Oneplus One

My trusty Galaxy Nexus has been by far one of my most beloved phones : I loved the design, the openess and the available development (custom ROMs). It has been running ParanoidAndroid most of the time, but when KitKat wasn't available anymore for the GNex, and because PA4 just sucked, I switched to Shiny ROM during its last months.

However, the internal storage was way too low (16GB), way too slow, and the battery was mediocre to say at least. So end of July, I started looking around for a replacement. Initially, I planned on waiting untill the Nexus6 would be available, but rumours about its 6 inch screen did me fear that its price tag would be also impressive.

My eye fell on the Oneplus One, and despite the questions about Oneplus' ability to support, I decided end July to bite the bullet, and to purchase a OnePlus One. An invite was easily found on G+, and beginning of August, I got the phone in the mail. Impressive by size, this phone is located deep into phablet territory. However, its size quickly gets used to. I wasn't really impressed with the sandstone back, I even feared it would be too fragile and damage prone, but after 5 months, it proves to be quite durable. I'm not so wild of the design either, I would have like some more rounded corners.

But apart from that, my experience of the phone has been allround positive : the phone is fast thanks to the Snapdragon 801, and 3GB of memory, and the 64GB of storage is a bliss. The battery covers mostly 2 days even with moderate to heavy use. Add Cyanogemod on the software side, combined with Exposed Framework, and count me as a happy man.

Pebble

The smart phone market is saturated : nowadays, everyone and their mums and dads are having smartphones. So for tech companies, bringing new stuff onto the market isn't so easy anymore. In the past, it was just all about increasing the size of mobile devices, but in most countries, the size of the smartphone seems to have hit the 5 inch barrier, above which most consumers find a phone too large.

That's why manufacturers are pushing the smart watch so much : if you believe them, 2014 will be the boost year for wearable devices. After all, Google will release its Glass device into the wild. However, most smart watch prototypes seem more like a mini smartphone on your wrist. Large bulky devices, with touch screens and too much functionality crammed into a too small screen.

This is where the Pebble shines : with its black and white screen in low resolution, it seems almost a mockery, as someone jestingly released a mini Palm Pilot for your wrist. But by keeping the functionality down, Pebble tries to focus onto the core features of what defines a smartwatch : mostly, it's a watch, and not a mobile phone strapped onto your wrist.

It took a while before I took the plunge, and decided to buy a Pebble. So far, I don't regret it : being able to glance to my wrist in order to see what notifications I received on my phone is a gods gift. It is by far the killer feature of the device; something so banal, it's almost incredible, and by far the biggest surprise of the Pebble. Another killer feature are the watch faces : I like watches, and the Pebble offers thousands of creative and sometimes funny ways of depicting the time of day. And the standby time really is stellar : after the first charging, the device was able to hold on for an astonishing 6 days, despite some quite heavy usage.

But the Pebble also has drawbacks, and that seems logical for a technology so young. By far, the Android experience is a bit of a let down : the SDK2.0 offers way more functionality than it predecessor, but the accompanying app on Android (including a real app store), is still in beta, which results in connectivity drops, a slow app market experience and high smart phone battery usage. Granted, the app is still young and in beta, so pointing this out as a large drawback may be a bit unfair. Another thing which irritates me is the 8-app barrier that is built into the device : it can only hold 8 watch faces or apps, which is at least two times too small.

Christopher Ra… Wed, 02/26/2014 - 14:42

My favourite app is the Pebble Notifier. It adds the possibility to add notifications for every installed app on the phone. Other than that, I'm quite happy with the Pebble, as long as you keep the notification levels down. Getting involved in FB Messenger conversations while its notifications were up, was very distracting.
But it's great for the really important notifications, and phonecalls.