If you’ve read These are the Droids lately, you’ll know that I recently ditched my iPhone 3G, and I got my Nexus One. It took a little getting used to, but me and the Nexus have gotten to be really good friends. By now, you’ve probably read some other Nexus One reviews; it’s been out for a couple of months on T-Mobile already. So our review will focus on some of the things you might not have read in those other reviews. Things I, for one, didn’t know going into it. This first half of my review will focus on some of the day-to-day observations I’ve encountered in using it, and will feature a perspective of switching to the Nexus One from a Dumbphone, which I did. Closely following it will be the other half, which will come from a 2-Year iPhone user’s perspective.
Hardware
The Nexus One is a very fine piece of hardware. The specs have been well publicized; 1GHz Snapdragon, backlit soft buttons, 512MB RAM, volume controls, 5MP dual-flash camera, a track ball, active noise cancellation, a battery, 3.7” 800×480 AMOLED screen, speakerphone; you know, the usual. But that doesn’t replace actually being able to hold it. It’s a premium piece of kit, to be sure. It feels expensive, solid, and refined. It’s one of the nicest put-together phones I’ve ever used. And after a few weeks of day-to-day use, it still feels good and satisfying in my hand.
The fit and finish of the phone I received was second to none. It has the satisfying weight of a quality piece of hardware, and it’s barely taller, thinner, and less wide than an iPhone, thanks to a much smaller bezel around the screen. Speaking of which, the 0.2″ of screen real estate that you gain over an iPhone is not that noticeable.
What is noticeable, is how truly beautiful the AMOLED screen is. It’s stunning. It’s also capable of almost-painful brightness levels. Some have complained that the colors are over-saturated, however, they don’t seem fake at all to me. However, in direct or shaded sunlight, it becomes very difficult to see the screen. When the brightness is set to full, it’s visible, but not impressive.
The actual materials that make up the phone are premium: The face is dominated by smooth glass, and the back is made of the same soft-touch-yet-hard Teflon coated plastic case as you’ll find on the original, Euro-release Hero. The back detaches with a firm click, and doesn’t move around when it’s snapped in place.
One nice detail is the quality that Google puts into the packaging of the phone. The box, first of all, was surprisingly heavy. It seems trivial, but when I picked it up, I wondered how many phones were in there. It’s a largish box, and the presentation of unwrapping it really befits the fact that you might have spent over $500 on the phone (I did). Overall, the packaging looks like something you’d be proud to heft from a retail shelf somewhere.
Inside the box, Google’s given you all the accessories you need to get started: A wall charger, a USB cable, a headset (with music skip and pause controls), and even a neoprene-and-microfiber case that fits the phone exactly. This is a thoughtful addition, because rarely do you get a case and screen protector on the first day. I ordered my accessories first, so they arrived the day after the phone. But it was still nice to have something to carry it around in that first day, when, if you’re like me, you carry it with equal parts awe and paranoia of breaking it.
Dumbphone Refugee’s Perspective
After my well-documented week of dumphonery, it was a relief to go back to a smartphone. The Nexus One definitely fits the bill, and took me no time at all to get the hang of. It wasn’t my first time using Android, but I think even for someone who is new to a smartphone it would be fairly simple to use. An obvious perk of the Nexus One was speed. Everything on the phone is as snappy, or even quicker, than dumbphones I’ve used. Navigating the phone is lightning fast and very easy to grasp.
Making phone calls on a dumbphone is easy. That’s mostly all the phone does. On some smartphones, actual call-making is somewhat harder or less intuitive than on a dumbphone. However, with the Nexus One, you can call a person with as few as one tap, or, at most, 4 taps and one swipe. And each screen is snappy, even though your contacts are being synced to the cloud, and you may have several apps open.
With text messaging, the Nexus One offers an on-screen QWERTY keyboard and threaded SMS, which you might take for granted coming from another smartphone, but when you’ve spent a week on, say, a Motorola Z3, you’ll want to dance in the street. SMS alerts don’t interrupting your typing, and if a message comes in while you’re still typing, you don’t have to cancel the message to see what they said. This is nice if the person you’re texting is a speed demon, and their messages come in faster than yours go out.
