Big blog post coming soon....
Yeah, yeah, Part 2 of the Nexus One review is on its way...and it's positive!
It’s arrived!
But there isn’t really a lot to say about it…it’s a small nicely formed, well balanced docking station.
When you put the phone on the docking station, well, it charges.
When you take the phone away from the docking station in stops charging.
Might as well have just plugged the power cable in.
Docking station next to bluetooth headset...yup, that's it.
So what’s so special about it?
Well, for some reason, rather than connecting to anything via the connectors on the docking station, the Nexus One activates Bluetooth when docked, allowing you to sync with other devices or a headset.
It has a socket and cable for connecting to a speaker system.
The device basically turns into an alarm clock when docked, with the option of playing music or showing a picture slide show.
It seems to me that Google are really pitching this as a “lifestyle” phone and not a business phone.
I’m writing this post on my Nexus One with the new WordPress for Android app.
It seems pretty slick to me.
Announced via twitter tonight is the Google Nexus desktop docking station.
It looks to be positioned as a hybrid dock/alarmclock/photoframe/speaker system.
They had an initial glitch whereby the product wasn’t available to order straightaway, but you can now purchase one here.
I have; it’ll be here soon. Watch out for a review.
There are surprisingly few accessories for the Google’s Nexus One phone, but there are two I’m specifically looking forward too; the docking station and the car dock.
There is very little news on the Car Dock (ping me if you find anything), but it is expected to be a challenger to the existing satnav companies, such as Tom Tom.
In the meantime, details of the desktop docking device have started to surface have been published and the Bluetooth functionality sounds excellent
Just over year ago, everyone at my company who had a company mobile was moved from the windows smartphones to the Apple iPhone. They all had an option, and they all took the iphone…except one person. Me.
HTC Touch Pro
Don’t get we wrong, I think the iPhone is a great device (I bought my wife one!) but I felt I really need a phone with a separate keyboard, so I kept the HTC Touch Pro I’d bought the previous year. I’ll save my praises for this handset for separate post. For now, let’s just saw it was great.
However, over the last few months the keyboard has started to get worn down and the space bar started to stick makingemailsfrommereallyhardtounderstand.
So the timing of the Nexus One launch was perfect.
I watched the launch on ustream and followed Danny Sullivan’s live blogging of the event, and nearly ordered the handset (S~IM free) that evening. But I slept on the idea and did some more research in the morning…
….then ordered it.
Nexus One box
Within days I had received my new phone in its minimalistic packaging. I unwrapped and began to play. This is primarily a work phone for me so task number one was to set-up my exchange email and sync my calendar, contacts and tasks.
And that’s where the problems began.
The phone comes with a basic mail app which made setting-up the exchange account really, straightforward, and it managed to pull in my emails and contacts with no fuss. However, the app is really limited and lacks some essential functionality, such as:
- The ability to add a signature to emails
- Sorting of emails
- Scheduling of email sync (you can chose to check emails at set interval on a “push” basis, however you can’t set peak and off-peak times like windows mobile can)
The Calendar app, however, on the Nexus One only syncs with a Google calendar not outlook. oops. Thanks to a suggestion from my friend Jim, I downloaded Google Calendar Sync for Outlook, but it isn’t working that well at the moment.
As for syncing Tasks, that’s not an option.
From a productivity standpoint this is a real show-stopper to me and I don’t understand how Google plans to take an acceptable share of the corporate market without embracing the kind of software that makes businesses tick. Sure, there is plenty of novelty apps in the Android Marketplace (more of that in Part 2), but the basics need to be there first.
I’ve recently download a trial of the Touchdown exchange app which claims to replicate all the required functionality of mobile exchange, and will post a review separately.
POSTCRIPT – becuase the phone was purchased SIM free so I had to input the O2 data settings manually.
Some people spend Xmas unwinding from work, spending time with the family, opening presents and gorging on food.
Rob codes.
…Although, to be fair, he did all of the other stuff as well.
Want to see the fruit of Rob’s efforts? Then head over to Yack Social and sign up to try his Social Media Monitoring Tool.
Enjoy!
Tonight, I popped into my local Tesco to grab some things on the way home . On the way out my eye was drawn to a tiny mobile phone on display. As a bit of a gadget obsessive I couldn’t help but have a look.
Spare mobile phone?
It seems like a basic but very cute device so I looked it up when I got home.
In a review it was being pitched as a emergency phone for nights out when you don’t want to damage your expensive iPhone. But surely it’s great for anybody with an iPhone (or Nexus One) who gets to late afternoon and their battery hungry smartphone has given up the ghost?
Think I’ll be grabbing myself one of those.
In Prague this week meeting reps from the other European SEMPO working groups, looking to put the search world to rights. 
Be sure to post any suitable topics you want raising.
It’s been emotional – update on Latitude blog.
