Google's [and Simon's] New Toy - Nexus One Review

It's been a while ... well I guess the blog restarts with the review of HTC's Google Nexus One "Super Phone!"

Please keep in mind while reading this review or evaluation, that I haven't used the Android platform before, I've played with the iPhone a little, but am coming from a Symbian system that was on my Nokia N95 and Nokia N97.  I never went with the iPhone because of the battery not being replaceable without having to void the warranty or send it back to Apple - that was a dealbreaker for me, even though I know how good the OS is and all the available apps.

For those that don't know, Symbian is the most used operating system for cell phones, back in mid 2009 it had about 50% of the market.  

I've been using Symbian on my past two phones and they have worked really well, there are a lot of free apps which were very useful.  Compared to the iPhone and Android OS, Symbian lacks the polished look and gui.  Aside from that the only other issue that I found with Symbian was memory management, I would have apps crash on me because there wasn't enough resources, I blame this on the OS, but I could be wrong and this might be something with the phones firmware.

Enough of the backstory, onto the Nexus One (I'll post pictures and video later, the BBerry's camera is horrible).  

Unboxing - when you first receive the box you'll notice Google's hand was involved in it all the way and HTC seems like it just created the physical hardware that Google had told them how to and what to do.  It's very sleek and sexy, the screen is big and the body of the phone feels great in your hand.  The plastic/rubbery part which makes up the back of the phone is interesting and gives it just enough grip that you feel it won't slip out of your grip.  There is also a part on the back where you can have engravings done.  

It comes with the charger, headphones/microphone, 4GB microSD card, data cable and pouch.  Standard things that come with mostly all cell phones.

First Impressions - the time it takes to turn the phone on from pressing the button to being able to open apps and use the phone takes about 30 seconds, this was with nothing extra installed and fresh out of the box and charged.  With all the apps and utilities that I installed over the past day, the start up time is now 1 minute and 15 seconds.  

One of the first things you'll notice is the crispness of the screen.  My past phones have had really nice colors and contrast, but seeing the screen of the Nexus One pales in comparison.  It's extremely clean and the resolution quite good - to put it mildly.

Android OS - this is the first time that I've used the Android OS for more than a day and I like it ... I really really like it!  When I first used the Android OS on the G1, I wasn't impressed, it wasn't something that blew me away or even something that made me "oooooooo" and "ahhhhh" it was just "eh" when I first got my hands on it way back when.  Having the Android OS running on the Nexus One was a different experience, the quick response time from when you first touch the screen to when the app(s) open or whatever you're selecting comes up is quick - I'm guessing this is a combination of the OS and the Snapdragon processor.  

It's very responsive and customizable, which is something I like to do.  There's just something about changing as many options as you can on the phone to make it your own that's quite satisfying, this was a huge reason why I stayed with Symbian for so long, but I never had the time with the iPhone to be able to try it out extensively, so I can't compare.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but on the iPhone you can't multitask, on this ... you can.  I've had a lot of different applications running all the same time without much slowdown or stuttering.  You will get the occasional hiccup here and there, but there hasn't been anything significant.  You will also get the error messages from time to time, but I think those are from the apps themselves and not from the OS or the phone.  

Speed - the Nexus One is extremely fast, the processor and the OS work very well together.  For those who were into computers back in the day ... you'll remember this well.  Sitting there at your desk or wherever you were staring at that CRT monitor, pressing that big power button on that gray or off white box, probably running Windows 95 or even Windows 3.1 ... I remember when the question was asked, "what kind of pc do you have?" my answer was a very confident "I have a 386" or even a 486 for those who had faster pc's.  Do you remember how fast that was back then?  Then do you remember when the pc's came out with the 1GHz processors and that blew the 386's and the 486's of the world away?  This is how it is for me ... again coming from how Symbian ran on my N97, where I would sometimes sit there and wait for things to load, or cancel out the error messages; to having a phone that instantaneously opens the applications, that runs smoothly and seems like you can open about 10 more apps without any problems.  

That's the easiest way for me to describe the speed differential I'm experiencing with the Nexus One ... from the 486 to the 1GHz processor.  I'm not 100% but I think the processing speed of the Nexus One is almost double that of most of the popular phones out there.  The RAM is also another + where it has 512MB's.  It's only a matter of time where we'll be laughing at that number and cell phones will have 2GB's of RAM.

Marketplace - there is a lot of debate from the iPhone lovers and the Android lovers at which is better based on the apps available.  I think the iPhone App Store has about 100,000 apps, while the Android Marketplace has about 20,000 apps.  Alright ... having the kind of thinking I have and thinking logically, I see it as the iPhone having a headstart of a year or maybe more, hence the larger set of apps on their store.  I'm not a developer (yet) but from what I hear, a huge difference with Android and the iPhone is that Android is open, so people can make their apps with little or no interaction with Google.  But the iPhone on the other hand has to get approved and all sorts of hoops that you need to jump through to get your app on there.  

20,000 apps seems more than enough for me.  I've downloaded about 20-30 apps already and they are all free ... I haven't paid for them yet, but I'm sure I'll come across some that I'll just have to buy.  

Most of the apps on the Marketplace have been without issue, there were about 2 or 3 of them that didn't work with the Nexus One and the 2.1 Android OS, but those were rare.  The apps that I got were again smooth and ran well on the phone, I probably encountered 1 or 2 error messages from an app (not sure which one).  

Live Wallpapers - one of the features that Google pointed out was the live wallpapers which you can interact with and are touch sensitive.  These are fun and visually stimulating, but they don't offer much in terms of functionality.  They are pure eye candy and should be treated as such.

