Android 1.5 first impression

I approve. ... Cary on.

Oh, more? Fine.

Keyboard

They should have had an on-screen keyboard the whole time. I'm not sure who made the decision on leaving the keyboard to external developers and rely solely on the mechanical device, but they are stupid and should not be listened to in the future on similar decisions.
The mechanical keyboard is easier for me to type with. It is faster for longer sentences. When I have more than a few strokes to type in, I use the mechanical keyboard. To be hones, 90% of what I type on the phone so far is one sentence, and a phone SMS sentence at that. The on screen keyboard is a smidge better at simbols and the extra stuff. I hear there is one of emoticons Haven't found that one yet.

Camera

The camera now works. Before, the camera was slow. When you pressed the button all the way to take a picture, ti went blank for a full send before it forze the image and made that the picture. Now, the image freezes and that is the picture. In other words, you are not blind for the last second before the camera snaps the shot. It helps me hod the camera still which is very important because the camera still desperately needs a flash. That is in the next software upgrade right?
The camera now takes video. That is awesome. The quality is still phone level. I'm not upset about that. I like the choice. The old app you had to install was so buggy it was not usable. The integrated video camera is far better. Now I know why no one wrote a good app for video all this time.

SMS and mail

This is the complex one. I loaded an app called ChompSMS. It was very cool and included the same on-screen keyboard that was just included in the 1.5 update. I got a preview and fell in love. Anyway, I had to uninstall the pre-cupcake (the name of the software package) version of ChompSMS and liked how it handled messages and threads, so even after getting the Android update, I tried Chomp. It crashed, and crashed again. Crap. Stupid me, I had to uninstall the old one and go find the new post-1.5 update version.
Something very magical happened at this point. I noticed that the post-1.5 update of ChompSMS has a spell checker. Yes, my Tweets will have a shot at being spelled at least somewhat correctly. I'm not the only one who as complained about not being able to check myself. It also has a little counter to tell you how many characters you have used. That should required by law regarding SMS software.
Gmail on the G1 still has NO spell checker that I can find. There are plenty of library apps and one off spelling mechanisms on the G1. I know it can be done. Either I'm missing it, or Google is behind the curve on their own device. Come Google., chop chop.

Google Docs

Still sucks on the G1. Google just came out with this whole 'wave' thing and it will not work on the G1 for the known future. No spell-checker and your characters are all messed up when you sync a doc back to google docs. Someone does not get it. New stuff is great, but it has to work with the old stuff.

Other junk

The graphical security trace thing that pops up when the phone wakes up looks tranparent. It is more difficult to read in the sun shine. It might be adjustable.
That is about it. I haven't noticed anything else yet. I still need the extended battery. That bit hasn't changed. I'm sure if anything pisses me off, you will hear about it here.