Nexus One

When Google introduced the Nexus One in January 5th, 2010, the company hit on an odd bit of marketing to distinguish the new smartphone from its competitors. This was “superphone”, Google said-ever other mobile device on the market was merely “smart.” The designation didn’t make much sense-despite what would have you trust, the Nexus One doesn’t have any main features that set it apart from other top-of-the-line smartphones. It make calls, does e-mail, and keeps you online; so do the BlackBerrys, the iPhone, the Palm Pre, and every other Android-based smartphones. All of these high-end smartphones have 3G, Wi-Fi, and GPS. They’ve all got app stores that can serve you to access a wide variety of third-party software. And though smartphones come in two distinct hardware flavors-either with or without a physical keyboard-they are all very pretty to look at.

About the maker

The Nexus One is an Android-based smartphone, which is built and designed by Peter Chou and his team at HTC. Here, Google’s role, is just marketing and selling the smartphone. The smartphone is nearly identical to what HTC itself sells under the name Bravo in Europe, apart from the placement of its buttons. Google’s impact on the Nexus One’s specifications is far less significant than even Microsoft’s original Zune, which while being based on the Toshiba Gigabeat, was at least given a design update and noticeably different apps that rendered it incompatible with other PlaysforSure MP3 players. In contrast, the Nexus One is very clearly a Google-branded HTC smartphone, and there are no intentional, artificial compatibility barriers with other Android-based platform devices.

HTC is a well-known as an expert of building higher-end PDA-style phones, often with large screens, physical keyboards, and envelope pushing hardware features. Most of its phones have been designed as Microsoft’s Windows Mobile (WinMo)-based phones, and therefore targeted at that platform’s core market of IT staff and gadget enthusiasts. HTC has served as Microsoft’s primary licensee, building 80% of the WinMo phones to reach the market; many of these were sold under different brand names, just as Google is now doing with the Nexus One.

HTC also built previous generations of PDA-style phones sold by Palm, prior to the debut of the new WebOS-based Pre. However, HTC’s history as the leading maker of WinMo phones is what positioned it to be the first major manufacturer to introduce an Android phone, because Google targeted its relatively new Android OS at hardware reference designs running WinMo, in much the same way that popular desktop distributions of Linux are geared to run on Microsoft’s reference design for Window PCs.

About the device

Nexus OneIf you’re planning to buy a new smartphone, then, the most crucial thing to ask isn’t “What does it do?” Instead, it’s “How does it do it?” Phones that seem identical on paper turn out to be wildly different once you turn them on. The most crucial feature on any phone is one rarely mentioned in a specification list: the OS. If the OS is clunky and overstuffed, like what you’ll find on the BlackBerry, you’ll have a devil of a time doing everything on your phone. If it’s intuitive and stylish, like the iPhone’s, you’ll find your device a pleasure.

So where does the Nexus One fall in that range? Right near the top. Google has described the Nexus One as a kind of concept car for its open-source Android platform. Actually, the Nexus One looks more like the iPhone than any other phone on the market. There is no physical keyboard like the Android-based Motorola Droid, and the tradeoff is a much slimmer design. The phone is 11.5 mm deep, slightly thinner than the iPhone 3GS at 12.3 mm. The package comes with the phone, a removable battery, USB charger, 4 GB MicroSD storage card (expandable to 32 GB) and microphone headset.

The Nexus One has four functional touch buttons at the bottom of the screen (back, menu, home, search) and a navigation trackball pointing device. It also has physical power and volume controls. However, most of your interaction with the smartphone will be through the 3.7 inch 480 x 800 OLED capacitive touchscreen. For information, this is the best mobile phone screen-display on the market today, blowing away the iPhone’s 480 x 320 display.

This Nexus One is also powered by the Snapdragon 1 GHz CPU, which is more than able to handle the Nexus One’s 3D graphics, multiple applications running in the background and heavy browser use simultaneously. Unlike previous Android phones, there is no lag or slowdown when you push the phone’s performance, and less of a need to kill applications to keep the device humming.

On the downside: all this device bling is an energy hog. The screen will self adjust brightness and Google is smart about turning down the CPU when it’s not being used (hibernate). However, I’ve found battery life to be woefully brief, even by iPhone standards. Officially the phone has up to 7 hours talk time, 250 hours standby, 5 hours of 3G Internet use, 7 hours of video playback and 20 hours of audio playback. However, unofficially, you can able to kill the fully charged battery with 1.5 hours of continuous gameplay (Robo Defense) on the full-brightness screen. Therefore, be prepared to keep this device near a charger at all times.

I’ve to admit that Android’s interface is much less intuitive than the iPhone’s. Much of the OS’s functionality is hidden—Android can do a lot, but unlike the iPhone it keeps many of its options stuffed in menu bars. As a result, the Nexus One asks new users to climb a steeper learning curve. You’ve got to poke around every program to find out how to do its most basic tasks. Even once you’ve learned the easy stuff, the OS is still a struggle—it takes several steps to do something on Android that you can do in one step on the iPhone.

Price & availability

An unlocked GSM version of the Nexus One that will work in most countries is $529. Google is also offering a subsidized version of the phone (also unlocked) through T-Mobile for $179. The service plan offered by Google is 500 minutes/unlimited SMS/unlimited data for $80/month. T-Mobile’s termination fee is $200, and some users might be tempted to buy the T-Mobile version and terminate immediately, paying just $379 for the unlocked phone. Google informs that users terminating too soon will be charged the full price of the phone, however. But even the T-Mobile version of the phone can be used overseas on trips by slipping in a different SIM.

Google will ship the unlocked version of the phone to customers in the U.S., U.K., Singapore and Hong Kong. In the Spring, they say they’ll add a CDMA version of the phone through Verizon, and set up a European store with a carrier plan via Vodafone.

U.S. users can also use the unlocked phone with AT&T, although the phone’s radio isn’t able to use AT&T’s 3G network.

HTC Google Nexus One specifications:

  • Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz CPU
  • Android OS v2.1 with kinetic scrolling & pinch zooming
  • Quad-band GSM & dual-band 3G support
  • 3.7″ 16M-colors capacitive AMOLED touchscreen of WVGA (480x 800 pixel) resolution
  • 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geo-tagging
  • 7.2 Mbps HSDPA & 2 Mbps HSUPA support
  • 512 MB RAM & 512 MB ROM
  • MicroSD slot, bundled with a 4GB card
  • Trackball navigation
  • Wi-Fi & GPS with A-GPS
  • Slim profile & some great build quality
  • D1 (720 x 480 pixels) video recording @ 24fps
  • Accelerometer & proximity sensor
  • MicroUSB port (charging) & stereo Bluetooth v2.1
  • Standard 3.5 mm audio jack

Main disadvantages:

  • No Flash support for the web browser (update is on the way)
  • No smart and voice dialing
  • No DivX and XviD video playback
  • Non hot-swappable memory card
  • The soft keys below the display are somewhat unresponsive
  • No FM radio
  • Somewhat clumsy camera interface and limited camera features
  • No dedicated camera shutter key

Other alternatives:

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