Of course, when you sign into your Google Account on the Nexus One, you’re automatically connected and synced to an online calendar and one of the most popular mail services in the world. You’re also given access to the invitation-only Google Voice service, which gives you cheap, if not free international calling, customized voicemail outgoing messages for different groups of contacts, and text transcriptions of those voicemails.
Let me repeat that. You can set different outgoing messages for different people. Currently I’m waiting for my mom to leave me a message, because when she calls, my phone will tell her “Hey mom, I’ll call you back soon, I promise.”
Google Voice, as I mentioned translates your messages into text. It does a pretty good job, too! It’s lead to some pretty funny typos, though. “Hey Ryan, it’s Greg over at GoodYear, it’s about 20 to 6″ came through as “Hey Ryan screwed over at Goodyear, it’s about 26.” Humor aside, it’s very useful, and your voicemails are accessible and managable from the web.
Not only does Android Market have plenty of apps and games to keep you occupied, the browsing experience is good enough to occupy your idle time. Then there’s the interface customization. Playing with widgets, wallpapers, and home screens is another fun pastime. On the third day of Nexus One ownership, I ended up in a doctor’s office waiting room for 45 minutes. I was browsing the web, shopping the Market, and playing Homerun Battle 3D, and honestly had no idea how long it was. It’s the boredom killer!
What do you want for dinner, question mark
I thought the voice text entry of Android 2.1 as implemented on the Nexus One deserved its own section. As far as I’m aware, Android has a serious edge here. Google’s cloud-based voice recognition is one of the most un-glamorous yet amazing features of the phone.
When you are entering text, just hit the microphone button on the keyboard, or next to the text field, and speak your text. it gets sent to Google, and text gets spit out onto your phone. Very cool, and it works extremely well for the most part. What’s interesting is that it works better in certain contexts than in others. When text-messaging, it’s a little more prone to small errors, especially if you aren’t holding the phone right up to your mouth. In the context of doing a Google search from the search bar, it works better, but it works best in Google Maps. I don’t know if it’s a virtue of the fact that you say different things in each instance or what, but every single time I search by voice for something on maps, it comes back with the exact right thing.
Even though it’s not perfect, voice texting is a godsend. You simply speak what you want to say, and it’s remarkably quick and accurate. You can even say punctuation. You can actually text while driving without killing yourself. Granted, you should still exercise caution reading the transcriptions and replies.
There’s also a voice dialer, which can be used to dial people or issue other commands, as with the iPhone 3GS. However, with the iPhone, that’s where the voice command part stops. With Android and the Nexus One, you can enter text with your voice anywhere in the phone’s interface. If you can see the keyboard, you can use Voice command.
Maps & Google Navigation
Another app/feature that deserves its own section is Google Navigation. When it comes to maps, you’d expect Android 2.1 to be the best experience for using Google Maps. Android’s Maps app does provide access to the most map features of any device I’ve encountered, however, in some ways it’s not the best experience. I find the interface on the iPhone’s Google Maps client to be just a little more refined.
Sure, pinch-to-zoom is there and there’s an overlaid button to zoom to your current location, but that’s about it for the visible interface. There’s no search bar at the top. You hit the search soft button to search in maps. While this is fine, and I’ve gotten used to it, hitting the search button takes you to a full-screen search menu, which doesn’t really look like you’re still in Maps. Any number of things could be done to improve this, such as making the search screen’s background translucent, so you can see the map in the background, or just having an on-screen search bar.
Another thing I felt could be improved in the maps is rotation. I would like the map to rotate to match the direction I’m pointing. True, the little blue “current location” arrow points in the direction you’re facing, but I’d like the option to have it auto-orient. If you’ve ever used an iPhone 3G to navigate while on foot in an unfamiliar, overcast city, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Trust me, just try and figure out if you should go right or left at this crosswalk to get across 12 lanes of traffic to Quincy Market in Boston in December . . . you’ll be swearing like a sailor in no time.
The bottom line is, Maps needs some settings we can control, like Map rotation, and maybe just a little more on-screen interface.
That said, the Maps version 4.1.1 more than makes up for its shortcomings by bringing you Google Navigation, a.k.a. the thing that makes you not need your Garmin anymore.
