The droid is here!

Earlier in the month I was as excited as the next guy about Google's new little toy, the Nexus 7 tablet. I fiddled for a while and then finally I gave in and went as far as (pre-)ordering it from NCIX - it showed "backorder", and it never changed...

In the meantime I noticed (RFD forums be blessed! - that's Red Flag Deals for the uninitiated) the carrier I am stuck with for another year (Telus) had a reasonably nice promo: a refurbished (aka refreshed in Telus parlance /haha/) Samsung Google Nexus S for free with a "one year commitment on any plan." Sounds good. The small print? New activations only. So after a while (and talks with various people, and listening to a lot of music at phone quality...) I had to give up and admit that I had to get a new number if I wanted that little piece of high tech - which I did. I went on the site, got the cheapest plan ($25/mo) and got it this past Monday. The sucky part was that my old phone had a $20/mo plan... extra $5/mo. But all is not that bad. I noticed the new $25 plan has the CID included (for which the $20 plan required an add-on worth $8/mo!!!). I never bothered, but my wife had it, so I called and got her the same $25 plan, which means we are saving $3 this way - almost pays for my increase... Plus I got CID, too.

Going back to Nexus 7, once I got my new cell phone, I called Telus and cancelled my old phone, then called NCIX and canceled my Nexus 7 order (which was still waiting stock...) So no 7" tablet for me... yet!
I also upgraded the phone to 4.1.1 JB - it came with some 2.3.1 or so.

And it blew my mind away. The JB Android is amazing. The phone is also (almost) amazing. Almost is here because the battery is awfully undersized - on a full charge and with all networking turned off, playing games and watching movies will kill the battery in 3 hours... I disabled the data over mobile networks (for which the big RoBeLus guys charge an arm and a leg) and with wifi only it is amazing... Did I tell you it is amazing? Well, it is. The screen, the video performance, games, the availability of free apps, I love them all.

BTW, BB is dead. I was growing to hate it more and more over the past 2 years, but now I *know* it. And it is not the hardware that is sinking it, but the software. It sucks big time.

I am now contemplating my next moves: first I plan to root the phone, and then unlock it, sometime in the nest year as I am still tied to Telus for another 12 months. Which doesn't really matter as my wife still has 12 month on her contract anyway - and we have both phones on the same account for the free "family calling" feature. Plus try the USB OTG thing. Get a keyboard? First I'll have to get a case of some sort.

Now I need a NAS...

After several days with it, I think this phone has two technical weaknesses: the battery which is undersized - probably one three times the size would make the phone really unwieldy - and the wifi sensibility - this one is quite bad, I compared it with my wife's netbook (an Acer Aspire One some two years old) and the Nexus drops the connection in places the netbook has no problems connecting. It is rather annoying not to have a stable connection in your own livingroom... BTW, the access point is an old WRT54G from Cisco hidden in the basement.

And the lesson learnt: subscribe to RFD forums (especially the Hot Deals and the Latest Deals)!