Google Nexus One The flourishing Android operating system has appeared on phones made by Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG and HTC. Now Google has launched its own handset, though it’s actually made by HTC, which has made the bulk of Android handsets so far. Google Nexus One Nexus One: hardware by HTC, software by Google The thing about …
The million dollar question is when will it be avaialble to buy subsidised on a Vodafone contract, and when it does will it still be as current. It's already two months since the sim free and it's expected to appear on Vodafone next month and three months is long time in the mobile world.
The Desire, Legend HD2 and Passion and all the other HTC phones are coming through and are every bit as capable as this but without the Google branding.
And I really hope that VF don't "brand" it, and make it worse than the stock firmware by putting "Live" buttons everywhere. This is a Internet ready SmartPhone, I don't need a link to the Vodafone WAP portal on every screen hard coded into the firmware.
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that about sums it up really,
oh and as for the issue with apps, I've had a hero since uk launch and only once had an issue finding an app to do what I needed, and even then went online to http://www.cyrket.com/ and found the network ftp app.
also most of the "only on iPhone" apps on the ads are available in one form or another for Android, nothing like truth in advertising, if only it were the BBC doing it so people would complain en masse :-)
Well by the looks of things, emulation happened a while ago and now Google/HTC have overtaken at least on specs and openness.
If you can multi-task that's great, can anyone tell me how many web-pages its possible to have open simultaneously, I am famed for firefox on the PC telling me when close it "you are about to close 80 tabs" so a phone that can at least cope with 2 open at once would be great!
t
Hi mortowsic, there is no duty on the device itself as its classed as a telecommunicatinos device... of course you'll have to pay VAT on it though but still it worked out at less than £400 all in. Not sure if thats the case now with the exchange rate.
I only buy sim free these days as my sim monthly tariff is saving me ~£40pm from what I was paying. Therefore I'll save £80 in one year, have the handset I want without any branding and the freedom to upgrade (or not) when I want.... For me it works out the best way.
A pretty good and accurate review, I got my N1 the week after release.
If you press and hold the shutter button in the camera app and wait for the edges to go green you'll get the best focus shot.
I was impressed with battery life on it, it'll go a full 7 hours playing music, plus an hour of reading El'Reg on lunch, and still have around 40% charge. But it does need charging daily if your going to be using it as it's intended.
The suggested price of £354 is unachievable, you've forgotten about VAT. :-)
For those thinking of importing one, if you get it without the UK charger you're looking at £410 total. VAT is £60ish, DHL charge £1.25 for admin paying it. There is only import duty if you get the UK charger (you still get a US charger in the box.)
If you laugh in the face of voiding your warranty, the N1 doesn't need any dodgy hacks/exploits to unlock the bootloader to install a custom version of Android, it's as simple as plugging it in and typing 'fastboot oem unlock'.
My understand is that you don't pay import duty on mobile communications equipment, but you do accessories. Because the US charger is in the N1 box, it's part of the mobile communications equipment, but the UK charger is packaged separately, therefore an accessory and eligible for import duty.
However, people are saying they haven't been charged this, so I'm not sure now.
As for the VAT, DHL will send you an invoice after delivery. Mine came approximately 2 weeks later.
First of all, despite it limitations I think the iPhone is a superb bit of hardware but was curious about Android and picked up an Nexus last month. I have been very impressed with this phone. The screen is excellent, multitasking is well implemented and I love getting previews of text messages and google chats in the status bar even while performing other tasks. The android market has been had an issue of being a litte weak compared to the Apple App Store, particularly on the game side of things, but the number of quality titles appearing has noticibly improved even over the last month as the installed Android user base has rocketed. It's great to finally have a quality alternative to the iPhone - WinMo and Symbian never did it for me.
I ordered one from the states as soon as I could. Its a fantastic device and I've been very happy with it. Despite what the reviewer says, there are some good and useful apps out there for it, and some fiendishly addictive games.
My only annoyance is the lack of an EQ in the music player.
Does anyone know?
If it does Multitouch, is it Capacitative or resisitive touchscreen?
Does it have accelerometer and Compass?
Voice guidance maps?(for free)
Whats the battery size ? (mAh). How much does the spare one cost?
3G capable, video calling, any front camera?
Need more specifics pl EL reg ought to do better here.
