around writing probably pages worth of notes just to test it out on Android.You say the iPhone lackED it? I have an iPod Touch 1G and I guess I'm used to multitouch by now, but how long did it take for Apple to add it? I notice how ridiculously fast I can type on it and not skip words/keys. On Android, it's a totally different thing.
A few tips from me as I've investigated this for a long time and I've made cries out on Android forums with very little sympathy:
1) HTC's IME keyboard that is modded on XDA is a LOT better. The developer tried to implement a little pseudo multitouch so it is more used to you pressing the next key before releasing the previous. This is a HUGE issue with the space bar and if you use the stock android keyboard, you're going to be skipping words like mad if you type too fast.
2) Smart Keyboard Pro has multitouch. It also features a debug mode that you can look at your touch points. It definitely picks up multitouch flawlessly. Is it as good as the iPhone keyboard? Somehow I was still typing faster on my iPod than on my Android phone with Smart Keyboard Pro.
However, with the mods the modders have made on the HTC IME Keyboard, I've decided to stick with it. It's getting better and it's handling multitouch somewhat even though it's not a true multitouch implementation.
But you're right. It's night and day without multitouch. For people who haven't used the iPhone enough, they fail to appreciate the keyboard. Most people just go "Oh I type fine on my Nexus One. I type pretty fast." Obviously you can't type THAT fast if it lacks multitouch. Maybe they should look at what "fast" means on the iPhone :D
rossmandor - Monday, August 30, 2021 - link
nice one