I agree that you need to consider the keyboard, but frankly, I think the Droid keyboard friggin' sucks, I'd rather use a touchscreen. There's no differentiation between the keys because the overlay has very little space between keys & the keys aren't raised much. These were design considerations but for me, they mean there's little reason for me to choose it. Definitely a personal consideration, handle the phones before you buy.
And be aware that all touchscreens are not the same. I bought the first BlackBerry Storm, and hated it. Bought an iPhone 3Gs, and love it.
And I had an HTC Touch and it was a pile of shit. So was my wife's Droid Eris (also by HTC). I like my Droid. It's probably not the best at anything it does, but altogether it fits my needs well.
To add to the post above, flash on Android coming this June. Looks pretty damn nice. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/11/android-2-2-froyo-and-flash-run-like-butter-on-nexus-one-vide/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/11/andr ... -one-vide/</a>
The Nexus One hasn't been selling well as a standalone so Google announced they are closing the online store for the Nexus. I complained about an old HTC phone of mine earlier in this thread, but the HTCO Evo 4g looks pretty damn cool. Sprint Page Video demonstrations I've been in the market for a new phone since January, and it has been difficult to be patient and wait for all the summer releases. I'm already on Sprint so the Evo is pretty high on my list. Still going to wait and see just what Apple announces. If they're releasing an AT&T 4g it's going to be a tough decision for me.
Just ordered the Incredible this morning. Should be getting it in the mail in a couple weeks due to the backorder. Hooray for technology!!
I was thinking about waiting to get the new iphone that is coming out soon, but now i'm not so sure. After today's announcement from AT&T about the new data plans I think I might just get the 3gs so I can be grandfathered in the unlimited plan. I'm going from a old blackberry with Verizon if that helps. Should I just go ahead and wait?
The 3GS is already obsolete, there is no reason whatsoever to get it. If you're concerned about unlimited data, consider Android on a different (better) carrier.
I feel like I've also complained about those same things enough that I should say this publicly: Yesterday I called AT&T, and told them that I'm dropping over half my calls, and I'm tired of it, and I don't want to pay my bill. The customer service guy first explained to me without being defensive or pulling punches, that AT&T wasn't equipped to handle all the data usage, and told me about a few things they're doing to try to improve it, including not giving any of you newcomers unlimited data plans. Then came the good part. For starters, he completely waived my outstanding balance of $149.00. Then, he looked over my usage and found a way for me to keep the unlimited data plan AND cut my cost by $40 every month. And then, he went ahead and made me eligible to get the new Iphone, which he just fucking paid for, with the previous two sentences. I know, I'm a cheap date. But he made me a newly happy customer. Oh, yeah - he also found a way for me to keep the 7,000 rollover minutes I had racked up, even though he put me into a much cheaper plan.
I know I'm late to this thread, but I have a Nexus One. I've had it since Google started shipping them. My carrier is T-Mobile. Physically, the phone feels solid. It doesn't feel like a flimsy piece of shit. It weighs about the same as an iPhone. The screen size is definitely bigger and sharper as well. However, in bright surroundings, the screen is pretty much unreadable unless you jack up the brightness to compensate. As for the touchscreen itself, it's a love/hate kind of thing. Browsing is extremely easy and supports multi-touch. I've got sausage fingers and I've never had a problem clicking links. As far as texting goes, I'd rather juggle AIDS-infected hypodermic needles than do it on this, or any other touchscreen phone. Like touching any touchscreen, it gets smudgy as shit. Get a screen protector. The predictive text is pretty decent, except for stupid shit like capitalizing the word Guy all the time. If I knew how, I'd turn it off. Battery life is about what you expect from a phone with a beefy processor. Shitty. Generally, I have to charge it every night if I'm heavily using it. GPS and WiFi similarly rape the battery. Using the GPS for a long road trip is a recipe for failure unless you've got a car charger. I also noticed that the battery got pretty warm too. T-Mobile's coverage is wonky to say the least. I work in Seattle and I used to live in Lakewood. That drive is about an hour during rush hour and you're driving through some areas with a lot of trees everywhere. Weirdly enough, Pandora never dropped out or anything. But I can't walk from my office to one of our clients ten minutes away without Pandora staying connected. Android Marketplace is the tits. Pretty much any major app you'd get on iTunes, you can find the same or the equivalent on Android Marketplace. Best of all, no draconian Apple content policies. And Flash. If you can't wait for Flash, you can download a browser alternative called Skyfire that does Flash video.
