I have been using Nexus One for over a month now and it seems right time to do a
review. I did not want to review it soon, because as a smart phone it has too many functionalities and all those have to be tested thoroughly before giving a verdict. My main purpose was to fill the void between my McBook pro and mobile browser (iPod touch) during business travel. I planned to use this as replacement for a netbook and it seems N1 fits perfectly into it.
To start with hardware, the most striking feature of N1 is its beautiful screen. N1’s AMOLED touchscreen emits such beautiful colors that its a pleasure to watch videos and photographs. Unlike the iPhone screen, it gives much better contrast and blacks come out really well. One would expect phone to be heavy with a 3.7 inch screen but surprisingly HTC did a wonderful job. If one is transitioning from other smart phone they will feel the difference on how lighter phone this is. First thing that I noticed as soon as started my phone for first time was the snappiness, the reaction time between the action and command. It was brilliant and that is the result of 1 Ghz Snapdragon processor, which combined with 512 MB RAM makes phone very responsive.
At the end of screen we have four soft touch buttons, which come very handy for menu access, going back, reaching home screen and most importantly search functionality. These four buttons are tremendous leap for a multitouch screen phone. One might consider they are not needed when everything can be achieved with multitouch, but to experience the impact one has to use N1 and they will feel the difference. I believe Google took this idea from Palm Pre, but this is a brilliant addition to N1. Then at the bottom we have a trackball, which I do not use frequently. I wonder why would we need a trackball for such a device, might be some functionality but I don’t get it. The only use I have for trackball is its notification light.
Moving on to the Android OS, this is where Google shows its true strength. This phone is not as intuitive to use as iPhone, but by taking that away Google has provided such a wide set of functionality that every day one discovers new features. This OS is power packed with tweaks, shortcuts, and multiple ways of doing things that it takes few days to get used to the phone. But once a person is used to phone, its features look much more powerful then what iPhone provides. Android brings multitasking along with it and that adds a lot of complexity to the system, but Google overcame that with a brilliantly designed notification system. The way notification system is designed, my first reaction to it was, why don’t Microsoft and Apple make operating systems like that. Why have windows and all the complexity when things can be done in a much simpler way.
The phone comes up with a set of preloaded applications from Google, most notable are Voice Search, Google Goggles, Navigation, Amazon MP3 Store, Voice dialer, New and weather app and a browser. All of these apps are very well developed and I tested them in various scenarios and found them to be very useful. Navigation system is brilliantly designed and when first times one see Google maps changing to street view when we reach destination is amazing. Google has used its web services very well and combined a of them together to provide N1 users a perfect experience. Browsing apps also have been made very smooth and aesthetic by a roll down approach, rather then a card based approach as seen in most smartphones. Another good part about the N1 is, integration with Google services. One just has to provide his gmail id and everything is setup for him. Picasa albums are directly synced, Gtalk configured, contacts synced and phone is ready to go. Syncing contact has been revolutionized in N1 – Google takes contacts from Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and phone book and collates them together to provide all the information about the person. So lets say if I want to call X and I open the contact, I will not only get details about his phone number, email address but also his latest tweet, photograph etc. This just makes life so easy and one does not have to waste anytime for fixing contacts, removing duplicates etc.
Moving on to less used features. I rarely use the camera that comes with N1, its a very good 5 Megapixel camera but I have a bias. I do not like any other camera then a DSLR, I just want to have much more control over my settings. Browser – I do not know what browser it is, but I have not used it much. All the services/information I need are provided by apps from market place and direct search. One more complain I have from N1 is low ringtone. That is caused by the placement of the speaker on back side, if the phone is in cover, its very hard to hear the ringtone. One has to replace in built ringtones with a louder one.
Battery life, which is the main issue with all the smartphones is an issue with N1 too. But one can improve the battery life of phone easily. N1 provides a task manager where one can see how much battery an app is consuming and with that information one can kill the applications which are battery exhaustive. By following simple things, I have increased battery life from 1 day to almost 2 days.
Overall, I would give it very high rating. Its a smartphone with very progressive approach and frequent OS updates helps improve its performance. An open market place gives N1 tremendous strength. I get most of my updates/hacks about N1 from few people I listen to regularly. For hacks and increasing productivity on N1 I follow Gina Trapani and Leo Laporte, they give so many tips on This Week in Google that every times I listen to show I end up improving my phone. For applications I rely on Jolie O’Dell and her updates on Mashable.
