Buying my second Android Phone

A few months back, I blogged when I bought my first Android phone - Samsung Galaxy S. I had my fair share of disappointments and had written that the idea that I cannot upgrade to the latest versions of AndroidOS when the updates had been launched was too disappointing to bear. When finally I did get 2.2 on the phone, it was a massive improvement and suddenly the phone started looking a lot more closer to the iPhone experience. 

Subsequently, when my iPhone 3G (the one that I had passed to my wife when I got the Galaxy S) contract ended, I decided to continue with the AndroidOS. These are the reasons:

• I don't use too many apps - I have a minimal set of apps that are mandatory, then everything else doesn't matter much. To that extent, Apple & Android are about the same - the minimal apps are good in both OSes - Twitter, Browsers, Skype, Email, LinkedIn, FB and the likes.
• Google experience - Gmail, Chat, Picassa etc is a lot better on Android than on iPhone.
• For people like me who like to read a lot on the screen, the screen size and quality of some Android phones (like the Galaxy S) is a big plus.
• Battery life is normally good, and you can replace the batteries.
• WiFi hotspot - I can't count the number of times this has been a life saver for both me and my friends/colleagues.

So, I am now the proud owner of a Samsung Nexus S - the Android 2.3 phone (and my wife has moved on to Galaxy S). The biggest plus is that it is a pure Android phone - which means updating stuff should be pretty easy. On the other hand, Samsung had done a good job of creating an OS version with more utilities (video player, file browser and such) than the standard OS and I had to spend some time to get up to speed with that. All in all, I am yet to have any major complaints and am generally quite impressed with the product.

To address the concerns of the previous blog post: 

• Touch screen becoming unusable while charging - you get used to not using the phone when it is charging. Doesn't seem much of a bummer now.
• GMail App gripes: I had a few of those - but as I have been using the app, I feel the flow of usage is a lot more suited to my usage and works better than the Apple Native Email option.
• Browser: Both on 2.2 and 2.3, Android's browser is a lot faster and has a better feel to using it. I still have the problem of closing a browser which I have been using for a bit, but then, I am now used to using the task manager to killing the browser. I still feel Google can do something about this.
• Multiple calendar works and works precisely as expected in both 2.2 and 2.3 of Android OS.
• Contacts usability: Once you get used to searching instead of browsing for contacts, life is back to being good on Android - and so is the case with me.
• 3g/2g switching - still as bad as it was in 2.1, but with better battery lives, I have stopped worrying about switching to 2g altogether.
• Skype VoIP: Skype is still a rather poor experience on Android as compared to iPhone. Call quality is very poor and the phones freeze when trying to use skype. Can't help but hope for a better version of skype on Android - stable & fast.