After thinking about the phone for a while, it struck me that what made my previous mobile devices feel more constrained was software, not the hardware. My iPod Touch felt a little pokey, but being trapped at iOS 3.1.3 meant I was left out of some of the more innovative software being released. And while my BlackBerry only had a 3.2 megapixel shooter on-board, it was the inability to do much with it that frustrated me more than the image produced itself. And that was what made the Nexus S stand out: its software would be the most up to date, and would have the fewest barriers involved.

So when I finally was eligible, I zipped on over to my local Best Buy… then over to the nearest Best Buy that had a contract with T-Mobile, and got myself set up with the Nexus S.

All my initial problems with the phone subsided as soon as I fled the poor over-saturated cell towers that serviced the Mall of America and got out in the parts of the world where I would actually be using the phone more often. I’ve found it to get GPS locks rapidly (much to my relief, considering the Nexus S is based on the Galaxy S platform, which was plagued with GPS issues), and the hardware to be rather zippy. I haven’t yet actually hit the RAM wall on my device, always somehow finding myself with free RAM (according to the system). While I wish the camera provided higher resolution images and videos, I was impressed with how quickly it was able to focus on objects, and at how close I could get to objects and still be able to focus.

It took me a while to get used to Android’s convention of Home Screens. At first, I just considered it a place to put quick access to a few apps and maybe a weather widget. Quickly I realized that the main app listing would be unmanageably large, lacked any way to organize it (aside from the default alphabetical listing), and was not intended to function at all like iOS’s home screens. Gradually I started to feel my way around them, and I’m currently using four out of the five that Gingerbread has given me.

My first few days with the Nexus S were besieged by unacceptably short battery life. I had done everything I had been taught to do by previous devices: I had the backlight at its lowest setting, I used only a few apps I used, and I tried to avoid heavy network usage. While I love the Battery Usage meter, it wasn’t delivering the whole picture when it came to battery consumption. I was used to, on my iPod Touch and BlackBerry, loading up several apps at once for testing, and switching around between them. What I hadn’t realized was that without running these apps each and every time, they had all started their own processes and were gobbling up my battery life (and my Twitter API calls). I’ve since adjusted my usage habits, and while I typically expect a device to meet my usage instead of conforming myself to it, this is not unacceptable. It was extremely disconcerting, though, that some apps (specifically Tap Tap Revolution 4) could start background processes without me ever starting the app in the first place. And when I say “ever starting,” I mean that it was running a background service, and I had never run the app. Even after telling it not to perform background checks or accept Push notifications, it kept running. This has, fortunately, been the exception, rather than the rule.

On the whole, I’m rather liking Android. I’ve had a few apps crash on me, but I’m reassured by the fact that I can submit crash reports. I’ve also come to really appreciate Gingerbread’s combination spell checker/predictive text engine. I’ve been able to compose entire sentences using only a handful of letters from each word, and increase text entry and accuracy greatly. However, having large fingers to begin with, I’m finding myself hitting a lot of typos (especially when I’m trying to hit the backspace key). I’ve also found my hands frequently accidentally hitting the softkeys for Home and Back, causing all sorts of havoc.

I’m also not as thrilled with the screen as I thought I would be. Sure, 800×480 isn’t the Retina Display of the iPhone 4, and nor was I expecting it to be. However, its dot pitch is slightly awkward, reminding me, slightly, of old LCDs used as camcorder screens. However, the color reproduction is amazing, it’s extremely readable in bright sunlight, and unless you press your eye against the device, you can’t really see the individual pixels. This is the only thing I’ve found to be particularly upsetting since putting my hands on the device. However, I don’t think it’ll be a make-or-break issue.

