I updated recently my Android developer phone to Android version 1.5. The images and instructions were available from HTC. The update was very easy to do and took less than 30 minutes. There were lots of improvements. Video recording is a notable feature. Camera starts much faster. I like the changes in call log. Earlier I managed to make an unintentional call from the call log almost every other day. Now they have clearly added a call icon to the left and the actual contact to the right. This alone saves me a lot of head ache. The on-screen keyboard is some times useful when you want to type text using one hand. But I found it much harder to type without mistakes. The keys are too small for my finger. A stylus is needed to accurately press the keys. It is always much easier to use the keyboard.
The battery meter seems to be broken. When the phone is being charged it seems to take forever to get to 100%. Before the update it took less than 2 hours to get to 100%. I tried disabling various features like wifi and GPS without any effect on the charging speed. I finally turned off the phone when it was around 70%. When I turned the phone back on immediately it showed 100%. I need to find a solution to this problem. I am also not sure whether the charge is lasting longer. But many people at XDA developers forum who have noticed the same problem claim to have longer lasting charge in 1.5.
I wish the music player app had a way to create your own playlist. I can’t seem to find a way. The players found in the market seem to have lots of features. But all I need is a simple player where I can define my own playlist.
If there was a face off with some one with another smart phone, I could claim earlier that I had super user access on the phone with the Terminal client. Now with 1.5 that is gone. You can get it only with USB connection as a security precaution. Still I like to have a phone were I control almost everything. You do not want to buy a house where the seller controls the door and decides who gets in.
Some menu choices seem to be slightly different for the browser. Other than that I do not see any visual difference. I do not have a data plan. So I have not yet tried GPS services, the new home screen widgets or speech recognition. I also loved the way the phone worked with web. I got a phone number in yahoo email. When reading the mail in the browser the phone number was highlighted. When I touched it the dialer opened and from there I could add the number as a new contact. I was actually looking for a pencil to write down the phone number and then add it to the contacts by opening it separately. Interfaces are supposed to work like that. This feature was probably there in Android 1.0 itself. I wish Android came with built-in Exchange push support like I-Phone.
You can check out the full Release features for 1.5 at http://source.android.com/release-features.