Dead-Lands

So for my job I get the unbelievably sweet deal of dealing with phones. All sorts of phones on all sorts of OS's. Yeah it is alot like a dream job since I'm such a phone nerd and gadget elitist as some have claimed. Some of the phones I have directly worked with:

• Nokia N97 - Symbian
• Apple iPhone 3Gs - Apple
• HTC Tytn II - WinMo
• Samsung Omnia II - WinMo

The ones I've just seen, touched or haven't gotten yet (but will likely)

• Nokia N900 - Maemo
• Droid phone of some sort (they are still undecided on this)
• Nokia N97 Mini - Symbian

I still want to get a pre and compair it to these others, but thats not to likely as there are specific hardware needs we have and I doubt Pre is going to provide it. To bad really cause It's supposedly a dream to develop for.

Speaking of developing for, man Apple are a bunch of Nazi's sheesh. You can make a billion and a half apps for the thing, but if you want it running in the background... say goodnight.

The Symbian is apparently a bear to develop for, or more directly using Nokias libraries in Symbian as the stuff we are doing I don't think Nokia thought it through very well, but man you can do anything with that thing.

Course the N900 is the same, as it's just Linux on a phone. You gotta admit it's pretty neat to get a phone that comes pre-loaded supporting Python, Perl, and Bash scripts out of the gate. There are some other very neat things to the phone and a ridiculous amount of hardware packed under the hood. Same with the Samsung Omnia II, which is probably the best darn phone I've ever seen. It's Display is freakishly amazing, it's hardware zippy and expansive, it's pretty colors oohh and ahh the eye. And it's windows so you can have background tasks. Still, the stuff built into the iPhone SDK for it's UI elements is pretty darn impressive, they where pretty exaustive to make sure things where big, buttony, have animations, and all around look sleek.

It's just the worst development environment I've ever seen before. I thought the Symbian Signed process was silly, and a bit overkill but man oh man what you have to do for iPhones/Touchs is just crazy.

Course they approve just about everything and you just have to submit it to them. Symbian apps you have to submit to a third party, pay x amount of dollars and pray that it's ok to get signed. So while development is cake (just uses Eclipse for the IDE and it's all done in Carbide C++) the final app you better be damn sure it's what you want.

Anyways thats my little blurb. Still haven't found the perfect phone. To many things I can do on the N97 that there is no equivalent on the iPhone or Samsung. But if I was going to recomend a phone to anyone, right now it's those Samsung Omnias (Verizon has them for 200, a dang good deal) That is until Nokia decides to put a processor in their phones thats not 4 years old (400mhz... really?)

curious cause you are the phone whore... but what do you think of the nexus one so far... at least from what you have read???

I haven't read very much on the phone. I've heard they are having some mechanical difficulties, or hardware issues with the OS. It's not surprising as you have a company that has never made embedded products before venturing in this area. Yes yes I know that it's unlikely that google actually made the Nexus One hardware, likely it was outsourced to some other vendor to make it for them.

One thing I would look into on that phone is how is the on screen keyboard. Specialy cause you are coming from a BB, a good tactical keyboard should be pretty important. I've used two different phones that virtual keyboards give you a slight vibration when hitting the keys, so you know it registered your click. That is something that switching to an iPhone always stands out to me, is that missing buzz/click/ feeling. And maybe it's in my head, but I feel I type much faster on those kinds of phones than on the iPhone because of that feedback, but I've seen my little brother on his iPod and that kid just flies.

Other things I'd look into is the stuff that Apps can't do, Camera pixel rate, Video Camera frame rate / resolution, Flash LED's for camera, AGPS accuracy/sensitivity. FM Transmitter, FM Receiver. Supported Video format resolutions and codecs (though this can be overcome by software, most of the time it's costly) Screen resolution. Battery milli Amp rating (1300 - 1500 is the bare minimum) Running RAM amount (256 is the bare minimum to accept) Total Storage space, SDHC capabilities (even if it's a small phone, an SDHC card really negates that) Processor speed time.

AND the most important thing, UI feel.

Grab one of these and take a look. However if I was going to pick an android phone I'd go with the Motorola Droid cause I really like their keyboard, and they have been making phones for a long time.

So I took a look at the Nexus One specs, and it's got some good ones. a 800x480 AMOLED screen (AMOLED screens are what the Samsung Omnias use, they take less power, have more vibrant colors and the black / contrast is much deeper than other screens)

It's got a 1400mAH battery which is pretty good (1500 is better, but 1300 is the bare minimum for smart phones)

The biggest thing is the 1GHZ processor, plus it's a qualcomm which means it has a seperate processor to handle DSP and video, which is a very good thing.

Then you got the other usual things, 5mp camera, 720p video recording (20 frames? thats a little weird, most that sport 5mp cameras to 30 frames)

The good Bluetooth with all the good BT stacks so you can do everything with it, print to a printer, use a keyboard, use your computer/stereo to play music from the phone, obex bla bla blah (plus AD2P which is part of BT 2.0, it's weird they call it out like that, but people are concerned about not having full stereo headset support for calls / music)

You got a compass, but I can't tell if it's a magnetometer or what? I don't know what digital compass means. If it's a magnetometer then your google maps / GPS will be much better, as it will always know what direction you are facing when you are stationary, something most GPS devices can't determine, only when you are moving.

If it's just a stupid app... thats a worthless thing to mention (it's probably only there because the iPhone does have a magnetometer..... which the Nokia N97 and N97 mini have as well as the Samsung Omnia HD)

512 of RAM means you can run a lot of programs, and thats more than I've seen on any Smartphone out there, most come with 256 (Samsung Omnias), some come with 128 (N97.... stupid Nokia). Since the iPhone only does one thing at a time, it could have 12 and still be fine, but I have no idea how many it comes with.

It's to bad it doesn't have any onboard memory (other than the other 512) but SDHC cards can make up for it.

One of the best features I did see was the active noise canceling, a second mic for when you are talking. I'd be very curious how well that works.

So your overall rating of the phone would be???

I read all those things and every review that I have read the phone seems to be pretty decent I just wanted to get the opinion of someone that drools over phones like you do.

I don't think I could ever get the droind first off it is like 7 inches thick which is really the dimension that always kills it for me with phones. That and the keyboard blows for people with large hands as the top line of keys is way to close to the screen when you open it up so I would have a hard time using it.

On another note this isn't a nexus one thing but Tmobile is giving discounts for people that have unsubsidized phones so it you buy this one outright by the time you would normally have gone through a 2 year contract you would have only paid like 50 for the phone cause of the discounts

What are the Data plan rates over yonder of T-Mobile?