The software on the whole, has been agreeable, except for a few issues. I had heard horror stories of copy/paste on Android, and while my experience with it hasn’t been particularly bad, it isn’t been nearly as nice as I’ve had on any other platform. For starters, selection in any text entry field is done in an acceptable maner, but requires more taps than most platforms. But I can get over that. However, text selection outside of there is a mess. In the browser I’m still not entirely sure how I’m managing to select text, and in some apps I can’t select text at all. It’s a mess, and Google really needs to step up their game on this one. Also, the browser is something of a pain. Instead of on iOS or even in the BlackBerry’s abysmal browser, where columns of text are displayed at screen width when zoomed out (that is, the columns of text are shown exactly the way you will see them when you zoom in), but Android dynamically reflows the text, making zooming in on a particular paragraph annoying. I also am unable to connect one of my Exchange e-mail addresses to Android, receiving only an error telling me that my username and password are incorrect (though they work fine with OWA). This may be a due to some corporate security policy, but it would be nice if it at least told me that. My other Exchange account is working sufficiently well, as are all my accounts that are powered (in one way or another) by Gmail. However, having separate apps for Gmail and all other e-mail is suboptimal, in my opinion. Also suboptimal is how Android handles notification sounds: they’re all handled in individual applications, rather than in one centralized place. At first I was worried that I would be doomed to have the same tone for SMS as I would e-mail, until I started poking around in the Messenger’s settings. I much prefer how BlackBerry handled notifications: all apps told the Notification Manager what notifications they would issue, and I could control what would happen from the Notification Manager. Having all my settings spread out is not how I would prefer to do things, but at least now I know about how Android handles this.

I am rather pleased with the rest of Android, and am glad I’ve taken the plunge into 2.3. One of my particular favorite features is the Battery Usage screen and graph, which give me an indication of precisely how power hungry that SAMOLED screen is (I have yet to see it consume less than 42% power, or anything else eat more than 12%). Live Wallpapers are a cool idea, especially ones that display some kind of interesting info (such as the Polar Clock, or ones that show RAM usage, current weather, and things like that), but consume too much power for my lifestyle. I have yet to give Navigation a proper test, but I’m positive that if I don’t have a window mount on hand, the microUSB port being on the bottom of the device will annoy me to no end (preventing me from simply sitting the phone upright in a cup holder). Google Goggles has been a disappointment in translating anything, but is hands down the fastest barcode reader I’ve ever seen. Hearing all the stories of disappointment with the Android music player, I’ve skipped straight to DoubleTwist for music and Podtrapper (an app I loved on my BlackBerry) for podcasts. So far, Astrid is serving me well for a to-do list, though HoneyDew is something I plan on checking out. I’m also in love with the Android Notification System. It’s simple, it’s out of the way, and I can ignore a particular notification (for now), receive several more, and not have it be pushed away into the miasma, like how iOS handles Push Notifications when you aren’t using your device.

So far, only four things have stuck in my craw with the phone. First, when I got it, the on-board software was Android 2.3.1. Sure, it was Gingerbread, but 2.3.3 was out, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it to recognize that. In the end, I manually updated it to 2.3.3, and I’m glad I did. I initially wanted 2.3.3 because I had heard that I would be able to take screenshots without having to root my phone, however this may not actually be true (and no apps are available yet claiming to do this, thus the lack of screenshots in this post). However, Priority Inbox may retroactively be the reason I went to 2.3.3, as it is my favorite introductions to Gmail since Labs. I may yet root my phone, just so I can take screenshots of my phone. The other thing that annoys me is that randomly my phone will simply shut down. No warning, no proper shut down, just: off! This happened more often with 2.3.1, and it may be a defect with my phone. It hasn’t happened so often that it has caused me any trouble (since I upgraded to 2.3.3, this has happened once). Finally, my phone doesn’t ever seem to want to charge to 100% power. Every morning when I wake up I am greeted with a 96% charge. Last night I put the phone on the charger at about 30%, and in eight hours it should have had no problem whatsoever in topping off 70% more. I plan on contacting Samsung on this issue, since I seem to be alone, at least with the battery problem.

Fortunately, none of these problems have made me seriously consider swapping out the phone for a different one. I sincerely doubt I would be enjoying the platform as much if I was shoehorned into TouchWiz or Sense or some other custom UI that I could not remove. Week Two with the Nexus S should prove interesting, as I think I may have finished experimenting with the phone, and will see how it settles into its niche in my life.

