Sarah Perez: ‘iPhone to Android: One Month With the Nexus S’

Great review of life with a Nexus S from a former iPhone user. Matches my experiences with the Nexus S almost exactly. On battery life:

To prolong the battery life, I’ve learned to do this little dance with my phone. Arrive somewhere, turn on GPS, check-in on Foursquare, turn off GPS. Turn off Wi-Fi, if none present. Turn on Wi-Fi when I get back home. Turn off Sync when I’m worried about the battery draining too quickly and I’m far from home. Turn everything off if the phone is going to sit around for a while, unused. Turn Auto-Brightness on, turn it off. Turn 3G on, turn it off. Over and over, I’m tapping the little Settings widget. […]

I asked my (non-tech savvy) husband who totes the Galaxy S if he had the same problem. His response, and one I’ve seen echoed among Android’s many fans, is that it’s “no big deal” to switch something off if you’re not using it. “It’s like turning off the lights when you leave the room,” my husband said. (I’m not good at that, either).

And the lack of iTunes for TV and movie content:

I have to say it frustrates me to no end when I hear Android users say that you can duplicate the iTunes experience via apps. For example, the Android Market, plus DoubleTwist and Spotify (or Rdio, MOG, etc.) No you cannot. You cannot!

People who say this act as if the only things iTunes provides is music and apps. They completely dismiss the large, and very complete, collection of iTunes video content, for example. Where do you find both current and older TV shows on Android? No seriously, please explain where you’re getting this content. BitTorrent? How do you watch movies? mSpot? Illegal torrents? My guess is, Android users either torrent videos and copy them to their phone or they don’t watch movies and TV shows at all, so the thought doesn’t even cross their mind that Android lacks this feature.

She’s got many positive things to say about it, too: superior Maps app, voice recognition, and she found replacements for many of her favorite iOS apps. But the battery life issue is something that doesn’t get enough attention. I couldn’t get through a whole day on a single charge with the Nexus S. That’s not a problem with the iPhone 4.

★ Friday, 14 January 2011