Gshocker's Toys

iPad?

 
Unless you live under a rock you have heard of the iPad by now. Ok maybe you were at work but word is out there.. The leaked rumors seem to have been true and it looks pretty cool. I thought I would just post a few thoughts about this new "game changing" device.

1) Pricing is not too bad.. You do have to pay for the hardware which is not free and the "coolness" factor. Not sure which model will sell the most as having 3G would be pretty cool but that gets you out of the sub $500 price point.

2) Form factor is very nice. For kicking back on the couch this will be a sweet toy. I expect that this will sell a ton of units for Apple.

3)I was a bit dissapointed that is appears to be running the same base OS as the iPhone. It would be a winner for me if you could run background apps and really use it to replace a netbook or small notebook. For me if I could SSH into servers and do some of that type of work on it I would be all over it. I am curious to see if we see jailbreaking on the iPad.

4)AT&T still? After all the problems users are complaining about all the time I would have thought that Apple would have taken a look at another provider. I wonder if this will deter some from picking up the 3G product.

Well enough for now. Looking forward to checking on out at an Apple store in a few months.

 

New Android Phone

After my interesting shopping experience on Google's phone site I finally got my phone a few days later. As it turned out it they took a business day to process the order and the following day it was shipped. Not perfect for someone who was excited to get their hands on it but still not too bad. Would have been nice if they could tell you what was going on.

So I have been using it for about a week now and figured I would post a few comments about it. This will not be a review as there are plenty of those floating around the net.

Some things that I like about the phone are -

Speed - this phone is fast. The menu system feels smooth and fast and overall a good experience. Not to much lag anywhere so far.

Build Quality - this is top notch. The whole thing feel like a quality product and not some cheap phone (I am looking at you Palm Pre).

Camera - not up to par with the Nokia phones but still very good and usable. Compared to the Droid this is great. Fast to be ready to shoot again and switching between video and camera modes is not a painful process.

I picked up the phone unlocked so I was able to get a cheaper T-Mobile plan than the subsidized phone came with. Plus I am not locked into a contract with them which is nice.

As with other smart phones (notice I am not calling it the Super Phone) the battery is not great but I manage a full day with it on most days. The only issue I have with it so far is not really the phone but the speed of the T Mobile data network. Not that it is slow or a problem so far but with their hype of the 7.2 HSDPA network I was expecting faster speeds when on their 3G network.

As with my Droid on Verizon I have yet to have a dropped call. This is something that was getting to be all to common on AT&T. The call quality is top notch and so far I have not had the urge to turn on my iPhone which is what this has replaced.

2010-01-17 09.40.51

Google Order Processing.

Looks like Google.. or at least a Google employee has finally let people know how long things may take. Too bad this was only in the forums and not posted anywhere on the site.

Hey everyone,

Orders can take up to three days to process. Once the order has been processed, standard shipping times may apply depending on your shipping location and preference, so please remain patient as we work to fulfill your order.

Buying from Google

The Google buying experience is not quite what I had thought a big company like Google would offer. While the purchase of my Nexus One phone was relatively smooth it did not offer as much in terms of customer information as I had hoped for.

After ordering the phone I was unable to find out when they expected to ship it. Sure they were giving me free overnight shipping but overnight from what day. Since I had ordered in the morning I assumed that it would get to me the next day.

Well a little over 24 hours later it was shipped. Not terrible but I had hoped that it would be shipped a little quicker. If they did take longer to process it would be nice to have that noted on the website.

Can't wait to get it tomorrow.