Just some brief history: I’ve owned a device that runs almost every mobile operating system on the market, except Android. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet, so nothing against the platform. By far, the two with the most captivating experiences I’ve had were iOS (I’m locked into 3.1.3, since I’ve only got my iPod Touch) and Symbian Series 60v3. Yes, seriously: Symbian. By far the worst have been Windows Mobile 5/6 (which preceded my Nokia N73) and BlackBerry OS 4/5. So I’ve been around the block as much as someone without buckets of cash can be.

When Apple announced that the iPhone 4 would record 720p video and have iMovie onboard, I was floored. This seemed too good to be true, especially as I had never owned a phone that could shoot at 480p, let alone 720p. Hell, I was merely satisfied that my BlackBerry Curve 8900 could shoot at 320×240 after its upgrade to OS 5 (OS 4.6 capped “normal” video resolutions at 240×160 for some unimaginable reason).

While I’ve owned and enjoyed my iPod Touch (1G) for a while now, I’ve been using iOS as a platform long enough to know that I do not want it to be my phone. I’m quite convinced that the only reason I’m still using it is because:

1. It was free with my MacBook Pro
2. BlackBerry OS is rubbish in most areas (except messaging).

I’ve always been a bit of an Open Source enthusiast, and everything about iOS rubbed me the wrong way, but its UI and fantastic media support kept me coming back for more. Android had me intrigued, but it wasn’t until the Nexus One came out that I truly coveted such a device. The Nexus One seemed to have it all: a beautiful screen, an advanced operating system, and the potential to be a multimedia monster. At least, I could have a phone where not only could I take high resolution pictures, but I could also tweak and adjust it (rotate, crop, basic things like that) right on the phone, and shoot high quality video and upload it without a computer. It would simultaneously replace my iPod Touch, BlackBerry and Flip Ultra in one fell swoop. Alas, its price was beyond my reach, and it left the market long before I could afford it.

Now comes its successor, the Google Nexus S, and boy am I disappointed. The Nexus One was Google’s flagship phone, leading the way in capabilities and features. It had a 5 Megapixel camera and recorded video at 720x480p20. The Nexus S has a 5 megapixel camera and records video at 720x480p. As you can see, this is groundbreaking stuff. And unfortunately, things just get more bland.

First off, how does this impact me as a multimedia creation guy? Well, the 720×480 resolution is only ever used in DV, and so if you’re not working with something that expects non-square pixels, your video tends to look rather weird, so there goes using the maximum settings to record video for direct uploading to the Internet. Second, the 480p resolution is unimpressive. 480p recordings have been around for a while now, and it doesn’t replace a Flip HD, if one happens to own one. Even more annoying, this is basically a 4:3 resolution, and almost everything today is shot for widescreen. I could shoot 4:3 for 16:9, but then I lose vertical resolution and it still requires additional processing. In short, this is par, and suboptimal.

The five megapixel camera also isn’t that impressive. 5mp is the new 3.2mp: every phone has it. Nokia’s high end phones have been running 5 megapixel cameras since at least 2008, and 8 megapixel cameras since 2009. Now it’s almost 2011, and I’m not sure there’s a single Android phone that delivers better than 5mp.

So the multimedia capturing isn’t the device’s strong suit. Actually, it doesn’t seem like anything is the Nexus S’ strong suit. It’s running the same 480×800 resolution that the Nexus One had (though this one should deliver better images, and is curved), its processor still weighs in at 1GHz (though the Hummingbird A8-based processor should deliver more kick), and it even shares the same RAM ceiling of 512 MB with the Nexus One. In fact, besides the use of gyroscopes instead of accelerometers, and the addition of a front-facing camera (something else Nokia has had for a long time) and Near-Field Communications, it specs out almost identically to the Nexus One.