HTC Evo on Sprint: I have had this phone for almost a week now. I am incredibly happy with it. The phone has an impressive screen that blows the iPhone 3G out of the water. Of course this means the phone is a bit larger, but I'm ok with that as I feel the trade-off is more than worth it with the extra screen size. I also dig the sleek black and red accented color. The touchscreen is not quite large enough to accommodate my sausage fingers (and I don't like texting in landscape mode) but it's better than others. As for the touchscreen itself, it has the right amount of sensitivity. You don't have to mash down on it. I really like the Android OS. It's simple and intuitive with few quirks and I still get a kick when I figure out something new I can do. The Android market's great. I was worried about how Apple has a lot more apps but I really have not been wanting in that regard with Android. I thought it was really cool how it added all my contacts from Facebook and Gmail. Not so cool is that it added EVERY email address ever in connection with my Gmail, which means I have about 300 Craigslist email addresses (from apartment and job hunting... I swear) that I have to delete. Also, it I want to use it as a disk drive and connect it to my computer via USB my laptop has a fit and Windows Explorer keeps crashing. I am still getting a kick out of the voice-to-text feature which works surprisingly well. I honestly just tried "Beat up Martin" and it wrote it perfectly. The camera is pretty wicked. Incredibly clear and a decent shutter speed. The camcorder is a little iffy with sound but is still pretty respectable. I'll post samples from each. I bought an HDMI cable but I don't see myself using it much. Unfortunately 4G service won't be available in my area until the end of the year so I can't comment on that either. As for Sprint and their 3G service, I have no complaints. Very rarely so I get a call dropped or a text message 30 minutes after it was sent. My bill is only about $80/mo too for unlimited data and text. I talk very rarely however so I have the lowest # of minutes possible. Battery: It's a battery-killer. I wisely purchased a car charger and keep it connected anytime I travel and diligently charge it every night when I'm asleep. I also made sure to download the Advanced Task Killer app as soon as possible. Anytime I check something on my phone I make sure to kill any apps I don't want open before putting it back into my pocket. If you do all this I really don't see battery life being too big a problem even with 4G and GPS enabled, though I do recommend only enabling Wifi when you need it. Overall: I have been waiting to purchase a new phone since January. I wavered a lot and would have got one sooner had Apple not have been doing their iPhone 4G announcement this month. When it finally came out I compared the 2 and it wasn't worth me switching carriers. I'm really happy with my choice and have no regrets. So long as your conscious of killing apps and keeping it charged, it should serve you well.
HTC Incredible I'm typing this from my phone now, so forgive any spelling errors even though this t9 or whatever spelling predictor is pretty awesome. The Bad: There's very little that I've noticed to be bad about this little guy except a couple things, one being obvious in most smart phones; the battery life blows. I wish battery technology would improve as quickly as phones do to be able to keep up with the crazy leaps phones make. Many days my battery would end up around 10-20% by the end of the day with minimal use due to the Android system eating so much power. Comes with the territory I guess. 2nd thing is the vertical position keyboard has its buttons really thin and It's sometimes hard to type a quick text up, but the t9 thing kind of counters it. 3rd, when typing something like this, I go pretty fast and the software has a slightly hard time keeping up, but its not a huge deal. 4th some of these buttons are really small and difficult to press, like in the phonebook, trying to just view someone's contact info, the button is maybe half the size of my pinky fingernail and is set on top of the 'call them' button. Lastly I keep setting my ringtone to a piece of music that I cut shorter, but the phone keeps changing it back to a default one and I don't know why. I think that's it for now. Oh, the construction could be a little more sturdy with better materials. The Good: this thing is ungodly fast. Holy hell everything loads at the snap of a finger with minimal wait time, my computer isn't even this fast. The internet over Verizon is faster than my wireless network at home, so I use the phone more often to check email and browse the interweb and load videos and whatnot. A lot of the apps and widgets that come with the phone are great but I use some that I downloaded (really fucking fast of course, like 5 seconds fast) instead and they work like a charm. The camera quality is amazing and even better than my digital camera that I got last year. The phone comes with a 2gb micro SD card to store all the pictures too, so that's pretty cool. Basically, the phone is crazy fast, can hold a lot of info, and is all around awesome. I give it a solid 9.5/10. If anyone has any specific questions, just shoot me a pm.
