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Never stop Grokking


Friday, February 01, 2013

Nexus 4 — First impressions

Just got a Nexus 4. Started it up, and tried to sign in to my gmail account. I have two-factor auth set up for extra security, and you'd expect a google device to work well with google auth, but here's a list of bugs I've found within minutes of opening the package.

  1. It first asks you to sign in to your gmail account. Type in your username and password.
  2. It then tells you you need to sign in on the web to continue, so it opens the browser for you to sign in.
  3. Focus is on the username field, but there's no keyboard available. You need to tap on the username field (which already has focus) to bring up the keyboard. This is counter-intuitive.
  4. Type in your username and password and submit. It then takes you to the 2FA page (at least in my case) where you enter your security code.
  5. Again, tap on the field to bring up the keyboard. This field is a numeric field, but the keyboard starts out in alphabetic mode. This is probably a bug with all mobile devices, but you'd think that something this new would have fixed it.
  6. Type in the code, and now try to click on the checkbox that says "Remember this device". Except the keyboard goes away and you now end up clicking a link that explains what 2FA is.
  7. Ok, cool, I just want to go back and hit submit... except there's no back button on this browser. There's no toolbar that normally pops up at the bottom of the browser. No, this is a special browser that does not allow you to navigate through the browser history. FAIL.
  8. The only way forward is to shut down the phone and then start it up again. Except at this point you start from scratch, including selecting your language.

A few other things I've noticed...

  • The timezone by default appears to be UTC. You'd think that it'd localise this based on my location, which it knows and is configured to use.
  • If a transient alert message pops up, and you try to tap on it, you'll actually tap on the item below the message.
  • The icons are a bit too small for someone with normal sized fingers like me. It's easy to tap on the wrong item.
  • The position of the power button and volume control buttons means that when you press the power button with your thumb, your forefinger will inadvertently hit the volume control (or vice-versa). This happens because of Newton's third law of motion. Google/LG engineers should know this since it's a 300 year old basic law of motion.
  • You cannot move a widget from one screen to another by dragging it. You have to remove it from the old screen and then go through the process of adding and configuring it again for the new screen.
  • When you select punctuation on the keyboard, entering an apostrophe should switch back to alphabetic mode. It doesn't.
  • It just reboots at times.

Will post more as I use it.

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