Confessions (and a review of the Nexus One)

Time for confessions, my dear speech-heads: I have been to (more than one) Star Trek convention in my youth, I sometimes talk to my cat, and I don’t own a smartphone.

In fact the closest thing I have to a smart device is the Apple iPod Touch, so I should be upfront that I have little to compare this device to in the way of exact comparisons. (Unfortunately, I have the previous version as Apple didn’t release the date of it’s new one and I happen to buy on literally the week before. Seriously. I actually received it on the Day of the release of the new one. Anyhow. That’s another story filled with much bitterness and eventual grudging acceptance, though I will be very cautious about buying an Apple product again without scouring the web very carefully for even a whispered of a rumor of a new release.) For the record, you can see, I’m a little biased when it comes to Apple, even though I do like their devices–clearly, I bought one.

Ok.

Now that I’ve slammed Apple in the beginning of a post where I talk about Google, let’s talk about the Nexus One phone. I happened to mention to someone at Google that I didn’t have a smartphone, so they sent me one to try out, which is pretty cool of them. Thanks, Google!

What fascinates me about most new devices (phones, etc) is that they are so utterly pretty. I know, I’m supposed to talk about functionality, but we see (and feel) devices with our eyes and hands first, and Android’s Nexus One is a pretty little machine; it’s has a nice heft to it, though it’s not heavy. It has the same shiny (yet easily finger-printed) screen as other devices I’ve seen. It’s display is very clear. It takes very decent pictures. It has a wheel you can use to scroll through the screen that is really great, easy to use, and it’s nice to not have to touch the screen to navigate all the time, especially because, as with my iPod, (and many devices, I’m betting) I find the screen’s keypad to be a few shades too sensitized, and the display doesn’t always obey by moving horizontally when I want it to. And while the keypad seemed too sensitive, some of the buttons bellow the screen seemed somewhat unresponsive on occasion.

But that’s where speech comes in. I can really see firsthand that speech is incredibly easy to use on this device, but perhaps more importantly, it is really necessary to use because of the smallness of these devices. Here’s the other confession: I hate typing on small devices. So much so, in fact, that my friends know not to text me (or to expect terse answers or phone calls in return). I find it infuriatingly slow and when I can send an email from a computer or make a phone call, I usually do. So: I liked the way speech was used on the Nexus One, especially because in most cases when I was searching for something, and the keypad came up, there was the mike waiting for me. It seemed to say, here I am! Use me! I am easier! It’s a great idea for integration, especially when a lot of users aren’t yet using speech. I think it’s encouraging to say the least.

Oh, and it worked. I tried to use it as I would anything, asking it to find out where the closest bike shop was or recipes for fried chicken; it did both, no problem.

The problems really only arise with the somewhat more difficult form: the email. In fact, the first time, our editor here tried to show me how to use the phone to ‘type’ an email using voice, he said something to the effect of “I’d like to order 200 dozen cigars,” which the device recognized as 2,000 cigars. Whoopsy.

As for my tests with email, they were relatively accurate, but it was difficult to type a longer email because whenever you pause, the system types a period, so there is a bit of figuring out how to make it work best. Then again, I do tend to be long-winded, even in my emails. I long for the days when it would be easier to punctuate, but that is one of the difficulties right now that even Nuances much lauded Dragon software is facing–probably because punctuation is so strangely exact, but, can also, occasionally, seems almost poetic. But I digress.

I can see how, in a pinch, using voice to type email can do the trick, especially if you hate typing your emails on a small screen. I would still use this device, and I think the voice commands do set it apart from products like the iphone where you can use voice for some things, but they mostly require downloads (of Dragon software, for instance). I like that with Nexus One the voice is right up front and really intuitive.