I’ve used the Navigation several times now, and I can tell you, it’s worked flawlessly every time. It uses a text-to-speech function to read off the directions, and it’s extremely loud and understandable. The 3D interface is smooth and updates much more accurately and quicker than any GPS unit I’ve used, though I’m sure some of the more expensive newer models are quick, I doubt they’re this smooth. The GPS’s actual directions are clearer than my Garmin 750, for example. When navigating the clover-leaf at the intersection of I-95, State Road 84, and I-595 in Fort Lauderdale, for example, the Nexus gave me more specific directions like “go right at the fork for State Road 84″, in a situation where one exit ramp forks several times, where the Garmin just assumed I would know where to go on that one.
If you’re like me, and don’t have the car kit just yet (and I’m not sure I want to get it, I have a case on my N1), you won’t have the phone visible. To save battery, I hit the lock button while it’s navigating for me. While in Navigation mode, locking the screen only turns off the screen. When you hit the lock button again, it goes right back to the navigation, and jumps to your new location.
I haven’t yet been able to get the street view navigation to work, mostly because when I’m using the Navigation function, I don’t have time to fiddle with the phone. I’m sure it’s just as impressive.
Honestly, I could see only ever using my Garmin when I’m sure I’m traveling to a place where I know I won’t have cell service, but I would still try the Nexus One first.
“Well THAT’s Cool.”
The more I use the Nexus One, the more things I find that make your life much easier. For example, one of my wife’s questions about Android in general was, “Okay, from wherever you are, how long and how many steps does it take to make a phone call?” In other words, “can I make a call faster than I can with the iPhone?”
On the iPhone, you can access your favorite numbers by double-tapping the home button. However, on the iPhone 3G, we were putting up with noticeable and annoying lag when opening the phone app. Not only does the phone app launch instantly on the Nexus, but Android gives you the option of adding an icon to your home screen to call a number with one touch. There are external apps that will do this on the iPhone, but honestly, including it in the core OS is very nice.
Another “eureka!” moment happens every time I use a widget. When I open my Nexus One, I’m greeted with my next 4 to-do items, my next 3 calendar appointments, and an analog clock. I’m still looking for one that will show me my most recent Gmail’s, and when I find it, I’ll be in widget nirvana. Actually, I’m hoping that Slidescreen comes out with a widget view. This, to me, is one of the key definitions of a smartphone; it has to keep you organized, has to present you with relevant information at the swipe of a finger.
The wallpaper on the Nexus One is very subtly, very very cool. You set the wallpaper to a standard-aspect picture, and as you scroll through the 5 home screens, the wallpaper subtly scrolls along with the icons. The live wallpaper’s are cool, but I was paranoid that they were stealing system resources, so I went with the tres-cool static wallpaper panorama.
Barcode scanning is something that you can apparently do with the iPhone 3GS, but for me, it’s a new feature. And ShopSavvy’s slickness is really hard to beat. Then there’s Pocket Auctions, which searches eBay by barcode. It’s truly amazing, and really makes you feel like you have an amazing computer in your pocket. Google Goggles still has a LONG way to go, it hasn’t recognized anything (other than barcodes) that I’ve tried with it.
“Well that’s stupid.”
There are a few gripes that I’ve had, and some things I’ll have to work around. The most serious of these are the soft-buttons at the bottom of the screen. When I first got the phone, I kept hitting Home instead of spacebar. I was very concerned that I would keep hitting them while typing, and not having them be physical buttons seems a little silly. However, the soft buttons require a more deliberate press than the on-screen keyboard, and by day 4, I didn’t hit them anymore. Still, the HTC Desire definitely has the better design here.
I think not including the optical trackball from the HTC Desire et al is another faux-pas on Google’s part, too. At first, I didn’t use the trackball very much, and I wasn’t sure it would ever grow on me. Now, I’m using it much more, and it works very well. However, it sticks out quite a bit, and I’m very much worried that it will get dust in it and stop working well. Fortunately, Android 2.1′s touch interface is just about perfect, and you don’t HAVE to use it. It does prove to be very useful when you need to scroll in a text field to fix a typo.
