Hell all
finally chiming in with my initial thoughts; I got my N4 on Tuesday, but it must have been packaged with a cold virus, because I spent the next day hold up in bed sick and subsequently didn't get much chance to play until yesterday and today. Since this is my first Android device there's some blur between Nexus impressions and Andriod ones; I trust you can all sort them out
Very first impression out of the box: damn I'm going to need the bumper. I love how shiny and awesome this thing looks, but there's no way I can make this last a year or two without some protection. I've been looking at some options, but think the best is to wait for the branded one to come back in stock from the Play store.
I love the screen, especially the curved edge. Feels nice and supple and gives some really fine control to scrolling. Not a fan of the rear speaker. If I leave the device face up on my desk it muffles any notifications. the button placement for power and volume are going to take some getting used to. I find so far that every time I go to hit power when one-handing the device, my other fingers instead press volume. Gotta give the point to Apple for the top-side power button.
I really want to give the photosphere it's paces, but been busy and haven't had a chance. Did one in the office upon device arrival and it stiched together pretty badly, but I'm going to say part of that was a closed space with no wide open skies for easy stiching. Will try some more over the holidays.
Pretty seamless switching to Android, all the same basic features as iOS, but I do like that there's some additional customization possible with widgets and screens and settings. It was a bit of a hassle getting all my contacts out of the iPhone and dowloaded, and in the process figured out that there's no stock option for connecting to my home Ubuntu machine like with the Android File Transfer app for Mac, so I have to go through my laptop instead. Since then I've discovered ES File Explorer and am wirelessly grabbing files, which is pretty awesome, so I've forgiven the oversight, although am surprised there's nothing official out there.
I was pretty disappointed with the stock email app. I have a couple gmails and some non-gmails. At first I had both gmail and email apps running concurrently, which is stupid. Then switched to just the email app importing the gmails, but this was a non-starter -- each time you go to email from notification or start the app from scratch, it loads default inbox not unified; also stupid. Tried K9; fugly. Ended up spending an afternoon importing my non-gmail (and the older gmail) into my main with labels. The best solution and means less battery waste on IMAP, but wish I didn't have to do that much work to get it there.
I really like how the Play store works, being able to add from device or from web, but at first I felt a bit lost, like 'where do I plug this into and sync with'; I was so trained by iTunes. But it passed quickly. In short time I was considering book and magazine purchases from Play, which I never would have done on the 3GS. The Play Books app works pretty well; read through a few chapters of The Time Machine commuting to work on day one. Haven't tried any magazines yet.
Battery issues, yes there are some. I think it's performing for me about on par with the general experience I'm reading out there, but I really wish it was better. That big beautiful display is the issue, showing 65% of my battery usage right now, so I've already settled for a dimmer output and have installed Juice Defendor to protect against other wastes. At the mo I'm transfering a file over wifi to the device and even on charger it still keep draining battery, all the way down to zero. Just normal usage and I can get to work and home on a charge, but that's about it, so ~10 hours.
Played a bit of NFS Most Wanted tonight, which I also had on the 3GS. Love that it was only 99c not several dollars, and it looks so so so much better.
Overall happy with the purchase, the device, that the shipment was on time and before xmas. I'll keep my 3GS around as a backup/ glorified remote for itunes, but I think it's safe to call me a convert.
Cheers
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