I’m three weeks into a new 30 day challenge: no iPhone. When I got a Nexus One in December, I spent a few weeks carrying both phones around in the pockets of my jeans. It took a little while to adapt to Android, but I’m very happy with my Nexus One and I don’t plan to go back to the iPhone. Both the iPhone and Android are great operating systems, but it’s important to me that I can write or run the applications I choose on my phone.
The best way I can describe the transition is to read this article by Jason Kincaid and this article by Danny Sullivan. Danny contends that the iPhone is better, mentioning that after “literally an hour or less of playing with my wife’s iPhone” he was an iPhone convert.
I think both Danny and Jason are right in some ways. Like Danny, it only took me a couple hours of playing with my wife’s iPhone before I knew that I had to have one. In a post that I wrote in 2007 but never published, I said “I think the iPhone is going to be a monster hit.” And it was. But here’s the thing: I was comparing the iPhone to my previous phone, which was an LG enV. That was like comparing a Ferrari to a old station wagon.
If you’re coming from a feature phone (or almost any type of phone other than an iPhone 3GS), you’ll probably love Android right away. But if you’re already an iPhone power user? Well, you’ve learned how things work on an iPhone. Maybe you have your music in iTunes, and you’ve already built up a list of favorite apps. That makes switching to a different make of phone much harder. Jason Kincaid describes it well: “Imagine if you took a longtime Windows user and sat them in front of a Mac for a couple days.” Things seem weird and different in arbitrary ways, like the power button is on the other side of the phone. But those things fade away after a few days of using Android, and you’re left with a powerful platform that feels like it’s under your control.
Do I still miss a few things on the iPhone? Absolutely. For example, the iPhone makes it easy to take a snapshot of the screen — just press the power and home button at the same time. The iPhone fits 20 apps on the home screen instead of 16 on the Nexus One. I use a password for my phone, and the iPhone has a setting that says “If you’ve used the phone in the last N hours, don’t lock the phone,” while the Nexus One needs me to unlock it each time I wake it up. I prefer the default ringtones on the iPhone. I preferred the iPhone’s finance app for the news sources it showed.
But the Nexus One outshines the iPhone in other ways. Voice recognition built into every text box. Google Voice. And judging from the jitter in Google Sky Map vs. the iPhone Yelp Monacle Monocle, I think the sensors in the Nexus One are a little more robust. Once you use the high-resolution screen on the Nexus One, it’s hard to go back to the iPhone (and the screen on the Droid is very nice too). And I love kicking off a podcast in Listen and then multitasking in a web browser.
The iPhone is praised (rightly so) for its fit-and-finish. But glitches happen on the iPhone too. I went back to check on something a few weeks ago and the iPhone browser kept dying and kicking me back out to the home screen. Overall, I would still rate the iPhone higher on fit and finish, and the iPhone is simpler for a non-tech-savvy person to understand. But polish and simplicity aren’t the most important things to me as a phone user. I want maximum functionality, and the velocity of Android in that area has been staggering. Going from the G1 to the Nexus One in about a year is amazing. I can’t wait to see what new things show up in Android.
Ultimately though, what matters the most to me is control. I have a simple rule of thumb, which is that I don’t put data somewhere that I can’t get it back. That’s the reason that I didn’t buy songs in iTunes, purchase ebooks for the Amazon Kindle, or really log into Facebook at all. It’s also the reason that I recently switched my computer from Microsoft Windows to Ubuntu Linux. With Android, I feel like I have more control. It’s pretty easy to write your own programs for free. My contacts and calendar and email are sync’ed with Google, which lets me easily export that data. I can put widgets or folders or whatever I want on my phone’s home screen. And yes, I could install an app to wobble pictures if I wanted to. Why? Because phones are increasingly mini-computers with a phone attached, and I should be allowed to run the programs I want on my own computer.
I could ramble on about the iPhone compared the Nexus One (both really are great phones in different ways), but I’ll wrap up this post. But my 30 days with no iPhone is going so well that last week I started a new 30 day challenge. My new 30 day challenge is reducing my sugar consumption. I won’t be able to get to 0% sugar (even A1 steak sauce has sugar as an ingredient?!?), but I’m trying to stop eating sugar, candy, Splenda, and anything with sugar as a primary ingredient, even (sob) yogurt. You have to understand, I love yogurt. Wish me luck: only 27 more days to go. Sigh.
Okay, someone tell me if this device exists (or build it!). I want a device where I can pay $10-15 to get a gadget in the mail. The gadget would sit in my pocket for a week wherever I go. The device would record cell phone signal strength for each of the four major U.S. carriers every few seconds. After a week or so, the device would deliver the verdict on which cell phone carrier would have the strongest signal for me. Then I could mail the device back so someone else could use it — sort of a Netflix-like model to temporarily borrow this device.