To wake the phone, you must use the button along the top, none of the other buttons, including the ball, will wake it. I understand why this is; it’s because the ball would continually wake and sleep your phone in your pocket, because it sticks out (see above). It’s not annoying once you get used to it, but it’s not super intuitive coming from the iPhone, where the main only button woke it up. I’d also like the Home button to be assignable to a press-and-hold on the trackball. I don’t think this is too much to ask, and it would really be ergonomic and handy.
And one last gripe. I haven’t found the ambient light sensor for the Nexus One yet, but I get the feeling I’m shading it with my case, or hand, or something. On Auto Brightness, it never seems to get bright enough outside, and it keeps fluctuating inside. It’s a known issue, so hopefully it will be fixed in the future.
Summary
In December 2006, rumors of a Google Phone started to come up. About a month later, Apple set the world on its heels with the iPhone. But ever since those first rumors, I’ve been waiting for The GooglePhone. When the G1 came out, it (And Android 1.0) had some serious drawbacks. Now, 3 years later, Google’s services and Operating System have matured, and the Nexus One represents one of the best combinations of hardware, software, and use of the Internet currently available.
The Nexus One is the Droid I’ve been looking for, for me, it’s THE Google Phone.
But it’s not the only one . . .
Soon, the Nexus One will be available from every major carrier in the United States. It’s available now for customers of AT&T and T-Mobile. In Europe, the Nexus One’s slightly hotter cousin, the HTC Desire, is your best bet right now. You’ll get more RAM, Sense, the optical trackpad, and the hard buttons for home, back, search, and menu. If you’re waiting until the summer, you might see the Desire in the US, and you will see the Evo on Sprint here.
I’m a firm believer in choosing your cell carrier based on price, features, and coverage in your area. In my area, AT&T 3G has great coverage, reception, and all of my family is on AT&T. On top of this, I can call any AT&T mobile and landline without incurring any minutes. Plus, my wife is an iPhone user for the time being. For anyone who is on AT&T and wants to stay there, buy the Nexus One. AT&T has crippled the Backflip, and has failed to deliver any one of the other four Android phones it has promised. The HTC Desire may eventually make an appearance, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
If you’re on T-Mobile, buy the Nexus One. It easily bests every other Android phone they offer.
If you’re on Sprint, you will have to wait for Nexus One availability, and by the time it is available, you’ll probably have to choose between it and the Evo. If you live in a 4G city, and like a bigger screen, go with the Evo.
If you’re on Verizon, don’t even bother with the Nexus One. I love it, but there’s no point in waiting: the HTC Incredible has better multi-touch, the optical trackpad, an 8MP camera, 8GB of internal storage, and HTC Sense.
Even in competition with other large-screened, high-hertz Droids, there is one reason to choose the Nexus One, and that’s updates. As we’ve seen with the Droid, updates don’t always come as easily or quickly as they should. After all, the Droid wasn’t running anything but vanilla, stock Android 2.0. With the Nexus One, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be the first one to be blessed with any future Android updates. Speaking of updates, what of life beyond Android 2.1?
Epilogue: Future-Proofing the Nexus One
In today’s smartphone market, there’s always something better just around the corner. There’s always something with a bigger screen, faster processor, more memory, more whatever, just around the corner.
The Nexus One runs Android 2.1 extremely fast, and handles several running applications like a champ. It’s plenty of phone for right now. Even as it is, the Nexus will likely run Froyo and Gingerbread Android like a champ. But it has something up its sleeve to make it even more future-proof. Right now, the Nexus One comes with only one EBI memory bank active. This might save battery life, or it might just be an ace-in-the-hole, who knows.
Cyanogen’s Nexus One ROM opens up the second bank, giving you 200MB more memory. It’s likely not necessary right now, but in the future, more demanding apps might necessitate it
But what’s really encouraging about the extra 200MB of RAM is that Google could enable all or part it at any time with a future update. So you won’t really need to root and mod your Nexus One to take advantage of the the Nexus One’s untapped potential.
All in all, I’m extremely satisfied with my purchase, I highly recommend the Nexus One, and I look forward to using it for a good long while.
