My weekend with an Android
I've read a lot of complaints with BlackBerrys over the last few weeks, and some of those issues I can actually relate to, especially after acquiring my new Torch. This weekend, due to work/travel and a variety of reasons I shall not bore you with, I was given an Android to use. A lot of people here have brought up a few points while mudslinging, battery life, performance, etc. So I thought that I would share my experience as a BB addict who went over to the 'dark side' (Without choice of course).
The easy one to start of with - Battery life:
Way too easy, the Android, well sucks. I thought we were being a little too arrogant on this regard because my Torch and Bold really don't have a great battery life when I think of my old Pearl. But seriously? I can use a Torch, the most battery intense BB I've used an entire day without worrying if I'm going to run out any moment. My Android was 75% full the first day. I ran youtube on it for about 10-15 minutes, navigation about twice (for about 5 minutes each time), and a couple of short calls. Then by mid day --- dead as a door knob.
Performance
Not an easy thing to swallow, but damn the Droid put my Torch to shame. I did however have a couple of instances where it frooze, and rebooted on me. But despite that, it still runs wicked fast, youtube never had any buffering issues like I have with my Torch.
Apps
Numbers do the talking here
Phone
Don't you miss the days when a cell phone review actually had a proper section for just the phone part? Anyhow, call quality was more or less the same. Didn't really get a lot of chances to really test the capabilities. The call history log was pretty good. I think RIM and Android should learn from each other on this one.
Screen
RIM...3.2" screens are tiny. Puh-leaze catch up to the original iPhones at least! kthxbai
Anyhow, the intent of this thread wasn't to do some boring Android vs RIM analysis (no really! read on). It actually made me more excited for the future phones of RIM (Assuming they don't screw up, Mike and Jim, I'm looking at you). I was using a Samsung Galaxy with a 1 Ghz processor and 4" screen. One of those AMOLED screens I think.
RIM's new phones are 1.2 Ghz, hopefully will still have a battery life that can stay alive for a day under considerable usage, a screen that rivals others, and a thin/light body. While it would be cool to have a phone that has a 20 Ghz processor with 16 GB of RAM, I don't think we need it just yet. It's life having an i7 processor to run Doom. Kinda cool in a geeky way, but pointless. I'll probably skip OS7 for the QNX phones, but if RIM has truly learned from this year, and focuses on good strong hardware with an intelligent and friendly UI (Please use TAT for QNX RIM! You didn't for OS 7 and PB), that's going to be one heck of a phone.
One last thought. Or rather prayer. Oh BlackBerry gods, for the love of all things holy, stop with this BlackBerry traffic nonsense, give me a Nav software that talks and looks cool and works as well if not better then the Google one. Telenav is okay...but $$$ and it stopped working. Carriers won't care once your phones are flying of their shelves, trust me on this! They probably will love you more since you actually give a damn about data compression over their networks. They'll let this one slide. Heck, even if you did VOIP over BBM, they might give in based on how popular this feature would be on selling those pricey data plans they now have.