Living Large in the Face of Three Bling-killing Irritations
Don't get me wrong, if you were to call me an Android fanboy - you wouldn't be far off base. Being able to freely tether my phone to my laptop for Internet access anywhere I can get 3G data is AWESOME! Not having to deal with TouchWhiz or HTC Sense UI or MotoBlur is AWESOME! Not having to live in the iPhone nanny-state is AWESOME!
I am living the big life (smartphone-wise) and have very little to complain about. But, as one cyborg to another, if I were to complain, there would be 3 items worth putting into words.
Of the three biggest irritations keeping me from complete Android bliss, the T-Mobile Flex Pay Ghetto is the most ire-rattling, nerve splitting of the three. I have learned to live with the battery slaying nature of the Nexus S and I am coping with not having a microSD slot or the option for a 32 GB Nexus S.
So yes, life with the Nexus S is almost 100% wonderful. Almost.
One: The T-Mobile Flex Pay Ghetto
In the T-Mobile Flex Pay Ghetto, conditional call forwarding (or any call forwarding except to T-Mo's voicemail) is not allowed. Without this feature, there is no seamless Google Voice voicemail on my premiere Google phone and is a severe irritation that might lead to me selling my Nexus S and quitting my T-mo service.
Two: The Nexus S is a slayer of batteries.
If I am listening/watching a netcast, it drains the battery faster than it can be recharged. I did find some suggestions in the xda forums. For under $30, I purchased 2 additional batteries and a charger. Not a perfect fix, but workable. I've tried Tasker and other software approaches - ultimately, to me, more hassle than physically swapping batteries.
Three: The One with the Bigger GeeBees
I had the white iPhone 3Gs 16GB model. After a year of swapping music in and out and being tied to one instance of iTunes (for me, installed on my desktop), I realized I needed a phone with more storage.
When I purchased the Nexus S, I had some how talked myself into believing that I didn't need it. I think the logic went something like this: With apps like AudioGalaxy or Rdio, I don't need to store music files on my phone. All I need to do is stream music from the cloud to my phone.
Well, in theory, my logic was sound. In reality, the economics of Rdio are inflated in my opinion. $10 a month for music when I get so much more streaming content for less than $10 a month from both Hulu.com & Netflix.com. If Rdio were $4.95 a month, I doubt I've think twice about signing up.
As far as AudioGalaxy is concerned, if I ran it on a server in a data center, it would be rock solid. In reality, things happen that leaves me without access to my music just when I need a fix of Renegades of Funk or the entire Indigo Girls discography or some old-school Outkast.
So, what kind of things rained on my cloud logic parade - things like the power going out longer than my UPS could keep my NAS drive running. Another streaming fail: Windows Update rebooted the PC that hosts the little AudioGalaxy server agent and the PC wouldn't reboot back into Windows because I left a thumb drive in the USB port. What else? Well, there were a few times that I got paranoid that the AG server agent was slowing down gaming performance so I shut it down telling myself that I will definitely remember to fire it back up after my virtual slaughter of animated agents of evil. Repeatedly, I forget to relaunch the AG server.
