I got a Nexus S today, and here are my initial thoughts, when comparing it to my Nokia N900.
- No LED indicator light. Â This is driving me nuts. Â It’s rather jarring to not be able to look at my device and know whether or not it needs my attention.
- It’s FAST! Â Opening applications is instantaneous, scrolling is smooth, no slow downs whatsoever after the first day.
- Android multitasking is rather annoying coming from Maemo. Â I’m not in love with how it works, its kind’ve like “every app is always open” and to switch back to an application you just reopen it. Â Thats nice, but it doesn’t lead to any nice workflows with great multitasking.
- There is a lot more application support in the android ecosystem, which is nice coming from Maemo.
- The lack of a physical keyboard is going to take some getting used to. Â I’m not particularly thrilled about the on screen keyboard quiet yet.
- Installing applications is quick and painless. Â Much less frustrating than on Maemo.
- I can actually use the email client! Â It has good search features! Â It doesn’t take 20 minutes to load! Â Oh happy day!
- There are… ads….? Â In my applications? Â This is weird. Â I don’t like it.
- SUPER integration with all Google services, which is sort’ve a big deal for me now a days.
The Google services integration is actually the deal breaker for me, and is probably what will keep me on Android going forward.
Update: So I’ve been using the phone for a couple of days now. Â Here are some more thoughts:
- Battery life is ‘meh’. Â I felt like i had a lot more control over the battery usage on the N900 — changing from 2G/3G, disconnecting from the network etc. where all much simpler operations on the N900.
- Using the phone, just for day to day stuff, is a pleasure. Â By far the most ‘fun’ to use where it ‘just works’ a very large percentage of the time.
- Voice commands are simply *phenominal*.  “Send text to daniel Hi dan, want to meet for drinks?” actually works about 90% of the time!  Or  “Goto engadget.com” or “navigate to pizza” all work rather well.  It’s what voice recognition should be like.
- The navigation app is slow and almost unusable. Â Nuts.