Google´s mighty Nexus One has only been officially launched in the US, and while we wait for Vodafone & other carriers to bring it overseas we´ve bought one from Google’s shop for testing it here in the UK. One of the few lucky countries (with Singapoure & HK) where the Nexus 1 is shipping, basically these 3 countries are considered as “test countries” (and therefore those of us who bought it…. “test users”).
the packaging is also part of the Google experience
We’ve had no problem at all using our European SIM cards & setting up our APNs to get our Nexus 1 on UK’s Orange, T-Mobile & O2 3G networks (yep, we’ve missed out Vodafone … the preferred carrier by Google to bring it here).
First Impressions
Aesthetically the N1 is probably one of the most beautiful (desirable but not “sexy”) smartphones out there. A sleek & geeky but not too pretentious design perfectly balancing beauty & functionality. We have to admit that HTC & Google have done a great job here keeping HTC’s neutral style while matching (to a certain extent) the elegance of other smartphones and not making the mistake of becoming “too cool”.
The N1 feels great to the touch thanks to the perfect mix between its Teflon coated back & aluminum front and although this can’t match other Smartphone’s’ metallic body it still makes other plastic options feel cheap.
Hardware
We’re not going to bother describing and citing most of the information already available in N1’s homepage and pretty much analysed by other blogs. Still we’d like to highlight some small issues but also some wins by this second Google-branded phone.
It’s large 3,7” 400×800 Amoled screen clearly outperforms most of the large touchscreens we’ve seen up to now, it’s just delightful to navigate, watch & play with such a responsiveness & brightness. And the best of all is that HTC have managed to pack this powerful beast in a slightly more handy & comfortable body than that of the iPhone (119 x 59.8 x 11,5).
Iphone/Nexus One
The 5mpx camera might be useful for casual pictures (or videos) but let’s face it, there’s still a long way to go before smartphones (and not monofunctional phones like Cybershots) can actually be any good for taking pictures. Adding more and more megapixels without a good lens doesn’t make the camera any good, just bigger photos but as unfocused as usual (more pics here).
A pic taken with Nexus' 5mpx camera
But probably the most annoying part of the Nexus One is its battery. It may last for a day or a day and a half if barely used but if you give it a heavy use….
2h of music, 2h of phone calls plus some browsing & e-mailing quietly but quickly killed our Nexus’ battery… the result was a 12h routine. This, for any serious smartphone and considering the heavy usage they get is definitely a huge weakness, although to be honest not many smartphones out there offer a much better battery life.
Software & features
There’s nothing “astonishingly” new in this 2.1 version of the Android OS that will shortly be available for all Android devices.
Live wallpapers, a couple of new widgets (that Weather+News widget is the best we’ve seen so far) and mainly cosmetic changes in comparison to Droid’s 2.0.1 version:
- The sliding drawer has been replaced with a more intuitive menu with 3D effects and a home icon.
- Long pressing the home-button will show you the 6 latest services you’ve been using and at any point this is a great way of quickly accessing the different apps if multitasking.
- 5 homescreens plus an iPhone-style dots to help you keep track of where you’re situated, and if you long press these dots you´ll get a similar card-view to that of Palm’s WebOS (although this won’t match the elegance of the Palm’s cards in any way) .
- An improved gallery application also with 3D effects or a speech-to-text engine which tries to translate your words into onscreen text are some of the other visible improvements ….. in any case, they’re always welcome.
But there is one outstanding service that Google has evolved with great success… Voice Search; which now also works for every text field in the Nexus One. In many apps you can choose the microphone button and talk to the phone! The accuracy has also grown and around 70% of our searches were very right the first time, however, even if it looks like a time-saving option sometimes it takes more than 5 seconds and a couple of attempts for Goog Voice Search to provide with any results.
Overall Impression
Apparently Google has only sold 20.000 Nexus ones in their first week (far behind those 50.000 iPhones sold by Vodafone only in the UK!) but until a larger choice of carriers is available as well as a worldwide launch these figures can’t be compared.
The iPhone has much bigger brand awareness and will keep being the “Jesus Phone” for many more…. years? However the catch-up Motorola, HTC and other manufacturers are playing with Google’s software is already proving to be more than effective with some nice results and a growing market share.
The Nexus One is without any doubts the best funphone out there beating the iPhone in most aspects; and while we wait anxiously for a Nexus with a physical keyboard, Apple will probably drop one of their bombs in the meantime.
See you @ Bristol
