I just wanted to post a few updates on my recent experiences with Android in general, and the Nexus S 4G in particular. I've had some time to put it through its paces, and I'm quite happy with how things are working out so far.

I'll start out with the main thing I don't like about the NS4G, which is the voice and data network reception. I've lost calls in areas that I didn't on my Palm Pre, and I've had poor network reception (either 1xRTT or none at all) where I would previously get a reasonably consistent 3G signal. Sprint has said the next update (due to start rolling out tomorrow, actually) addresses some of these concerns, so maybe this will get better.

The mobile hotspot, on the other hand, works beautifully. It was really nice to not have to pay $15/day for hotel wifi while on vacation. I do hope Sprint keeps it free, but I suspect some day they'll hit me with a surcharge.

The turn-by-turn navigation with Google Maps has been nearly flawless. It was really nice to be able to create a map in Google Maps for various vacation destinations and have them in my phone for easy viewing/selection when driving around. The traffic data seems to be pretty accurate, and it's easy to call up an alternate route if I do hit traffic.

The voice search and dialing is a lot more useful than I thought it'd be. It's great to be able to just say "Navigate to [local business]" when I'm driving. I'd say it guesses right 80% of the time, and if not, the thing I want to drive to is usually in the list of potential matches. I haven't used any of the more fancy voice actions like sending emails or texts, but for the basics, this is great to have.

Battery life is good. The things that seem to really drain it are having the display on for long periods of time, GPS navigation, or being in a bad cell/wifi signal area. I've gotten an hour or two of music from it with the battery only draining a few percent, and casual internet browsing / app usage doesn't seem to do much, either.

I was bummed by the lack of a car dock with a charging connection, but the home multimedia dock has one, and it's very nice for use as a nightstand dock. In the car, my Touchstone works great as a mount, but I still have to plug in a charging cable. If someone released a charging Nexus S car dock, I might use that instead of the Touchstone.

The camera takes very nice photos. I'm not ditching my Panasonic ZS3 any time soon, but when I forget to bring it, I no longer have the dirty feeling that I'll end up with crappy shots from my phone camera. Video is acceptable, but the lack of HD is a slight disappointment.

Hardware-wise, the NS4G is considered underpowered compared to current dual core models, but I haven't really noticed much slowdown at all, and on the occasions when I did, it was usually due to a misbehaving app.

Here are some app highlights that I don't think have been mentioned here yet:

• Go Launcher EX: I picked this one because it's free, and ADWLauncher costs $3 or so. It seems to have everything I want/need from a launcher replacement. ADW seems to have a larger theme library, but otherwise I don't see any reason to switch.
• Animated Widget Contact Pro: I like having my most frequently-called contacts as launcher widgets, and this does a great job, with little pop-out icons for calling a specific number for a contact, texting them, emailing them, etc. You can disable some of the gratuitous animation stuff if it bothers you.
• WidgetLocker: Lets you customize your lock screen. Here's mine, with sliders for opening the camera and TeslaLED (see below).
• TeslaLED: Simple flashlight app that I use a lot more than I thought I would.
• K-9 Mail: Best IMAP mail client I've found. The one thing missing is Exchange ActiveSync support, but they're actively working on it.
• D7 Google Reader Pro: Fast Google Reader client with a clean UI. Needs better offline support (right now you have to save each offline item individually) but by far the best RSS app I've found.
• Google+: The Android G+ app is off to a good start -- UI could use some polish, and it needs resharing functionality, but it gets the job done.
• IP Cam Viewer: I use it to view my own webcam at home, but it's also handy for viewing live traffic cameras (it's got a built-in directory of hundreds of them.) Wonderful app, well worth the $5.
• Miren Browser: I kept going back and forth on whether I needed a better browser, and I decided that I do. I've tried Dolphin and Miren, and Miren seems to be faster and less bloated, while still adding functionality above the built-in browser.
• NFC Task Launcher: It lets you read and write NFC tags. I bought a few for automated switching of Tasker profiles. I put tags in my Touchstone docks at work and in my car, with the work one changing my Google Voice settings and engaging airplane mode, and the car one putting my phone in car mode. Enabling NFC hasn't diminished my battery life in any noticeable way.
• Searchify: This expands the Android search to include things like Wikipedia, IMDB, calendar entries, etc. Brings Android close but not quite up to WebOS's universal search capability.
• Google Music: Having my entire music library streamable, and being able to optionally pin a subset of that music on my phone's local storage is basically the perfect setup for me. Google Music itself has some warts in its current beta form, but Google's overall approach is better for me than something like Spotify.
• Google Chrome to Phone: Simple app that lets you send links from a desktop browser to your phone. (Despite the name, there's also a Firefox extension that lets you do the same thing.)
• Logitech Squeezebox Controller: Self-explanatory. There are third party player apps, but all I really need is a remote control for my Squeezeboxes.
• My-Cast Weather Lite: I couldn't really fall in love with WeatherBug or any of the other weather apps I tried. I'm not thrilled with this one either, but it's the best I've found.
• HandyBank: Finance app for syncing and viewing of MoneyDance data.
• Eye-Fi: Lets your phone pretend to be an Eye-Fi card, uploading camera pics to your Eye-fi destinations. Also lets you do "direct mode" between an Eye-Fi card and your phone. Must-have for anyone who uses an Eye-fi.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a big bump in cell reception from the next Sprint update, but overall, I am very pleased with the phone -- there's no other phone out there right now, Android or otherwise, that I'd want to have on me now.