Edit on 3rd Feb 2010: Entry remains for posterity, however - I Take it Back, Android is Pretty Sweet!
If you are considering buying an Android OS mobile phone, or if you want to know how HTC have implemented it on the Magic G2, here's some impressions for you.
Yesterday I recieved a second-hand HTC Magic G2 to replace my crippled, near-dead mobile phone. My previous phone was a Sony Ericsson z750i, and I can say without hesitation it was the best mobile phone I've ever owned. The only complaints I have are the usual ones when it comes to Sony products - the proprietary memory cards and power ports. The operating system and user interface was fantastic. The hardware was capable and attractive. Sony clearly put a lot of effort into optimising the interface for easy access to frequently performed tasks. Until the hardware began to die (partially due to frequent exposure to the elements) it was exactly what I needed.
A first look at Android
Almost all the reviews I read of the OS and the hardware have been glowing, so I've been surprised to so far have been experiencing less-than-optimal success myself.
After playing with every setting I could get my hands on and generally experimenting with the limitations of the OS, I increasingly began to feel that for Android, using your mobile as, well, a telephone, is a secondary concern. Primarily the focus is on apps, and integration with Google services. Which is somewhat to be expected, but I'm disappointed at some basic mobile phone options Android does not seem to natively possess (more on them later).
The integration with Google services is a major selling point for me. I use nearly all their services on a regular basis, particularly RSS, calendar and email.
The first disappointment is that the calendar cannot display all my events. I have about seven calendars in my Google Account - I separate appointments from social engagements from classes from work events and so on. Each type of event has its own calendar on my account, and they each have their own identifying colour.
They're all owned by my main Google account - they aren't being pulled in from elsewhere. It should be simple to pull them all up at once.
However, the Google Calendar app can only see my first calendar (Appointments) and whenever I attempt to add more, the software simply hangs. On the rare occasions it doesn't hang, it lists 'all available calendars' on my account as... exaclty the same. Just Appointments. It can't see any of the other calendars on my account, and that would have been a deal-breaker right there if I had known this before buying a phone running Android. Even browsing my Google Calendar via the web interface will not solve the problem.
On the other hand, my Sony Ericsson phone could bring up every single event on my Google Calendar via the mobile web interface with no issues at all. Why is Sony's software able to perform better than Google's for a product Google makes?
(I have been trying to get tech support on this issue, but no one seems to have a solution).
There's also no decent Google-made or third-party produced RSS reader apps, which isn't a dealbreaker but somewhat surprising.
No problems with the Gmail app, at least. That worked as I would expect, and has the abillity to allow you to perform mass actions on emails.
Managing contacts
If you don't want to have every single mobile phone contact appear in your Gmail contacts list, too bad. There seems to be no other way to easily edit your contacts using a computer other than importing every phone contact into Gmail and then modifying contacts from there. I find the Gmail contacts editing interface clunky and slow compared to the Sony Ericsson PC Suite, which allowed me to simply configure settings, contacts and media for my phone with ease.
One of the reasons why being able to easily modify contacts is so important to me is that I find the touchscreen keyboard a complete pain to use, and all my important contacts have been imported from my SIM as a single string consisting of "[Surname];[Firstname]" - meaning without re-formatting every single one of my contacts individually my addressbook becomes a hideous mish-mash of surnames and firstnames (some people had surnames on my phone, some didn't). You can't easily anticipate what letter of the alphabet someone's name is going to fall under.
If you use Gmail as your contact management system, you will probably have no issues. But seriously, who does that? The interface and fucntionality just can't compare to other contact management systems right now. Instead I am going to be forced to have a whole bunch of contacts in my personal Gmail account that I don't want, simply so I can make them easier to edit on my mobile phone.
Hardware
HTC have done a good job. The Magic G2 is pretty, and it can connect to two different types of NextG networks. It's lightweight and attractive. The buttons are a little smaller than I'd like, but they're useable. The screen is clear, crisp, and doesn't creak concerningly under pressure. The battery cover is easy to remove and the SD card easy to access as well. Fingerprints seem to be repelled from the screen effectively. All in all, it's a pretty sweet piece of kit.
The only problem I have is with the touch screen functionlaity itself. The keyboard seems to only take capacitive input and not transitive - ie my spare Nintendo DS stylus can not be co-opted into use as a stylus for the Magic to make typing much much easier. I hope I have that the right way around - I'm not incredibly informed when it comes to touch screen technologies - but I'm very disappointed that I can't reduce my keyboard innacuracy by switching to a stylus instead of fingers.
And there's a LOT of keyboard innacuracy. Maybe it's a matter of becoming more familiar with the layout, but the touch keyboard is a pain in the posterior. I have ridiculously tiny hands and fingers (my mother was a petite 5-foot pixie - I'm taller, but my hands are a carbon-copy of her pixie-digits) and I still have trouble hitting keys accurately, even in landscape view.
Is this a party calculator or a phone?
"A calculator that you can show off at parties" is how I am mentally imagining the OS. There's some great little apps, and I'd be remiss not to mention the accuracy of the GPS used alongside Google Maps. It really is very slick.
But the actual functionality as a phone is not making itself very clear to me. Perhaps I'll uncover more with time. But simple things like having a shortcut to switch between profiles - in my case, my louder ringtone and SMS sounds for home and the quieter ringtone for when I'm at the office - seems non-existent. You can quickly drop the phone into silent mode, but that's not what I'm after. So far, the only way to change the ringtone's volume seems to be to manually go into the settings menu and change it each time you move into a different context - way too high maintenance. I want to be able to leave my phone on my desk, go to a meeting, and not get filthy looks when I return because my phone went off three times and blasted everyone with my taste in music for five minutes. And I don't want to leave it on silent all the time because I'll miss important calls.
Also, the SMS sound plays by default any time ANY of your apps gets an update - so every time someone Twittered, updated their status on Facebook, or sent me an email, I was getting the SMS sound. This happened several times a minute. Why is this the default? And why do you have to jump through about thirty hoops on fire with whirling blades to shut this off for each app individually? After hearing that sms sound about 40 times in half an hour I was about ready to the snap the phone in half and devour the phone-candy.
These are minor things, but they're key bits of mobile phone functionality that I've seen in ever other phone I've ever used. I can see now why there are so many homebrew hacks to the operating system floating around.
Final thoughts
My original plan was to buy a Crackberry Blackberry 9700 - keyboard and seasoned OS in tow - but I was so keen to try out the Android OS, and so disappointed that I couldn't buy a Nexus in Australia, that I switched to the Magic instead.
I'm regretting that choice now, but I'm sure over time I'll adjust my behaviours to suit Android. Hopefully I'll find a few hacks and apps that might allow me to customise how I use the phone a little more to my liking. What annoys me is that an end-user shouldn't really have to do that for basic mobile phone functions. If you want a highly specialised phone, sure, I'd anticipate having to modify the OS a little and do a little homebrew development. But some configuration settings are unavailable and it just makes no sense to me. It feels like Gnome versus KDE all over again (yes, I'm a KDE person, though I use both).
If this sounds like a big cranky rant, you're right on the money. I'm cranky. I spent five fruitless hours last night trying to get the phone to let me edit contacts in an easy-to-manage interface. I'm sure in time I'll grow to appreciate the phone more, and, as I said earlier, modify my behaviour to suit the system.
I'm just so surprised because everyone else seems to love it. So I thought I should get my cranky opinions out there for grouchy people like me wanting more information on what their potential phone can and cannot do.
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