At any point, I could go to a web page to view a map of where I’d been. The page would show a “heat map” of signal strength for each carrier or frequency band. Maybe I could also slice/dice by time or see the total number of readings in each location. I’m pretty sure you could rig this up out of 2-3 cell phones running Android in the worst case.
So far, I’ve found:
Android
- RF Signal Tracker is a nice app to collect and map signal strength data. It looks like it can upload to OpenCellID, which is a project to create an open database of cell IDs (numbers that correspond to cells).
- Antennas is a pretty cool free app to show you nearby antennas and signal strength. It can even export some data in KML for use with Google Maps/Earth, but it doesn’t seem to make a heat map that could be easily grokked.
- Sensorly has a free Android app, but they seem to want you to pay to zoom in closer than city level. I’m willing to do that, but didn’t see the for-pay addon in the Android Market.
iPhone
- I also found an iPhone app called Signals that will continuously collect signal data and upload it.
- AT&T offers an iPhone app called Mark the Spot to report dropped calls, no coverage, etc. I have to admit that I don’t understand why this is manual though. Personally, I’d want my phone to ping my carrier with its location every time the phone dropped a call.
Web
- SignalMap is a website to (manually!) submit the number of bars for a location. It doesn’t appear to have any mobile app to back it up. Likewise, Dead Cell Zones and Got Reception? appear to rely on manual reports. I don’t think manual reports is the best way to tackle cell phone coverage maps though — you really want an app for this.
- http://www.cellreception.com/ has the standard manual reports data, but also will map the location of cell phone towers based on the location of cell phone towers registered with the FCC.
- Root Wireless powers the cell phone signal strength maps that CNET uses, but I didn’t see any apps I could download or install on a phone. I registered to be a beta tester a long time ago, but no one ever contacted me.
That’s what I could find. Do you know of any good Android (or iPhone) programs to collect, map, or upload cell phone strength measurements? If so, let me know in the comments.
We recently recorded a video of one of my favorite “hidden gems” at Google: the Google Mobile App, which does voice recognition to make searches easier on a mobile phone. It’s available for the iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerry, Nokia S60, and Windows Mobile. In the video below, I ran the Google Mobile App through its paces on an iPhone:
We basically decided to say queries until something went badly wrong, and I almost ran out of queries. I did:
[behavioral economist]
[ed felten dmca]
[fox theater redwood city california]
[time in beijing]
[39 centimeters in inches]
[answer to life the universe and everything]
[safebrowsing api safari firefox] [custom made pinata] < – this got recognized as [old custom made pinata], but the search results were still fine
[google quality guidelines]
[sheraton hotel boston massachusetts]
I can’t promise that the voice recognition work as well for you, but I have noticed that the voice recognition has improved considerably since the mobile app first launched. If the recognition doesn’t quite understand your accent, I hope it will in the future. Give it a try though, because you might like it.
Disclaimer: This post is entirely my personal opinion. I also own an HTC T-Mobile G1, which runs Google’s Android operating system.
I picked up the new iPhone 3G S this Friday and I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts:
The Good:
- The iPhone 3GS is considerably faster than the iPhone 3G. Especially in the browser, you’ll notice pages render faster. JavaScript-heavy pages (such as the mobile web version of Gmail) execute much more smoothly. The iPhone 3GS feels less like an underpowered mobile phone and more like a powerful pocket computer that can keep up with its owner.
- The built-in video camera is very cool. I expect a corresponding spike in home videos. For example, here’s my cat Ozzie playing with a toy:
More seriously, within about five years, for any group of 10 or more people, at least a few will have a video camera built into their phone. That’s a very powerful trend in a lot of ways.
- I tend to agree with Michael Arrington that no one with an iPhone 3GS needs a Flip video camera now. Cisco bought Pure Digital Technologies, the makers of the Flip, for almost $600 million dollars about three months ago. That might prove to be good timing on Pure Digital’s part.
- Lots of small changes in OS 3.0 are quite nice, such as showing outgoing vs. incoming calls in the “Recents” list.
The Bad:
- Apple’s iPhone philosophy has always seemed to me to be about simplicity. The single button forced a constrained elegance on the iPhone’s interface. In providing some newer features, the iPhone 3G S feels less like an iPhone and more like someone shoveled in a lot of features. I didn’t really need copy/paste, and it seems to pop up at random inconvenient times: double-tap a word if you’re not in the browser; in the browser, hold your finger on some text. Except the copy handles don’t seem to show up on the web pages I want, and sometimes unwanted copy handles appear when I’m just scrolling with my finger.
- The iPhone 3GS is not the huge leap that the iPhone or the iPhone->iPhone 3G was. I do think that leaves some opportunities for Android, Palm, and other competitors.
- Battery life has been worse so far for me. I’ve been using the phone more and it’s only been a few days, so I’m not going to jump to conclusions on this yet. Apple also recommends that you let the phone run down completely at least once a month, and I haven’t done that yet. I expect that battery life will be better for most people.
