I've been rolling with my Samsung Intercept for about a month and a half, so I figured I'd write a review of what I thought of it, as well as the apps that I use.
There have been some reviews that Android is difficult to pick up, hard to work with, etc. I didn't find it difficult at all. As a lifetime Windows user, I think that all the tinkering and tweaking and fixing I've done over the years to make things exactly right helped me here. Sure, there are some sub-menus that might hold some secrets, and some settings that could be better explained, but really, if you've used a computer in the past 10 years, you shouldn't have any issues with Android.
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Installing apps is easy, you just go to the Market icon and find what you want. The app automatically downloads and installs itself. Of course, this works 90% of the time. I still have issues with app downloads hanging and never going anywhere. I sometimes have to cancel and restart them in order for them to complete.
Regarding my phone specifically, the Samsung Intercept from Sprint, it is fairly well laid out, it thicker than most sexy phones now, but that is partially because of the slider keyboard that is included. Let me tell you - having a slider keyboard is definitely a welcome option for folks who have larger hands and fingers. If you try to type on the phone's touchscreen, it's almost laughable. I have completed the word REMACHINES without messing up once though, so that's an accomplishment. Call me old school, but tactile keyboards are still where it's at for hammering out emails on the go.
Sometimes the phone's touch buttons (Home, Menu, Back, etc.) don't respond right away. I intentionally went with the slowest Android phone from Sprint because I wanted the best battery life, but really, this can be frustrating at times. I press home and I expect it to respond within two seconds...not 10 on occasion. But back to battery life, I can go two days with fairly heavy duty use without a charge. Not like I do, because I wouldn't want to be completely dead at the end of my second day, but it's nice to know that my phone is going to die just after lunch on day 1. I'm a battery holdout - I've been on enough international vacations to know that batteries are the key to life. Without them, you have no way to record your personal history. Life never happened. Same with the phone - if I miss a call, I miss a business opportunity. Batteries above all else.
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Finally, there's the apps I personally use. But rising like a superstar above all the other apps, making the iPhone users (sorry Audric) jealous and their phones substandard (in this matter).
The free included Google Navigation that meshes with Google Maps is easily the best app I have ever used, and it made my Garmin obsolete. It is supposedly in Beta right now, but really, it's found everything with turn by turn and with spoken street names. It rules, and makes having an Android a loaded weapon, saving you $5o - $100 on buying a GPS by itself. Honestly, I looked at my GPS and gave it away as an Xmas present in October.
Some other apps I use are K9 Email which works better than the included email program, Yahoo! Fantasy Football, Facebook (duh), Craigslist Notifier, Google Voice, Calendar, Google Finance, Dolphin Browser HD (has tabs like Firefox, until Firefox or Opera release something better), Dropbox (upload your pictures and video from your phone here and pull them down from your computer later) and The Weather Channel. These are the daily apps I use.
The special apps I use for program management are Advanced Task Killer (to kill running apps eating RAM and Battery during the day), and the best battery extending program Startup Cleaner Pro - which allows you to disable all the programs that start up on your phone when you turn it on. I mean, do I really need Craigslist Notifier running in the background? Sprint Nascar? Heck no. Goodbye, I will run you if I ever use you. This allowed me to disable about 10 apps that were sucking my cpu, ram and battery from behind the scenes, and in particular Amazon Mp3, the dreaded program that would always come back from the dead and start running again even if killed by Advanced Task Killer. Now it doesn't run in the startup, now it's disabled forever. Why don't I uninstall it? Because I can't. Some behind the scenes backroom deal with Google and Amazon put it on my phone forever (unless I root the phone). But now, it's a distant memory.
Overall I have to give my Android experience a very positive rating. I'm already thinking how good these phones are going to be in the next couple of years with Android 3.0 coming out, along with the advancements of cpu usage, speed and battery life. It's a very good tool with some quirks, but I'm glad I made the jump to a more open platform that has a ton of apps. Did I mention all the ones I use above were free? Nice.
-Nate
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