The Nexus One

The Nexus One

 with smart phones coming out almost as fast as the eye can blink, Google's official entry into the phone-sales game has excelled in where many find difficulty: generating legitimate excitement. The genuine-article Google Phone is finally here -- for better or worse.

The device, a Snapdragon-powered, HTC-built phone looks -- on paper, at least -- like the ultimate Android handset, combining a tweaked and tightened user interface and it looks cool. A sleek, streamlined phone that can easily go toe-to-toe with the iPhone 3GSs, Pres, and Droids of the world, powered by the latest version of Android. But is it all it's cracked up to be? Can the Nexus One possibly live up to the hype it has generated?


When you first see the Nexus One, you can almost hear someone at Google say something like, "Make us something as sexy as the iPhone. Whether you love or hate the iPhone, it's hard to deny its obvious physical attractiveness, and it's clear that Google and HTC made strides to bring an Android handset into the same realm of base desirability that Apple occupies. For the most part, they've succeeded. The phone shape finds itself somewhere between the iPhone and Palm Pre -- taking the Pre's curved, stone-like shape and stretching it into something resembling a more standard touchscreen device. The shape and size of the phone is absolutely fantastic; The surface of the device houses a 3.7-inch display.

HTC has managed to get the thickness of the phone down to just 11.5mm, and it measures just 59.8mm and 119mm across and up and down -- kind of a feat when you consider the guts of this thing. It's a bit lighter than you expect, although its no wimpy.  The curved edges and slightly tapered top and bottom make for a truly comfortable phone to hold. On the glass-covered front of the device there are four "hardware" buttons (just touch-sensitive spots on the display) laid out exactly as the Droid's four hard keys: back, menu, home, and search. Clearly this is going to be something of a trend with Google-approved devices.

Unlike the Droid, the Nexus One has a trackball just below those buttons. Along the left side you've got a volume rocker, up top there's a sleep / wake / power button on one end, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the other, and along the bottom there's a micro-USB port, a mic hole, and three gold dots that look destined for some kind of dock. Around back you'll find the 5 megapixel camera and accompanying LED flash. The layout of the phone is solid, though no dedicated camera key (no biggie).

Inards
The Nexus One runs on 1GHz Snapdragon CPU from Qualcomm (the same processor powering the HD2)  The phone also has 512MB of both RAM and ROM. The display is an AMOLED, 480 x 800 capacitive touchscreen, and the handset also contains a light sensor, proximity sensor, and accelerometer, along with an HSPA-capable GSM radio (AWS and euro 2100MHz bands only for 3G -- sorry AT&T users), WiFi, the prerequisite AGPS chip, and a microSD slot (which comes loaded with a 4GB card, but is expandable to 32GB). By late-2009 / early-2010 standards, there's really nothing notable about the guts of this phone beyond the presence of a Snapdragon processor, and even that left something to be desired.

Display

The 3.7-inch display is stunning  for the most part.  In terms of touch sensitivity, the display is as good or better than any other Android phone. While the resolution is high (480 x 800). The big issue with the screen is the color balance. We found colors on the Nexus One, particularly in the reds and oranges, to be severely blown-out and oversaturated, and using this thing in daylight? Forget about it. Like most screens of this type, the Nexus One is a nightmare to see with any kind of bright light around, and snapping photos with it on a sunny day is like taking shots with your eyes closed.
 
Now, the big story with the Nexus One (besides how it's being sold, we'll get to that in a minute) has been the rumored alterations or updates Google has made with Android 2.1. There's been talk that this is somehow the "real Android," a suggestion that other, earlier versions weren't true to Google's mold. There's been talk that the Nexus One is worth the hype, and will blow people away when they see what this version of Android can do. Mostly, there's been a lot of talk. So, what's really the story here?
Well the real story is that Android 2.1 is in no way dramatically different than the iteration of the OS which is currently running on the Motorola Droid (2.0.1).  Of the notable changes, many are cosmetic. Still, there ARE changes, so here's a peek at just what Google has cooked up for the new phone.

Firstly, the place where Google really seems to have put a lot of its energies has been in the look and feel of homescreen navigation. Most noticeably, the company has killed the sliding drawer which used to house all of your application icons -- the tab is replaced with a handy "home" icon which zooms in your icons over top of whatever homescreen you're on. You can scroll up and down through those icons, which is now accompanied by a cute 3D animation where the items slide over the top and bottom edge, like wrapping a piece of paper around the side of a table. It's nice, but not necessarily functional in any way. Google has also added a little bounce to the menu.
 
Additionally Google has expanded the number of homescreens accessible from three to five, adding a combo of  iPhone style dots to help you keep track of where you're situated. If you long press on those dots, you get a kind of "card" view of all your homescreens which you can use for quick jumps. All of the homescreen improvements are just that -- improvements -- and it's nice to see Google thinking about a user's first impression of this device. Not only do these additions bolster the look and feel of the UI, but they're actually sensible and helpful solutions to problems.

Elsewhere, there are nips and tucks that are welcome,  But Google stumbles as well; the dated and always-underwhelming music player has undergone almost zero change, and the soft keyboard -- while better than previous models -- can still be inaccurate. Of course, Google wants to provide another option for text input that we haven't seen before the Nexus One. Now included when the keyboard pops up is an option to use the company's speech-to-text engine, which will (attempt) to translate your words into onscreen text.  but we don't see this being a big part of our communications game until the audio recognition gets a little more robust. It might work for an occasional text, but dont use big vocab.

One other thing, there's no multitouch on the Nexus One. Now, we can live with a browser or Google Maps with no pinch-to-zoom, but not having a hardware keyboard hamstrings this device in other ways. For instance, gaming on the phone is pretty much abysmal save for a few accelerometer-based titles. And some of our favorite software, such as Nesoid (an NES emulator) is a total dead. For a phone which uses touch input as its main vehicle for navigation, relegating that experience to a single digit is really kind of bogus.  Why won't Google open this up? Why have they kept what has become a normal and quite useful manner of interaction away from their devices? Only Eric Schmidt knows for sure. What it made us realize, however, is that an Android phone is really better off with a keyboard.

Where can I get one?

If everything falls into line the way we think it should, the sale of the phone won't be the kind of barnstorming industry shakeup that many predicted -- rather, it's business as usual, with one small difference. While the phone is manufactured by HTC and destined for use on T-Mobile's network, Google will be the one doing the selling of the device. By all appearances, the company will have a new phone portal where buyers can pick between an unsubsidized, unlocked Nexus One for $529.99, or sign up for a two-year agreement with T-Mobile and purchase the phone for $179.99. This shouldn't seem strange or exciting to anyone who's recently bought a smartphone -- it's pretty much the lay of the land right now. The hope was that Google had found some ingenious ad-supported way to get this phone into consumer's hands for a low, seemingly subsidized price but without the shackles of a contract or specific carrier -- but those plans seem have been either invented, or somehow dashed.


The Nexus One is at its core just another Android smartphone. It's a particularly good one, don't get us wrong -- certainly up there with the best of its breed -- but it's not in any way the Earth-shattering device the media and community have built it up to be. It's a good Android phone, but not the last word  Of course, if Google's goal is to spread Android more wide than deep, maybe this is precisely the right phone at the right time: class-leading processor, vibrant display, sexy shell, and just a sprinkling of geekiness that only Google could pull off this effortlessly.