I've been enthusiastically tweeting about and from my new Google Android Nexus S phone. It's a lovely little phone with so much inside it. I felt that shiny-new potential way about the G1 running Android 1.5 when I got one about 2 years ago, too. Now it seems so dated and clunky in comparison. Such is the pace of change.

One software feature, I think, is badly misdesigned. This handset is my personal phone, which I have bought and paid for. But it would help to be able to read work emails on it from time to time. The 2010 iteration of Outlook Web Access is slick, but a native mail client is prefereable. So I entered the exchange server mail details into the email app, but stopped at a dialog asking me if I wished to accept the mail administrator's security control over the phone.

After a bit of googling, I found that by tapping "yes", I was giving the mail administrator the ability to remotely wipe the phone, i.e. completely reset it to a factory default state, erasing all applications and data on it. Though our admins staff are nice guys, it's a big security risk on my part to hand over this control. I did not feel that this control was appropriate, and declined to set up exchange email. This permission may be appropriate for devices that are owned by the company, but by attaching it to receiving emails, two separate things are being conflated. So unfortunately, my new phone is not going to get work emails.