I’ve been playing around with quite a few of the systems I use on a daily basis.
A recap of the last week’s changes:
- Purchased an offline Motorola Milestone – an Android based mobile phone.
- Downgraded my O2 contract, saving me £25/month.
- Sent my iPhone off for repair, the battery life is appalling; sending two SMS should not reduce the battery level from 100% to 97%! This will the become my backup phone.
- Migrated my personal email from self-hosted (postfix/courier solution) over to Google Apps. I now have push email to my phone, and it’s fantastic.
- Configured Spanning Sync 3 so I can sync my iCal and address book stuff to Google.
- Started using Google Voice extensively.
Switching over to Android was definitely a good move. I’m finding the UI nicer than the iPhone, and the OS being able to multitask is a definite plus – Google Voice, Twitter et al. can all run simultaneously.
Google Voice is fantastic, even though I’m only using the SMS facilities. It integrates with my mobile’s address book, and is set to poll (no push for that yet) for messages every 15 minutes. From sending to receipt is mere seconds, and it’s possible to SMS other countries for free too. Seeing complete message history online along with the ability to send SMSs while the computer is a boon too, no fiddling with the mobile while at the office.