As I continue to use my Nexus One, I keep running into features that I had forgotten about, or otherwise didn’t know how to find. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it says something that Google hasn’t done a very good job of marketing every cool thing that the Nexus One does. It also shows that Android has some improvement to do; these are features that shouldn’t have taken so long to find. On the other hand, discovering new things about the Nexus One has been a pleasure, and each time I find something new, I feel like I have a brand new toy all over again. And when I do finally discover the features, sometimes I question my own intelligence.
So enjoy the last two weeks’ revelations, maybe you’ll learn something about your phone, like I did!
Street View Navigation
As mentioned in my review, I couldn’t figure out how to get the street view navigation directions while using the navigation feature, at least not without wrecking my car. I wouldn’t mind how buried that feature is, if it hadn’t been such a highly touted feature.
As it turns out, you have to press Menu, Layers, and activate the Satellite view, which disables the 3D, smooth-scrolling navigation view that I love so much. In fact, I can’t imagine a situation where I was driving a car, where a satellite photo of my route would be MORE useful than a clear, 3D vector map. Maybe if I was a pilot it would be helpful.
In any event, once you’re in satellite mode, a Street View icon appears, and when you click it, you see each turn in Street View. It’s pretty cool, but isn’t always that useful. For example, on I-595, the street views of the exits were taken from the middle lane with medium to heavy traffic, without a clear view of the exit sign, and with all the cars around in the picture it was not very helpful at all.
Navigation is a very Beta product, and it works amazingly well as is, especially for free. However, common sense dictates that there’s an easier way to present the different features of the Navigation product.
For example, imagine 4 different “views” for nav: Classic, 3D, Detailed 3D, and Directions List. Classic would be the typical iPhone-style top-down map view, similar to the view on Android with the Traffic Layer activated. 3D would be similar to the current default Navigation view, but with the traffic layer added.
But imagine an auto-zooming Detailed 3D view. It would be in the typical 3D view, with the option of Google-Earth style 3D satellite map view. When you approach a turn, it would zoom in and give you the Street View of the turn, then zoom back out to regular 3D once you make the turn. This would be a lot simpler than the layers, options, and on-screen button approach that they’ve taken so far.
One thing to note, is that if you follow your navigation to the destination, it shows you the street view of your destination automatically. Which, at first blush is cool. But it only shows it to you when you ARRIVE, when you presumably have a “street view” of the destination outside your car’s windows.
Deleting Voicemails
This one is probably partially my fault for neglecting one of Android’s main interface metaphors: the Long Press. Until last week, I had never deleted a Voicemail from Google Voice. Why? Because I it was way too annoying. I thought maybe if was viewing a voicemail message, if I pressed the Menu button, one of the choices would be to delete this message. Instead, the choices are Call, SMS, View Contact, Star, Archive, and More. I have to click More, and then Delete is under there.
That seems to be way too many clicks to delete each message (especially when you have 8 or 10 to deal with). Also, the “Add Contact” choice is completely redundant. If the person isn’t in your contacts, you hit the contact icon next to their number and it gives you the option to add them. That slot could’ve easily been used to hold the Delete button.
But as it turns out, when you’re in the list, if you long press the voicemail, a long list of options pops up: Open, View <Contact>, Call <Contact>, SMS <Contact>, Archive, Delete, Mark Unread, Add Star, Spam. So I guess that’s cool. An iPhone-style edit button, or a GMail style check box element would allow you to check off a bunch of items and delete them en masse.
Hey, Remember Card View?
Somewhere between the flurry of coverage surrounding the Nexus launch, the HTC Desire’s demos at MWC, and me buying my Nexus One, I forgot about card view! In fact, I was considering rooting my phone and installing Cyanogen to get the helicopter view, among other enhancements.
Then I remembered that stock Android 2.1 had similar functionality. So I Googled it (of course), and found out that if you long press the dots on the left and right of the bottom of the screen, a row of cards showing your home screens comes up! This is a much better way to navigate the home screens, as the swiping motion is still a little choppy, as the UI hasn’t been fully GPU accellerated (come on, FroYo).
While long pressing the little side dots works, the odd thing is that long-pressing the grid icon (which brings up the Application tray) does absolutely nothing. Shouldn’t it do the same thing? In fact, doesn’t long-pressing on that button make MORE sense? Oh well, at least I found it.
As Android matures, I’m sure some of these interface oddities will coalesce and form a more user-friendly experience. Until then, I’ll keep digging!
