Life with Android 1

I was telling my colleague John Naughton, who has a keen sense of what matters in technology, of my having bought an Android phone. He sensibly suggested I keep a diary. Not sure if I should be doing it on this or a more work-related blog, but here goes…

I've not had a new-style smartphone before (i.e. an iPhone style). I previously had a Symbian phone with keypad - good Internet access but a small screen + an OS that felt a bit long in the tooth. I've had two kinds of touchscreen PDA though - beloved Psions with great keyboard & software, and a Palm with good screen (and WiFi) but a bit dated. Enough history, on to the present.

So I have an Orange San Francisco - big bright screen with great resolution, small + light, and cheap. Lots of Orange bloatware, but I can ignore that and in time delete it.
Experience so far is positive. All the PDA stuff (calendar + contacts) easy to shift from old phone via Gmail + Google Calendar. Texting + calls fine. Music player also seems to do all you might expect.

Internet access is smooth + easy, with a neat little browser. WiFi is fast at home, though it was a nasty shock to discover that it can't handle proxy servers, so thus far can only use 3G at work.

And the apps are a delight. So far I've installed: Facebook + Twitter (natch), DropBox for updating files on phone & home/office PCs, Adobe Reader, neat Barcode Scanner, and Blogger (yes I wrote this post on it).

Not a lot to dislike, though I find the touchscreen interface a bit unintuitive at times. Still to work out the best way to move around long text boxes when composing and editing text. And the resolution is so good that selecting text links can be a bit tough. Oh, and very little onboard help. But I hope to get over these in time.

More on my Android experiences as time goes on.