- Not a great name; the “GS” part makes me think of Ghostscript. A few days ago, I would have said that the “iPhone Video” is a much better name, but it’s true that the speed bump is more noticeable than the video. I still think Apple could have come up with a better name than “iPhone 3G S” though. I’m sure someone who knows about Mercedes Benz cars knows the difference between the E class, the SLK class, or the GL 420 CDI, but most normal people don’t know what a bunch of letters and numbers mean.
The Ugly:
- On my previous iPhone (the 3G), the metal band around the front matched smoothly with the black plastic back. On the new iPhone 3GS, I can feel the seam where the band meets the plastic. On the front of the phone, when I flick my finger off the glass, I can feel the seam of the metal band there too.
- In my personal opinion, someone miscalculated in charging iPhone 3G owners $200 extra to upgrade. New iPhone 3G S customers pay $199 (16GB) or $299 (32GB); many early adopters would have to pay $399 (16GB) or $499 (32GB) to upgrade. The CPU speed bump and video abilities aren’t enough to counteract what many early adopters will perceive as a bit of a slap in the face. Last year, the line for the iPhone 3G at Valley Fair stretched outside the building most of the day. When I went to get my iPhone 3G S on the release day at Valley Fair this year, there was no line at all.
And remember that early adopters often give their previous phones to family members. In my case, two other relatives are taking our older iPhone 3G phones and moving from a different carrier to AT&T. By charging early adopters more, AT&T ensures that more people will hang on to their old phones instead giving them to other people, many of whom would then become AT&T/iPhone customers. By limiting the “trickle down” effect as older iPhones go to family members, AT&T is missing a chance to gain more marketshare by acquiring additional new customers.
I’ll be interested to see how Apple and AT&T react. AT&T has already allowed some (but not all) iPhone 3G owners to upgrade without paying an “early adopter penalty.” And Apple can move quickly and decisively when needed–remember the $200 iPhone price drop in 2007 just a short time after the iPhone was released? Of course, it’s possible that penalizing early adopters is all part of some four-dimensional chess game that Apple is playing. If Apple decides to terminate its exclusive U.S. deal with AT&T in a year or so, maybe it didn’t want a bunch of people signing up for two-year contracts this time around? Right now I’m puzzled by what appears to me to be a misstep, but the folks at Apple are smart, so I’d be willing to believe that Apple has good reasons for what they’re doing.
Should you upgrade? That’s something only you can answer. If you still have a non-smartphone or an original iPhone, it’s probably worth it. If you have an iPhone 3G (especially if you’re not eligible for the discounted upgrade yet), you might try OS 3.0 and see if that’s enough. I decided to get the 3G S and I’m glad that I did. I fill all sorts of idle moments with surfing, tweeting, and checking my mail. The iPhone 3G S makes all those activities much faster and more pleasurable. Overall I’m quite happy with my iPhone 3G S.
Here are some tips to help you get the most out of Google’s new Mobile Application for the iPhone.
To get Google Mobile App on your iPhone, go to the App Store and search for “Google Mobile App,” or click on this link to install from a computer. If you have an older version of Google Mobile App installed, you might want to uninstall the older version before installing the newer version.
Voice recognition is turned off by default for non-U.S. users. To enable voice recognition, click on the “Settings” tab at the bottom of the screen and slide “Voice Search” to ON.
If you hold the iPhone up to your ear and don’t hear the “baBUM” sound to start talking, swing the iPhone down and back up to your ear. Sometimes a little wrist flick helps to tell the iPhone you want to search.
You can search things besides Google’s main web index. Do a regular query such as [daffodil pictures]:
then press on the magnifying glass near the top left corner to bring up other options to search. By default you’re searching iPhone and Web, but you can also search Maps, Images, News, Shopping, or Wikipedia:
Press an option like Images and the application will immediately redo the query:
If you want to go straight to the onscreen keyboard, you can tap the “Search” tab at the bottom of the screen twice.
Searching with the keyboard can be very handy. As you type, the application will suggest contacts, websites, previous searches, and related query suggestions:
and do you see those query suggestions in the middle of the screen? You can slide/flick them to get more suggestions:
The “Apps” tab at the bottom of the screen is a one-stop shop to get to all your Google services easily, including Google Apps versions of services:
You can use Google Mobile App with multiple Google Apps accounts. In the Settings tab, click on Domain. Then you can add multiple domains, separated by commas.
Bonus tip #1: If the voice recognition is close, you can press on the green query in the search box to see other possible queries. For example, if you said [background gradients in css] and got this search query:
Notice that the query was recognized as “gradient” instead of “gradients” with an ’s’. So I pressed the green query and saw other possible queries:
My desired query was the second choice.
Bonus tip #2: If you want to understand what your cat is trying to say to you, start the voice recognition and just hold it up to their mouth as they meow. Then Google will try to convert the meow into regular English text. Thanks to Sean Harding for this tip.
![[custom made pinata]](http://www.mattcutts.com/images/spam-pinata.jpg){kind=link}