marvingreenberg

marvingreenberg: #htc_dream I have the phone, and like the idea of the phone, and am even forgiving that it isn't the iPhone. Apple is Apple and they get usability RIGHT (although iPhone 1 had some issues). My attraction to Android was that it was more open, and I hoped that Google (a software company) and the Android platform would have enough influence to get many of the usability issues right.

My biggest annoyance is that I use the web browser, browse to a streaming media link (real time feed of a radio station, m3u,pls) and it doesn't play. This phone has all the codecs, streaming media is no different. This may be a deliberate limitation by T-mobile (some problem in their network with a long-lived connection?) but probably not since there are other applications that stream music. So its probably just a stupid oversight.

Then there are tons of usability problems. You can filter you contact list by the groups in your google contacts. But as of Nov 6, 2008, the Contact application doesn;t let you create or manage or show groups -- you have to do that online at Google Gmail. Further, GMail makes three special groups (Friends,Family, Co-workers) and these DON"T EVEN show up. Probably a bug in google's Contact API. And to use the groups from Contacts, you have to do: button: Menu, touch screen: 'More', touch screen:Show by Group, touch screen: , touch screen: 'OK'. And then it shows only the contacts in that group, but with no indication it is filtered. Why not just a filter pull down or popup menu on the contacts tab or something. Calendar similar requires 4 or 5 button presses to change the displayed calendars.

Anyways, I knew I wouldn't get an iPhone user-experience on this first Android phone. I was hoping for better, but luckily its all software and can (and should) get fixed in time (even if I have to write a Contacts replacement... :-) ) Nov 6, 08