I'll whip up some form of review tonight I think when I have some time with a camera. The hardware is somewhat less horrible to use than it is to look at - I'd be the first to admit that it is sod ugly - but it works.
So far my bugbears are:
- My alarm doesn't work, well it works but it refuses to make any noise. On the plus side with one of the zillions of apps in the market I was able to edit an MP3, resave it, and then not listen to it on my alarm. Brilliant!!! Actually the App is awesome, like a stripped down audio editing tool where you slide bars for the start and finish of the music that you want and then save it as an alternative track. Very clever.
- The menus are very convoluted and need to be rethought - I would like to go to the same menu to turn on and off everything 3G, GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth but they have put GPS under the Security & Location menu... kinda makes sense but at the same time - irritating from an accessability standpoint.
- Due to some interesting file management options there is a little quirk that is frustrating at times. When the phone is plugged into your computer it makes the Micro SD onboard into a drive that appears in your drive list. This is cool because you just drag and drop music, pictures and video into the directories and then they get listed on your phone when you unplug it. The problem is that if you are charging the phone on your PC it won't let you access the SD unless you go into the menu system and turn off 'Use SD as Storage'. It seems like a clumsy solution to me.
- As you install apps from the Market the menu screen just gets longer and longer - I would like to be able to create directories like: Games and Apps and then drag and drop the icons into it to make it a bit more tidy.
- Web browsing is a doddle but there are definite signs that Android has been developed by geeks. The forward and backward shortcut keys are Menu + J to go back and Menu + K to go forward. These are remenants of the UNIX VI Editor (VI=Visual) where J and K were used to go forward and backward along your lines of code. Not at all intuative.
Lastly - having come from using an iPod touch for the last 6 months or so and enjoying the intuative interface and uncluttered approach to doing things Android needs some polish. It has a learning curve - not a killer one by any means but it certainly has one.
My first days thoughts were that I could sell it on the bay, hope to get close to £500 for it, and get an HTC Touch HD but you know I might just stick with it for now. There are things in the Market (apps store) that are really making me realise how impressive this thing can really be.