Look briefly, though, at the Samsung Galaxy S series. It features phones that have 1GHz Coretex A8′s (very similar to the Hummingbird, from what I can tell), 512 MB of RAM, a bigger screen (same 480×800 resolution, just physically larger) and shoots 720p video. Did I mention that Samsung is building the Nexus S for Google? Then there’s the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G and the G2, with 768 MB of RAM for the MT4G and 512MB for the G2, yet both shoot 720p video, and one features a physical keyboard. Both also have HSPA+ capabilities. So not only is the Nexus S a poor successor to the Nexus One, but it’s a poor flagship among phones of the same type, yet have better specs.

The Google Nexus One was supposed to be the alternative to the iPhone. In many ways, the Nexus One was a, technically, better phone than the iPhone 3GS. As the Nexus One fell by the wayside, the Droid took its place, and still managed to beat the iPhone 3GS at its own game. Now the iPhone 4 is here, and if Google wants the Nexus S to stand up against it, it is doing a very poor job.

The iPhone 4 has a higher resolution screen (with higher pixel density), the option of more internal storage, a more efficient multitasking system (in a high-level technical sense), 5mp camera with tap-to-focus, 720p video recording (and editing), and the super-snappy A4 processor that was given its field testing in the iPad. The tables have turned, and now the iPhone 4 beats the Nexus S in every technical way. In fact, the Nexus S is a very lackluster answer to the iPhone 4, because the only thing it brings to the table is the NFC, which doesn’t have any use yet.

Even Nokia’s N8 is more impressive, mostly because it is pushing boundaries for Nokia. The Nexus S isn’t. Of course, the N8 also shoots at 720p25, has a 12mp camera with a xenon flash (not the weak LED ones found in most phones now), stereo microphones, HDMI-out, and a short-range FM transmitter, so even it has features the Nexus S lacks, and the N8 is generally considered a flop in the United States.

So the Nexus S isn’t great as a multimedia capturing device, it isn’t impressive as a flagship phone, it’s beaten by phones that have been on the market for a while now, and its greatest competitor is better than it in almost every technical way. All that the Nexus S has going for it is Gingerbread, which hasn’t delivered anything big or iPhone-killing yet; the curved screen, which doesn’t do anything besides allow for a cool looking shape, but offers no other useful purpose; and NFC, which has no practical use yet.

Before you jump on me about software, let me explain why I’m not getting into it. I’m sure Gingerbread is a great operating system, and I already know the new Google Maps for Mobile has been announced for the Nexus S, but it’s also been announced for other phones, and likely the Galaxy S phones, the Droids and maybe even the Nexus One will see Gingerbread, so this isn’t anything unique or special to the Nexus S. And while it’s nice that this is a pure, unadulterated Android experience, I’m sure I could hack off whatever skin my manufacturer of choice would put on there.

I want to love the Nexus S so badly, because I loved the Nexus One so much. Since the V key on my BlackBerry started to become slightly unreliable, I had been looking at Android replacements, and I held off, knowing that the next “Google Phone” was due to be announced soon. And now that it’s out, I’m so very disappointed, because I was expecting something better than what was on the market already, and what we were given is worse than the best phones now. I’m not asking for 1080p with LTE, 128 GB of Storage and a 24 megapixel sensor with a flip-out full keyboard, and a pico-projector, but it would be nice if the Nexus S at least did 720p, and offered a sharper screen, something— anything that is just a little bit better than my current options. Something I could point to and say, “that! That is why I want this instead of an iPhone 4!” Instead, my only reason to snub the iPhone 4 is perhaps one of the oldest reasons: AT&T, not some technical reason, or some way in which the iPhone’s OS would hamper my lifestyle.

That is why the Nexus S is disappointing to me, and why I probably won’t buy it (instead of some other Android phone). I hate to say it, but outside of its slow CPU, old OS, and tiny RAM amount, even the N8 is more tempting than the Nexus S.

