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Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

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Re: Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

#21

Post by drivebyacct2 »

fredliu wrote: post #20
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed improvements are both. Hummingbird is a crazy beast but the low level touch improvements are showing. There is visible lag on my Mom's stock Droid 2.2 phone with few apps. Running a preliminary build of CM+AOSP 2.3 on my Droid is unbelievable. Same CPU speed, but my Droid now handles like a Droid X. It's truly, truly crazy. The UI enhancements are subtle but have a huge effect. This feels like a bigger upgr…

That's true. But I'm still a little bit underwhelmed by the raw horse power packed into NS, at least not as impressed as when N1 came out. Hummingbird may be the fastest on the market right now, but I'll probably bet on the next dual core 1.2 Ghz snapdragon phone for my next upgrade.

Dual core is appealing for a lot of reasons, especially if you buy the company lines about performance and battery life improving due to parallelism offered by two cores. Good luck finding a dual core phone that will easily run CyanogenMod though. That's why I have a little soft spot for Nexus S, even with some of its... missing hardware. :/

Re: Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

#22

Post by Estragon »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #12
fredliu wrote: post #2

I'm not sure the perceived "improvements" (especially regarding to the speed) is due to hardware or software upgrades, as NS is still the only official 2.3 game in town. Hardware wise, Nexus S doesn't have a spec that can totally blow you away. But when N1 came, it was clear that N1 was the king, and it was so for quite a while.

The speed improvements are both. Hummingbird is a crazy beast but the low level touch improvements are showing. There is visible lag on my Mom's stock Droid 2.2 phone with few apps. Running a preliminary build of CM+AOSP 2.3 on my Droid is unbelievable. Same CPU speed, but my Droid now handles like a Droid X. It's truly, truly crazy. The UI enhancements are subtle but have a huge effect. This feels like a bigger upgr…

This is quite exciting. Do you have notes on how you installed 2.3 on your droid? The lag from 2.2 drives me crazy, particularly when I go to the homescreen. (It did force me to learn the keyboard shortcuts for switching between applications, though.)

Re: Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

#23

Post by 51Cards »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #19
51Cards wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have to travel a lot and I load up the N1 with Movies, etc. for entertainment on the road. 16 Gig internal is nice but it's just not quite enough, not to mention to have to load it via USB (I pop the card out when I want to put on large media). Even 8 Gig internal with an 32Gig capable SD slot would have been a dream.

Yeah, I don't mean to encourage removing features like that, I just suspect that most users don't mind or care and more importantly, I'm willing to sacrifice a lot for some good ole pure AOSP with an unlocked bootloader.

Yes, I suspect you're right. When I get a chance I will put one in my hand and play with it for sure. I just really hoped the Nexus series of phones would always imply 'no compromise / this is the new high bar'.

Re: Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

#25

Post by cookiecaper »

joshu wrote: post #13

Blah. I have a droid and I want to microwave it on a dail basis. Weird crashes, wrong apps launch when i press their apps, etc.

I just recommended a Droid 2/X/whatever the latest version is to a client because they advertise support for Exchange. Supposedly it works great, etc. etc. Anecdotes seemed to indicate it worked fine on Froyo so I had her get something with that.

Then she emails me saying she can't get it to work, and apparently the Moto ROM has some issue that can make it difficult to get Exchange support working. Makes me seriously bummed out and feel bad inside.

My wife and I have G1s running CyanogenMod 6.1. Mine works pretty well, but my wife is having pretty constant issues, and has with all the ROMs we've installed. These include the wrong app launching, text messages going to the wrong people, unbearable slowness, and more. The only conclusion I can reach there is that her phone is defective.

Re: Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

#26

Post by kenjackson »

The difference between the Nexus One and Nexus S is that when the Nexus One came out not only was it the best spec'ed Android phone you could get, but it would be the best spec'ed for some time.

While I think you can argue that the Nexus S is the best spec'ed Android phone today (and I think there's an argument to be made against it, with phones like the Epic 4G that includes 4G support, while the S doesn't have HSPA+, a really odd omission), it seems pretty clear that this will be pretty short lived... we've already seen leaks of phones like the Optimus 2X that will be out shortly

Re: Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

#27

Post by SandB0x »

To anyone looking to get a Nexus S in the UK:

The link from http://www.google.co.uk/nexus/ takes you to: http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/mobile-phones/NEXUS...

Here, the Pay As You Go model is £549.95 and the Pay Monthly model is free from £30/month with the usual low low usage caps (and in some cases apparently no internet allowance included at all?).

However the sim-free model is a slightly more reasonable £430, on the same website. The page is harder to find. I have absolutely no idea why anyone would order the PAYG "model" (as in it's exactly the same phone) instead of this + a free sim card from any provider.

http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/mobiles/choose-tariff/NEXUS...

By the way, I've been using the giffgaff sim-only network for a month and recommend you take a look. Unmetered internet usage is the big one.

Re: Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

#28

Post by drivebyacct2 »

Estragon wrote: post #22
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed improvements are both. Hummingbird is a crazy beast but the low level touch improvements are showing. There is visible lag on my Mom's stock Droid 2.2 phone with few apps. Running a preliminary build of CM+AOSP 2.3 on my Droid is unbelievable. Same CPU speed, but my Droid now handles like a Droid X. It's truly, truly crazy. The UI enhancements are subtle but have a huge effect. This feels like a bigger upgr…

This is quite exciting. Do you have notes on how you installed 2.3 on your droid? The lag from 2.2 drives me crazy, particularly when I go to the homescreen. (It did force me to learn the keyboard shortcuts for switching between applications, though.)

(Oh I forgot the new software keyboard rocks too).

Come to #koush. mtwebster has a very initial build. Google Apps won't apply correctly, but there is also a link floating around to a rather large patch that you can install after the initial build that gives you an old version of Gapps, but the Market updated instantly and I got all updated Gapps.

I can see if someone has written something up yet, if not I can throw something together, or, like I said, if you drop by #koush people will help you.

Re: Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

#29

Post by kyleslattery »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #15
joshu wrote: post #13

Blah. I have a droid and I want to microwave it on a dail basis. Weird crashes, wrong apps launch when i press their apps, etc.

Let me guess, running Motorola's stock ROM? I'm so sorry for you. Funny, my mom uses her Droid all the time for gaming, emails, news, and doesn't even manage to have the problems you're having. "Wrong apps launch when I press their buttons". What? Come on, I've never heard of that and have no idea how that would even be possible unless you're using LP/ADW.Launcher's custom shortcut functionality... EDIT: I think I kn…

FWIW, I've had the wrong apps launch on my phone as well. I'll click an icon and something else will come up. So, I'll just assume I fat fingered it and go back to the home screen, but when I press it again, the same thing comes back up. It generally stops doing it after a few tries, but it is pretty annoying.

EDIT (to respond to your edit): I've had instances where opening the browser app opens the text message app, which definitely isn't a normal intent for the browser to use.

Re: Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review

#30

Post by guywithabike »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #15
joshu wrote: post #13

Blah. I have a droid and I want to microwave it on a dail basis. Weird crashes, wrong apps launch when i press their apps, etc.

Let me guess, running Motorola's stock ROM? I'm so sorry for you. Funny, my mom uses her Droid all the time for gaming, emails, news, and doesn't even manage to have the problems you're having. "Wrong apps launch when I press their buttons". What? Come on, I've never heard of that and have no idea how that would even be possible unless you're using LP/ADW.Launcher's custom shortcut functionality... EDIT: I think I kn…

Never heard of it? Now you have.
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