Living on the Edge

With this background, I find the Nexus S basically pretty awesome. The Super Clear LCD display is very good, by orders of magnitude better than the 3GS. Falls on especially when the sun shines. The automatic brightness control is very accurately, I use nothing else. The operation goes very fast out of hand. The sensor buttons at the bottom do not always react the way I imagine it, but almost always - and the touchscreen itself works excellently.

The Auspackerlebnis was similar to the iPhone - it seems to be coming into fashion, even the most basic information to banish (Inserting the Battery + SIM card, turning) into a mini-file on the Internet. My advice: ignore the Samsung pages for Help and Registration, which are time-consuming disaster. Invites you directly the (short) user manual for the Nexus S and the (long) User's Guide for Android downloaded from the German Google Nexus S side dear. And rejoice because the things that are in the Android Handbook, in the case of the Nexus S actually all agree. ;)

In lack of SD slot I can personally see no disadvantage - I'd rather have the 16MB fast and reliable as the ability to exchange because any cards, but perhaps barter for my card reader errors or slow memory access. If I want to copy or replace the content on your phone, I close it just to the computer. I'll replace him but probably never because 16GB is very much - and the standard main memory hogs Navi Thanks Google falls yes Navigation flat.

The navigation I've tried a few times - works excellent, better than I know it from a slightly older TomTom and Navigon Select. You have to make friends with the little emotion-tinny voice. ;) And you need at least at the start, of course, Internet connection - how he coped with it when it comes lost on the track and you have to leave the route, I have not tried it yet.

'Always get the latest ringing' of the - the principle Nexus S you can benefit since yesterday at the latest, since namely Android 2.3.4 came out as AutoUpdate. With other phones as a Nexus one will as well need to be patient if you want to give up the rooting.

In all but one should not lose sight of the disadvantages. An open, pure system is great. But manufacturers sometimes think also something when they do their own thing. And when you open, quickly and enthusiastically works just like Google, sneak up before annoyances, which rather would not happen with a strict QA or a genial dictator like Steve Jobs. A few examples from my first weeks with the Nexus S:

- The update to the 2.3.4 came as auto-update. Great in itself, but unfortunately it has not worked. When you install the Nexus S could not get, just remove battery helped. After that, it is then as unchanged booted with 2.3.3, the auto-update was no longer available. So it was very, very many Nexus S users (but not all). Manually downloading + installing according to the instructions in a forum worked, but of course, should an auto-update does not happen like that.

- The display is easy to read in sunlight still, but that costs Srom. A lot of power even. And if you, the device loads a car-USB port, it draws only 500mW standardized. The result: when you use the navigation on a bright day, it comes in spite of power with the battery while driving downhill. Actually, one could protect front by the display to disable the power button (you can hear the instructions then still - awesome even at pedestrian navigation, where you can put that thing in your pocket). Unfortunately, there is since Google Maps 5.3 a bug which paralyzes this really important feature - a few weeks, not yet fixed.

- From the iPhone I know that top right always the battery status is indicated in%. Very important in this power guzzlers that probably only hold for most users one day. The Nexus S has this info as well, but unfortunately not in the status bar, where it is needed. There are freeware tools for this, but ideally these solutions are not all.

- The compass is in such smartphones yes generally not always reliable, but in the Nexus S is really again a bit worse than others. Especially when the phone is horizontal, it is with me quite a lucky thing, what indicates. Even with the 2.3.4 yet, although I imagine that it was worse before.

- The launcher of Android like it in principle well. The problem I find but its folder: where can its applications namely not freely arranged. Again, there are freeware replacement, again, not entirely convincing.

- The Google contacts naturally support birthdays. Unfortunately, you can not change / edit the phone that you have to worry about GMail in the Web. And although you can then display on the phone in the calendar - but unfortunately the syncing for this calendar does not work properly ...

- VoIP works, but out of the box with only the hull functionality (no routing, WiFi only), and applications such as Sipdroid are cumbersome and / or insufficient to configure and suck the battery runs out quickly. This can and must be better and it will certainly sometime sometimes.

Do not get me wrong: I'm keeping the Nexus S in spite of such quite important drawbacks (of which I will certainly see the passage of time even more). The system is open, you can often help in a legal way, the hardware is good ... I do not see anything really better on the market and therefore give full marks. But you should know as a buyer, what one has to do it. Customer type 'No experiments, the stuff has kindly to work right from the start and finish' should look elsewhere might prefer. For the time being, anyway. But be careful: even if the competition is not working everything always so fast, user-friendly and reliable as with the simple Nokia phones ten years ago.