Getting a Nexus 4
If you follow me on twitter, or have me on Facebook you'll probably be aware that I had some issues with the delivery of my Nexus 4.
After ordering it as soon as it was back in stock on the website (they sold out within a day last time) I was given an expected delivery date of Feb 13th. So it was much to my surprise when I got an email on Thursday the 31st that it had been shipped. Following this my friend, Dan, also had one ordered and got the confirmation too. Then I saw the tracking said please call. So I did, which lead to finding out that the courier had "no goods to scan". Definitely reassuring, knowing the nightmares some go through with packages that have either been delivered and left outside, or damaged, or stolen I thought that might have been what had happened, and that the item was impossible to scan.
Long story short, I spent about £5 on phone calls between Google and TNT and I got my phone on Tuesday. Then thankfully got the delivery cost refunded for the hassle.
The phone itself is great. No problems with battery life out of the box. I like the fact that it's a vanilla android operating system. That's quite important for me as a software developer as with android fragmentation and different vendor's skinning the beautifully designed applications that I have the joy of creating and replicating don't always look as good, but with a more raw version of android it's possible to see what the official implementation of everything achieves. For example, with the Galaxy S2 the application cache is not deleted when an application is uninstalled. This lead to some problems with some of the applications that I've developed. However, in Google's documentation for the cache behaviour it states that the application cache is uninstalled or wiped when the application is uninstalled but as the S2 is such a popular device in use at the moment it's a problem that can't be ignored.
Widgets certainly offer an improvement to the possibilities and ease of access to the phone's operations. Coming from a Windows phone it's nice to see the amount of customisation one can have, and the variety in the styles of applications available. Not all of them use the same layout and control scheme as one another, with the only uniqueness of a lot of Windows Phone applications being their colour scheme.
Another bonus is actually having all of the popular applications that iPhone users can enjoy on my phone too. Windows Phone applications are pretty clunky to use, slow to load, and left behind, sadly, because the hardware and OS themselves are great, the platform is just let down by the ecosystem.
It's great to also be able to look at my phone and know that there's something there for me to look at. Then at the press of the button I can see what the notification was for, even if it's not a stock application, another thing that I found frustrating with WP7 was the fact that you could only see if you had an email, text, or a missed call without having to unlock your phone. The delay in the push notifications was also pretty frustrating if it was something a little more important than normal. If you were in a group of people and they were commenting on a status and you weren't getting notified, you got left behind - another time I'll probably go into this.
Cheap as chips, one of the best phones out. Nab one.
After ordering it as soon as it was back in stock on the website (they sold out within a day last time) I was given an expected delivery date of Feb 13th. So it was much to my surprise when I got an email on Thursday the 31st that it had been shipped. Following this my friend, Dan, also had one ordered and got the confirmation too. Then I saw the tracking said please call. So I did, which lead to finding out that the courier had "no goods to scan". Definitely reassuring, knowing the nightmares some go through with packages that have either been delivered and left outside, or damaged, or stolen I thought that might have been what had happened, and that the item was impossible to scan.
Long story short, I spent about £5 on phone calls between Google and TNT and I got my phone on Tuesday. Then thankfully got the delivery cost refunded for the hassle.
The phone itself is great. No problems with battery life out of the box. I like the fact that it's a vanilla android operating system. That's quite important for me as a software developer as with android fragmentation and different vendor's skinning the beautifully designed applications that I have the joy of creating and replicating don't always look as good, but with a more raw version of android it's possible to see what the official implementation of everything achieves. For example, with the Galaxy S2 the application cache is not deleted when an application is uninstalled. This lead to some problems with some of the applications that I've developed. However, in Google's documentation for the cache behaviour it states that the application cache is uninstalled or wiped when the application is uninstalled but as the S2 is such a popular device in use at the moment it's a problem that can't be ignored.
Widgets certainly offer an improvement to the possibilities and ease of access to the phone's operations. Coming from a Windows phone it's nice to see the amount of customisation one can have, and the variety in the styles of applications available. Not all of them use the same layout and control scheme as one another, with the only uniqueness of a lot of Windows Phone applications being their colour scheme.
Another bonus is actually having all of the popular applications that iPhone users can enjoy on my phone too. Windows Phone applications are pretty clunky to use, slow to load, and left behind, sadly, because the hardware and OS themselves are great, the platform is just let down by the ecosystem.
It's great to also be able to look at my phone and know that there's something there for me to look at. Then at the press of the button I can see what the notification was for, even if it's not a stock application, another thing that I found frustrating with WP7 was the fact that you could only see if you had an email, text, or a missed call without having to unlock your phone. The delay in the push notifications was also pretty frustrating if it was something a little more important than normal. If you were in a group of people and they were commenting on a status and you weren't getting notified, you got left behind - another time I'll probably go into this.
Cheap as chips, one of the best phones out. Nab one.