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Jan 10A latecomer Nexus One review.
I should preface this review with the following disclaimer: I have never owned an iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, Pre, or a smartphone of any kind. However, I am a nerd, and have used enough iPhones/Blackberrys/Droids to know what they’re like. Excelsior!
Note: the photo in this review has been stolen.
Bet you can't guess where this picture's from.
Design
The phone itself is pleasing enough, with a two-tone satin metallic plastic casing and curved design (now standard-issue on smartphones not named Droid). On the back, Google gets top billing–manufacturer HTC gets bumped below the fold. The phone itself is light, considering its guts: a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, AMOLED screen, camera, etc. etc. Storage capacity comes in the form of an SD card–4GB is provided, but it can handle up to 32. At the moment, apps can only be stored on the phone’s internal 512MB, but Google indicated they’re planning to allow SD card storage with a software update.
And that OLED screen. It really is a wondrous thing. It’s bright, crisp as can be, and puts the iPhone’s low-res display to shame. However, the default automatic brightness adjustment varies wildly, and most people will just end up setting it manually (which can be done easily with the power saver widget).
The four buttons carry over from the Droid, which seems to indicate el Goog wants a standard user interface for Android devices. Just below that, there’s a Blackberry-style trackball, which has no function except to glow white when something happens. I honestly have no idea why it exists. Maybe it’s for those golf “long drive” bar games where you roll a wheel down and up to swing. In another odd choice, the volume rocker is located on the left side of the phone, exactly where the phone naturally rests on your hand in landscape mode.
The speaker is located on the phone’s back, and is loud enough, if not particularly aurally satisfying. Unfortunately, this means that while on speakerphone, sound is projected away from you, which is an odd choice. Call quality is nothing to write home about, but T-Mobile’s network has been reliable, at least in DC and Baltimore (You know…over two days. We’ll see if it suffers during high-traffic periods).
Being the nerd I am, I haven’t yet had a full “representative day” free from excessive app downloads, experimenting, and…well, playing. However, other gadget hounds have said that battery life is about comparable with the iPhone–you’ll get through a day with moderate use, but you’d better have a charger or extra battery for those days of constant use.
Also, a Droid-style car-mount kit is in the works.
Android 2.1
First, anyone expecting the “real Android” operating system is going to be disappointed; it’s more or less the 2.0 that came with the Droid, with some cosmetic tweaks. However, the N1′s extra power is put to good use. There are five home screens now, and you can add things other than apps–you can add widgets, bookmarks, folders, or frequently-used contacts. The new live wallpapers are superfluous, as is the conveyor belt-style “all apps” screen, but Google is finally paying attention to the skin-deep beauty that can move expensive gadgets, and it shows. It’s not iPhone-slick, but Android’s definitely light-years ahead of where it was on the G1. One thing that Goog hasn’t done is improve phone security: drawing a pattern is an incredibly dumb way to lock a phone, and is no substitute for a numeric passcode, especially when it’s the only barrier safeguarding so much of your personal information. Oh, and there’s still no multitouch, despite the fact it’s supported by the hardware.
I don’t really have much of an opinion on the physical keyboard debate. After a few days of tapping out messages on the N1′s screen keyboard, I’m not breaking records, but I hated the Droid’s off-center, feedback-free keyboard, and I like having the extra screen space that a dedicated Blackberry-style keypad takes up. Landscape mode is much easier to use for those of us with fat, uncoordinated thumbs.
Google’s hoping that their voice recognition software can make up for any irritation caused by the keyboard. You can use it in place of any text field, in addition to now-standard voice-dialing, and my initial results have been decent (although I’m invariably alone when I use it, because saying “Sushi sounds good period do you want to see if Katy wants to go question mark” in public is weird, and kind of defeats the point of texting). Google’s Voice service is also included, which is good for those of us who hate voicemail with a burning passion.
