I've now been using the Motorola Atrix for a week and I've used a few more of it's features.
Did I mention I love the battery life on the Atrix ? Absolutely amazing. With regular browsing, email, FB etc, I'm getting almost 2 days out of a full charge. The iPhone could barely get through 12 hours.
I love the navigation, for example, when you click on a URL in an email, and the browser opens up the web page, I just need to hit the back button to get back to the email I was reading. On the iPhone, I would have to exit the browser, launch the email app and hope that it's state was still in memory (weak multi-tasking) to get to the email I was reading. I am a little peeved though that the gmail app does not allow me to move mail messages to folders. (@sanjay - thanks for pointing this out)
I can pick and choose which apps stay running in the background when I exit the app or the homescreen display times out.
The video recording (720p) is absolutely amazing. I will never have to carry a camcorder again. While the camera quality is great, I still prefer to carry my D-SLR on trips.
Sync with computer - I downloaded the Motorola Media Link app to my Mac and am still playing around with it. I was able to sync my music from iTunes to the SD card on the phone and to sync photos and videos from the camera to iPhoto and iTunes respectively. This has worked flawlessly so far. I have yet to try the backup and restore function. Photos, videos and music are all that I really need to sync as contacts, calendar and email are all on the air thanks to Google apps.
@lippy - I found the Chase mobile app. I've found a couple of apps for Starbucks - the locator app and some third party apps for managing a coffee card. There is no official Starbucks app that lets you login to a Starbucks account and manage all cards etc.
While the touch screen sensitivity and usability are not as good as the iPhone, I've no regrets so far.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Impressions of Android from a recovering iPhone addict
I have been an iPhone user since the first version of the iPhone, and, in fact, one of the early suckers who paid $600 for the phone.
While I must admit that it is one of the best phones out there from a user interface design, intuitiveness of usage perspective, the shoddy energy management, weak battery, lack of multi-tasking first and now pseudo multi-tasking were always a bother.
The low life expectancy of the device made it an expensive option as well - my first iPhone (gen 1) started dying (the home button would not respond) when it was about 16 months old and now my iPhone 3GS is beginning to die at about 17 months of life.
In between, I strayed to Windows Mobile on the Samsung OMNIA and needless to say, the combination of the inept WM and lousy Samsung hardware led me to move on the iPhone 3GS.
Here, I share my first impressions of the Motorola Atrix, running Android 2.2 and they are very good. Some of the features I comment upon are native Android (I believe) and some MotoBlur.
I am not yet completely sold on MotoBlur, but the ease of setting up accounts to various social networking sites and receiving updates in a single interface (widget) is awesome.
The Good:
Amazing battery life from the 1920 mAh battery (may not be applicable to other Android phones) and the superior energy management of the Android OS.
True multi-tasking with background apps using very little battery power - I can keep Skype running in the background :-)
A task manager that tells me what apps are running and how much cpu, memory they are using; and, the ability to kill the process when an app has gone berserk
MicroSD storage and a file manager
Very little battery usage in low (and no) service areas (the iPhone and Blackberry drain their batteries within 4 hours in my country home with low/no service coverage).
A single sign in to a google account and instant setup for email, calendar and contacts (far better than the iPhone Exchange setup)
Login to additional google accounts which only syncs calendar by default
Applications in an app folder and ability to add short-cut icons to the screen(s)
Widgets - I setup the home screen with a calendar widget, google search bar widget, and a date/time widget
Social Networking widget which displays un-read status updates on FB, linkedIn, Twitter etc. Saves a lot of time wasted on scrolling through repeated FB posts of links to lousy Youtube videos
Contact widget for on-screen single touch speed dial
Much better spelling correction than the iPhone
Notifications on the top status bar
The BAD
UI and setup are not as intuitive as the iPhone. It takes some time to figure it out.
The Android market place is even harder to search through than the Apple AppStore (I can't imagine this will get better given the looser controls)
App quality and penetration are low - No official mobile apps from Starbucks, Schwab, Chase Mobile etc (I imagine this will get better as Android market share increases)
The Social Networking sign-in results in contacts from all networks being downloaded to the contacts list - and there is no option to turn this off. I now have contacts from my google account (which I need) and from FB, and LinkedIn in my contacts list and this is huge clutter
The virtual keyboard layout does not have the same ease of use as the iPhone keyboard and results in more typos
Inability to specify data sync intervals in specific time intervals
No easy, smooth sync with iTunes for my music
Conclusion:
I have yet to use the camera or camcorder and I've had the phone for less than 48 hours. I have not yet figured out how to backup the phone and apps etc. The initial outlook looks really good. I will return with an updated post in a couple weeks.
While I must admit that it is one of the best phones out there from a user interface design, intuitiveness of usage perspective, the shoddy energy management, weak battery, lack of multi-tasking first and now pseudo multi-tasking were always a bother.
The low life expectancy of the device made it an expensive option as well - my first iPhone (gen 1) started dying (the home button would not respond) when it was about 16 months old and now my iPhone 3GS is beginning to die at about 17 months of life.
In between, I strayed to Windows Mobile on the Samsung OMNIA and needless to say, the combination of the inept WM and lousy Samsung hardware led me to move on the iPhone 3GS.
Here, I share my first impressions of the Motorola Atrix, running Android 2.2 and they are very good. Some of the features I comment upon are native Android (I believe) and some MotoBlur.
I am not yet completely sold on MotoBlur, but the ease of setting up accounts to various social networking sites and receiving updates in a single interface (widget) is awesome.
The Good:
Amazing battery life from the 1920 mAh battery (may not be applicable to other Android phones) and the superior energy management of the Android OS.
True multi-tasking with background apps using very little battery power - I can keep Skype running in the background :-)
A task manager that tells me what apps are running and how much cpu, memory they are using; and, the ability to kill the process when an app has gone berserk
MicroSD storage and a file manager
Very little battery usage in low (and no) service areas (the iPhone and Blackberry drain their batteries within 4 hours in my country home with low/no service coverage).
A single sign in to a google account and instant setup for email, calendar and contacts (far better than the iPhone Exchange setup)
Login to additional google accounts which only syncs calendar by default
Applications in an app folder and ability to add short-cut icons to the screen(s)
Widgets - I setup the home screen with a calendar widget, google search bar widget, and a date/time widget
Social Networking widget which displays un-read status updates on FB, linkedIn, Twitter etc. Saves a lot of time wasted on scrolling through repeated FB posts of links to lousy Youtube videos
Contact widget for on-screen single touch speed dial
Much better spelling correction than the iPhone
Notifications on the top status bar
The BAD
UI and setup are not as intuitive as the iPhone. It takes some time to figure it out.
The Android market place is even harder to search through than the Apple AppStore (I can't imagine this will get better given the looser controls)
App quality and penetration are low - No official mobile apps from Starbucks, Schwab, Chase Mobile etc (I imagine this will get better as Android market share increases)
The Social Networking sign-in results in contacts from all networks being downloaded to the contacts list - and there is no option to turn this off. I now have contacts from my google account (which I need) and from FB, and LinkedIn in my contacts list and this is huge clutter
The virtual keyboard layout does not have the same ease of use as the iPhone keyboard and results in more typos
Inability to specify data sync intervals in specific time intervals
No easy, smooth sync with iTunes for my music
Conclusion:
I have yet to use the camera or camcorder and I've had the phone for less than 48 hours. I have not yet figured out how to backup the phone and apps etc. The initial outlook looks really good. I will return with an updated post in a couple weeks.
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