Sync - another key feature of Google is how the Nexus One syncs with most (if not all) of the Google products that you already use.  Gmail, Google Voice, Google Talk etc etc.  So far they have worked seamlessly with the Nexus One ... as soon as you sign into your Gmail account, it syncs all of your contacts automatically and does it on the fly - so if you edit your contacts online, it will refresh on your phone.  It will fetch and match the facebook profiles with your contacts, so you don't have 2 or 3 of ever person on your contact list.  Again I'm not sure if other phones do this, but I know my N97 didn't, so this was new to me.  

If you have a Google Voice number, you can use it on your Nexus One.  So when you're calling someone you can either call with the phone number tied into your SIM card, or whichever Google Voice number that you have (in my case 347-878-SRAY).  You get access to all the Google Voice functionality as well, including the voicemail which is transcribed and you can read, or you can listen to it on the phone without having to dial into your voicemail.

Connectivity - I have it running on TMobile and the 3G has been a steady connection throughout my office, and also my house.  My past phone had issues when I was at home and I would lose signal when I'm in certain parts of the house, the Nexus One had signal in those trouble areas which was surprising - given that I live in the basement and part of the ceiling is enforced with metal, part of it is like living in a bomb shelter with no radio signals coming in or out.  

It was announced that TMobile had upped their 3G network to 7.2Mbs/sec ... here are the results of my speedtests on the phone:

wifi - 581.2KBs/sec DOWN / 89.7KBs/sec UP
Edge - 11.7KBs/sec DOWN / 2.5KBs/sec UP
3G (at home) - 187KBs/sec DOWN / 126.8KBs/sec UP
3G (in Manhattan) - 356.8/sec DOWN / 164.2KBs/sec UP

The wifi connection is correct and it goes with my speeds at home.  The Edge is slower, almost like those boxes that make all the noise with the beeps and chirps running at 56K.  Seems like the 3G in my house was slower than in Manhattan where it's blanketed with 3G.  The 3G in Manhattan seemed to be running at 3Mbs/sec.

Bluetooth and wifi were not a problem to setup, I don't think I need to go into detail more.

AT&T CUSTOMERS READ THIS - If you're on AT&T and plan on getting the Nexus One "unlocked" you will not have 3G speeds.  The current Nexus One will not connect to the 3G network for AT&T because TMobile runs their 3G at a different frequency than the other carriers, and does not support AT&T's frequency for 3G.  

ISSUES & PROBLEMS - Every phone has their share of problems, I didn't find many on the Nexus One, but there are a few that exists.  There are four hard buttons on the front of the phone that are for "back," "options," "home" and "search."  Pressing directly on the icons of these buttons will not work, you need to press a little bit above the actual icons to activate each option.  I'm not sure if this can be corrected with a software update, but it seems that the mapping of the areas to touch for these are a little off.  After using it for about an hour you learn how to "press" these buttons and the problem is goes unnoticed.

The camera on the phone is a good one, 5MP with an LED flash.  It takes 720x480 video as well ... but there is an issue.  There isn't a hard button for the camera, so if you are like me and like to take pictures of your face from time to time, having the back of the camera facing your face and trying to press the "shutter" button on the screen is something hard to accomplish.  It took me a little bit of practice to get this right but after a while I was able to get it done.  

Speaker quality is not that great on the Nexus One.  There is one mono speaker on the back of the phone and when using the speaker phone it comes out a bit pitchy (I sound like an American Idol judge now).  The speaker isn't that loud either, I'm used to the great speakers that are on the Nokia N97.  

While using the corded headset I did notice that there were little noises that I heard which might have been the "noise canceling" mic cancelling the noise for the party on the other end of the line, but not me.  I'm not sure if this was the issue or if I had low signal when I was making the call from inside my house.  I'll revisit this issue and see if this was an isolated incident.  

Other Thoughts - well I've had this phone for about 24 hours now and have been playing with it when given the opportunity, and I like it, it's a solid smart phone ... or as Google calls it a "super phone."  It's quick, it's responsive, it's really good to look at the screen, the apps are there, the speed is there, space is up to the user but you do get the 4GBs to start with.  People always label phones as the "iPhone Killer" but I don't think any phone is a "killer" or any other phone, it comes down to personal preference, what features the end user is looking for and what are deal breakers.  This is another phone that competes with the iPhone along with all the other phones on the market.  The apps are impressive, useful and easy to get, updates, installed, uninstalls and all the functionality to make a phone attractive are here in the Nexus One.  Given Google's track record for their apps and mostly everything else they've done, it seems like their Nexus One is going quite well, with a lot of additions and room to grow.  Adding more functionality and software updates could make this a phone that's very very well polished, the user interface and learning curve is small, so don't be afraid if you've never used an Android device yet ... it's not that hard to learn.  As with Gmail when it first started and for the years it went on and on ... it was still in "beta" I guess because they kept on adding more and more functionality that the user wanted to see.  Maybe that's how the Nexus One will be, being in "beta" for the upcoming months and years as Google adds more to their labs for testing.

One last thing before I cut this review/evaluation ... Google Navigation is incredibly good and fast.  Those stand alone GPS units in your car will become paper weights if you decide to get the Nexus One and use it while driving.  

+ mon

Update on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 2:10PM by MONStar

One thing I forgot to mention was the Text To Speech in almost every text field on the phone.  It's incredibly accurate, I have been "texting" everyone using the Text To Speech function and it's about 90% accurate!

It's extremely useful for texting, emailing and even searching online.  It works just as well with the Google Navigation, just say "navigate to [say the address]" and it'll route it for you.

Simple and easy ... and most of all, it works!