The camera is much better than the Droid’s much-maligned (and confusingly-fixed) shutter, and is entirely passable. It’s probably good enough to do away with your point-and-shoot, if you’re willing to risk dropping your $500 phone in your beer.
Applications and Android Market
Switching between apps is fast and painless (that 1GHz processor really does make the phone fly), and holding down the “home” button lets you quick-hop between recently-used apps–an alt+tab substitute that multitaskers will appreciate.
As far as the applications themselves… as you’d expect, they’re a mixed bag in terms of usability, usefulness, aesthetics, and reliability. And although it’s 10,000 apps strong, the Android Market lacks any sort of useful functions like sorting by ratings or price (a common search like “RSS reader” produces too many results to sift through, in no particular order), making it exceedingly difficult to find good apps without reading about them somewhere else. Besides multitouch, apps are the only advantage Apple has in the smartphone arena, but it’s a big one. Everything from Amazon to WordPress has an app–NASA even built a custom sensor package for the thing–and they’re nearly always equivalent or superior to their Android counterparts, if one even exists.
However, it’s worth noting that Google has put out three neat apps exclusive to Android in the last few months: Maps Navigation, which caused Garmin and TomTom’s stock prices to fall off a cliff; Goggles, which uses your photographs of landmarks to tell you about them; and Sky Map, which uses your location and compass to help you find constellations (an Android version of Google Earth, complete with voice recognition, is in the works). Google is still a software company, and it’s impossible to imagine they won’t keep upping their game with all sorts of mind-blowing (if not necessarily useful) apps. I also expect them to eventually fix the Android Market, although the continued lack of multitouch doesn’t exactly fill me with hope.
The Bottom Line
One often-overlooked part about smartphones is their price. Nearly all carriers subsidize the cost of their phones by locking you into a two-year contract, then bumping their plan prices. Take a look at the cheapest options for the iPhone, Droid and Nexus One:
- iPhone 3GS 16GB: $200 initial purchase (+ tax) + ~$95/mo. for 24 mos. = $2480. Call it $2500. That includes 450 minutes, 1500 text/picture messages, and data.
- Droid on Verizon: $200 initial purchase (+ tax) + ~$95/mo. for 24 mos. = $2480 again. $2500 for 450 minutes, 1500 texts (plus unlimited to other Verizon customers), and data.
- N1, with T-Mobile subsidy: $180 initial purchase (+ tax) + ~$90/mo. for 24 mos. = $2340. Figure $2350 with 500 minutes, unlimited texts and data.
- N1, unsubsidized by T-Mobile: $530 initial purchase (+$30 tax in D.C.) + $67/mo. with no contract = $2168 over a full 2yrs. for 500 minutes, unlimited texts and data.
Not only is the last option the best choice over a two-year span (and the longer you keep your phone, the better the deal gets), it becomes exponentially better if you need to replace your phone–if your iPhone/Droid gets lost or stolen, you’re still on the hook for the contract, which means you have to either cancel your contract (and pay ever-increasing early termination fees) and switch carriers, or buy the now-unsubsidized handset–which will set you back around $600.
And, you know… if something better comes out, you’re set too.
Wrapup
I was honestly a little concerned after reading Engadget’s less-than-glowing review of the Nexus One, especially given that you can’t actually use the phone before you buy it–it’s shipped sight unseen directly from Google. However, despite some minor complaints, I legitimately like the phone. I don’t really want to play music or games on a phone (though learning of an Android NES emulator made me giddy). The N1 hits (almost) all my nerd sensitivities: an open-source OS, a contract-free option, and not being an iPhone (they’re almost Ugg-level ubiquitous at this point). For the Farmville lovers who really just want a Game Boy with a phone attached, the iPhone is probably a better choice, but a high-powered, multimedia-friendly mini-computer sounds tailor-made for me.
If some enterprising coder would just add multitouch…
Tagged: apple apple apple, nerdiness, technology, toys, web