User Experience

• The user would start the application prior to departing, and would stop the application upon arriving at his/her destination
  • This process could possibly be automated by tracking whether the vehicle is moving or not, but due to restrictions such as battery life, and possible inaccuracy due to other conditions (idling, the user taking the unit with him/her, etc) this would probably be an option turned off by default
• The user would enter the number of gallons at each fill-up, and if this filled the tank entirely or not
• The user would get a report of calculated fuel efficiency, and estimated fuel efficiency
• Multiple cars can be specified, in case the user drives multiple vehicles (a small car and a pick-up truck, or a truck and an ATV). This could even apply to boats.
• The user can add additional sensors (ODB pick-up, temp sensors) to improve the accuracy of the reading
• The user can also add in additional details every so often to track other factors of vehicle’s operation
  • The user could specify how much they spent at every fill-up, and what grade of gasoline they purchased, so that this fill-up can be compared to others in the past as far as performance and cost is concerned
  • The user can also enter in maintenance data, such as oil changes, filter replacements, spark plugs, even tire inflation, to compare pre- and post-maintenance efficiency, and perhaps even track the point where any gains seem to drop off.
• If the device is Internet Enabled, and the user allows Internet access, the user can allow found gas prices to be uploaded to the Internet (to sites such as Gas Price Watch and Gas Buddy)
  • The converse can also happen, where the unit can list the most nearby stations and their prices
• Perhaps a social/community service can be available on the Internet, where vehicle efficiency statistics can be uploaded and anonymously compared to other drivers in the area (in general), other drivers with the same make/model/year of vehicle (nationwide, and locally).

Back-end

• The software would keep an internal trip odometer for each trip, and an overall tank odometer for driving since last fill-up
• The software would do some easy math to determine efficiency
• There would be various “education” modes where if the unit detects the person has not driven more than 35-40 MPH since last fill-up, it can estimate city driving fuel efficiency
  • Same can be said for highway efficiency, or even more complex scenarios, such as driving up or down hills, or being stuck in rush-hour traffic.
  • The software could also determine fuel lost idling, by tracking when the vehicle isn’t moving for a certain amount of time (to determine if the vehicle is idling, or parked)
  • With GPS doing the tracking, there doesn’t need to be any user interaction for this.
• With more and more accrued data, the software could also begin to estimate fuel efficiency before the person fills up, and when the software actually gets a fill-up, it can offer a comparison between its theoretical model and the vehicle’s actual performance
• An option would be to identify added weight or number of passengers, to offer a more informed model
  • Information can also be added after the fact
  • An intelligent weight option can also be specified in software
    • The GPS unit can determine if it’s gone to, say, the grocery store, and then assume that the average weight of a person’s groceries have been added to the vehicle
• The GPS unit can also be linked to weather service information (either by adding optional sensors, utilizing sensors already installed in the car, or information from the Internet) to develop a model of fuel efficiency versus various environmental factors.
• The unit could also have an interface for the car’s internal hardware
  • The car’s existing on-board diagnostics port can be utilized to gather a significant number of additional details, either by way of a capture device, where data can be added in after the fact, or by way of a custom dongle which would allow wireless communication of this data (perhaps via Bluetooth)
  • Cooperation with automotive manufacturers could find cars with on-board Bluetooth offering ODB data via that Bluetooth link (if this already doesn’t exist)
• Data could be exported to a full computer to allow additional analytical data to be presented to the user
• The use of GPS in the software should allow for the software to determine a reasonable measure of efficiency, without any additional hardware
  • Furthermore, the software should be intelligent enough to operate with a minimum of user interaction
• Perhaps the unit can detect if the vehicle hasn’t been moving for a certain amount of time (>5 minutes) that it has stopped, and therefore should no longer track information
  • The converse can also be used to determine when the vehicle actually begins to move.

When integrated into a navigation software (perhaps as a part of a stand-alone GPS unit, or navigation software for a smartphone), it could even be used to predict fuel consumption en route, or give an estimation of the distance capable of being traveled under current conditions (Granted, some vehicles already have this feature, but perhaps they aren’t as complex, and is a feature that many people may wish to retrofit into their existing vehicles.

This is just a brief overiew of my idea, I’m still scratching out some details. The nice thing about this, is that with some coding knowledge, someone could design a software prototype in something as easy to learn as Python and load it onto a Smartphone pretty quickly. The purpose of this post, however, is to establish a record of the concept, in the hopes that no one should appropriate it.