My thoughts on the Nexus One - Part 2

Having used the phone for more than a month now, i am now comfortable talking about how the phone performs with respect to battery life and the mobile internet. I will also talk about the applications for Android and my final thoughts.

__Battery Life : __ I have tried quite a few permutations of the battery consuming parameters like the screen brightness, wifi, live wallpapers, widgets, etc in-order to gauge the life of the battery on one complete charge. The maximum battery life i have got on this phone is close to 2 days. That was when the screen brightness was complete low, no live wallpapers, wi-fi __ON __all the time and no widgets on the home screen. On an average the battery life is one and a half days with half the screen brightness and with couple of widgets on the home screen. One thing i noticed among the widgets is, the clock widget hogs the battery to the max and so do the live wallpapers. I had come across tips and suggestions form other Nexus One users, to use the battery till it completely drains out and then do a complete charge, up until the phone is completely charged, and not till charging turquoise LED becomes green (At that point, the phone would just be charged to 90%). Must say, that the tip works and you will feel that your phone actually gives more battery life.  Another thing that i have noticed is that, rebooting the phone once a week makes the applications run much faster. I know a phone is not a computer that requires a reboot, but if increases the performance then why not?

Another worrisome aspect of the battery that is common to Nexus One is over-heating of the phone. I have observed this in two different scenarios. Firstly, when i charge my phone with the wall charger (the phone does not over heat when charged with the data cable). I can’t really express the extent to which it over heats, because perception of heat is always relative. I would say it gets luke-warm upon heating from wall charger. I have observed that the it gets over heated more if i do not kill any applications when i keep the phone to charge, than if i kill all applications using some sort of Task Manager app that is available in the Android Market. Secondly, i have seen the over-heating problem if i excessively use the location based features like GPS Navigation and Maps. The only way out of this one is to kill all apps, the phone will get back to the normal temperature.

Mobile Internet : As we all know, we do not have 3G as yet in India. If everything goes well, the services are scheduled to start from September 1, 2010. So until then, we will have to manage with the low data speeds. I use Vodafone service provider and this phone needs Vodafone Mobile Connect for internet access on the go (Vodafone Live cannot be used). One thing that is pretty obvious about this phone, is it consumes a lot of data, to sync Gmail, Gtalk, Calendar, Maps, etc. So a limited plan will definitely not suffice. But to use this phone without mobile internet, as i mentioned in my previous post, would be useless. The experience you get using the phone with mobile internet is way too great then without one.

__Applications : __ I have experimented with a lot of free apps in the Android Market (since the phone is not released in India yet, there is no way to buy paid apps). I will list some of them which i liked, according to catergory.

Essentials : EStrongs Task Manager, Barcode Scanner. Productivity : My Tasks, MindMap Memo, AK Notepad. Multi-media : Cubed(music player), FxCamera(takes pictures in different presets and templates), RingDroid(ringtone editor), Shazam(superb music look up app), TubeDownloader (to download videos from Google Videos, YouTube). Needless to say, combination of Shazam and TubeDownloader makes wonders! Browsers : Tried em all namely ( Factory installed browser, SkyFire, Fennec, Opera mini). I honestly felt the factory installed browser does the job well and is faster and simple to use. Opinions may differ, of course. Games : Haven’t tried much of the games because most of them are paid-apps and i am not really into games. Thunderlite is a good car racing game, colodroid is a good but addictive strategy(if i can term it so) game.

Final thoughts : The phone may come off as unpolished to the Apple fan-boys and those who put the attention to the details over the performance. But all in all, Nexus One is a great phone, superb internet device, a great camera phone  and easily the best Android phone at the moment. Worth every penny it costs.