So this evening I took the plunge. I used the method outlined here and signed up at imzdl.com. It all worked pretty well. And so far, so good. The battery looks like it’s draining a bit faster than before, but that’s to be expected of a first beta and it’s not the half-battery that the Chicken Littles claim. A few apps have bombed on me, but only sporadically. Skype didn’t open at first, but a quick look at their support forums found you just needed to delete and reinstall the app.

Is it worth it? I don’t know. The new icons are still a bit rough, as reported, but more than that, their flatness looks out of place next to the 3‑D icons that most iPhone apps still use. The new quick-settings bar is cool and the parallax effect for backgrounds is cooler still (it shifts the background as the accelerometer moves about, giving it all a feeling a depth). We’re told that multi-tasking is more robust, but that’s not something one notices immediately (besides, Android’s had it for years). I’ll update as I explore more. Guesses are that the second beta will come in about ten days—I’ll see if I can live with the first beta’s battery hit until then.

Lightbox is joining Facebook!
We started Lightbox because we were excited about creating new services built primarily for mobile, especially for the Android and HTML5 platforms, and we’re honored that millions of you have…

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