I'm considering getting an Iphone. I'm currently with verizon on the blackberry tour, which I've grown to hate. I'm on a family share plan, and it costs me about $70/month. If I switch, there'd be 2 of us on a new family plan or whatever AT&T has. But we'd want the same features we currently have - unlimited messaging between all networks, unlimited data (email, internet, etc), I won't use tethering, though the other phone might. I took a look around ATT's site, and it seemed like the total cost would be: $90 1400 mins $30 unlimited messaging $25 data plan for phone A $25 data plan for phone B So $170/month. I haven't had a chance to stop in at a store or call a rep, so I figured I'd see if anyone here has any ideas if there's a cheaper plan I could put together. Never really dealt with ATT, but I've always heard they were cheaper. I really would only switch if I could keep the cost about the same. I might be able to get a discount through work, but I didn't want to include that in case I'm not eligible. If I don't switch, I still want to get rid of this damn blackberry. Scroll ball has always had poor sensitivity, and this weekend something else happened, now it's even worse and there's a noticeable "click" when it scrolls down. That and the random shutdowns cause I looked at it wrong has grown my distaste for it. If I stick with verizon I'm considering the droid, but would definitely look at the other models. I've always liked having a physical keyboard, but I think I could get used to the touchscreen.
I just bought mine two days ago after playing with the one my dad bought on launch day. We've been with Sprint since 1998 (who the hell knows why) and out of the 10 phones I've gone through I can honestly say this is the only one I actually like. In fact, I love it. Everything is pretty much perfect about it except for the battery life. This phone sucks the life out of the battery in a few hours. Having a phone charger or letting it charge while your home combats this issue but it takes so long to charge it really doesn't work out that great. Today, for instance, I unplugged it from the charger with a full battery about an hour ago. I ran slacker radio for about 10 minutes and did some texting as well as download an HTC update. The battery is at 82%. Pretty fucked up in my opinion after coming from a Blackberry where it would charge in an hour and last me four days. I have read online that not all the Evo batteries are this bad so maybe I'll go back to the store and exchange it until I get a battery that can last me an afternoon. That or I need to buy a second battery...
There are two of you, both with unlimited data plans, 1400 minutes to split, and unlimited texting, for $70/month? WTF? That doesn't even seem possible. There's no way you're going to match that on AT&T. The data plans for each of the iPhones alone are going to run you the majority of that $70. Incidentally, I am increasingly unhappy with my iPhone now that the Android competition has stepped up. Along with that, I have been increasingly unhappy with AT&T's shitty network. A great phone is nice but a great phone without service isn't much of a phone. I will probably be an HTC Incredible/Verizon customer before the year is up.
Navigate to Settings, and find your battery settings under there. There will be a breakdown of what is eating your battery. Be especially aware if your phone is spending a substantial amount of time without a signal - a coworker was getting horrible battery life but when you looked at that stat, he was spending 50% of his time without a signal. There isn't that much variation in batteries. Returning it 5 times isn't going to suddenly net you a battery that lasts all day. What you're reading online is different peoples' experience with the phones, not some wild variation in batteries. Also, generally speaking, task killers do not improve your battery life. When apps are in the background, they will sleep and not drain CPU cycles. In fact, task killers could arguably be worse for your battery life since launching the app again forces it to start from the beginning rather than from an already loaded, suspended state. If you have misbehaving apps, of course, that's another story - but by and large, task killers are fine for freeing up memory but will not improve your phone's battery life.
Well I was also comparing the battery life to my dad's Evo. He has his phone off of the charger from 7am every day and uses it multiple times, making calls, texting and using it online and his battery % is still higher when he comes home at 5 while mine has been unplugged from noonish with minimal use. I laughed when I saw my battery was at 94% three minutes after I unplugged it from the charger and all I did was check my email. I don't kill tasks too often but for some reason after unlocking my phone to use it I see a ton of apps turn themselves on when I never had them on in the first place. After looking at the battery settings, it shows that 50% is being used by Android System, 23% by Cell standby, 14% by Phone idle, and 13% by Display. Battery is at 47% from being unplugged from around 12:30pm (it's 7:54pm now) and all I did was make two calls, check my email once, and browse the android market for a few minutes. My father's battery settings show that 31% are used by Android System, 25% by Cell standby, 18% Phone Idle, 9% Display, 8% Voice calls, 6% Dialer, and 3% Internet. His battery life is at 73%. I have no idea why mine it draining a billion times more than his.
Percentages don't mean much. Find that "Time without a signal" stat. I don't know where it is in those settings.