Paris, cos her specs are well known.
If it does Multitouch, is it Capacitative or resisitive touchscreen? Multitouch, but not enabled- capacitive screen
Does it have accelerometer and Compass? Yes (3 axis) and yes (digital)
Voice guidance maps?(for free) Not that I am aware of
Whats the battery size ? (mAh). How much does the spare one cost? Battery is 1400mAH, spare is $25
3G capable, video calling, any front camera? 3G capable no front camera and no video calling
Headstone- cos I shouldn't have to do the leg work reg...
It seems remiss to review the Nexus One without mentioning that the HTC Desire is out on all the networks in a couple of weeks time, and it's virtually the same device.
The N1's advantages are that it's tri-band (i.e. you can use it in both the US and Europe) and it has the extra mic on the front for active noise cancellation. The Desire, on the other hand, has the HTC Sense interface on top of Android, has slightly more RAM and includes an 8GB SD card instead of the N1's 4GB. HTC have also gone with an optical sensor instead of the trackball, and physical buttons instead of the capacitative ones.
Both great phones, and not much to choose between them really, but for those who are after a contract or don't want to deal with the potential customer service issues of ordering a device like this from overseas, the Desire is worth considering.
No mention of the ease of unlocking the bootloader, installing mods (eg cyanogen), the awesome developer tools (adb!), no hotswaping SD cards, the much trumpeted pinch to zoom (who cares anyway?), the aweful headphones provided with it (par for the cause) and not (unsurprisingly) of the possibility of native/chroot debian armel on the device. From a techie website it does read like a review from the back of the metro. No meat. (Also after you've had it a while and arent playing with it every day - with the right settings you can squeeze 2.5 days out of the battery.
I got a Nexus shortly after launch, casting aside my irritatingly sluggish iPhone 3G...
Compared to the iPhone, I like;
- network unlocked,
- active widget things e.g. I have an active tube status app on the home screen,
- visual msg indicator (the glowing ball thing),
- able to link to multiple exchange servers,
- apps aren't sandboxed, so lots of system tweaks are available,
- over the air OS updates,
- camera is relatively good,
- rarely drops calls, even on 02,
- I live in London and it's not a Blackberry or an iPhone.
Don't like;
- no hardware switch for muting,
- WiFi is flaky and doesn't reliably switch from 3G to Wifi when available (like the iPhone does),
- No Exchange calendars sync as standard,
- PC connectivity is a ridiculous 20th century process requiring the user to unmount/mount the SD card,
- too easy to save or discard new e-mails when 'typing' on the screen,
- for a Google badged phone, the on-phone search app is rubbish and I badly miss Spotlight's ability to search mail, contacts etc.
You pays your money...
Take the iPhone, the Apple parts are: scrolling like a games console (underdamped simple harmonic motion), coverflow, a browser built from open source, various open source stuff.
Plus Apps, plus Google stuff (maps, search, app, youtube etc.)
All the apps will be ported because their interfaces to the iPhone are minimal so quick to port and be better for the faster processor. All the Google apps will likely run better on the Android than the iPhone because Google designed both. The game-like scrolling is already there (but I think Google set the damping to 'optimal'. Pragmatism over fun).
So what do Apple bring to the game that is special to them? Nothing, and the iPad won't save them
Here take the iPad as an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDNVAgxOIew
At 3:22 the guy is holding an iPad on his lap watching a video and the commentator is telling us how natural it is to watch a video that way. The clip is fake, the hand is a fixed photo, it's terrible to bow your head for 2 hours, and nobody is going to hold the screen for that long up vertically.
At 2:35 you see him touch type with both hands, the iPad on his legs and his legs pressed together to form a makeshift table. Watch closely. His legs are flat to stop the smooth table slipping, yet in the next shot he holds it from slipping with one hand and his legs are upright. (Actually I suspect he had a platform between his legs it was resting on to steady it for the photo shoot). i.e. they say one thing, but the reality of the photo tells another.
And thus there is a departure between how Apple with the world was, and how the world really is. They really screwed up with that patent thing, stupid.
Another piece of unwarranted Apple bashing.
You can't compare a phone with an iPad anyway - it would be like me comparing a kids noddy car with an ocean superliner and trying to draw a sensible conclusion about which is most useful. So take your iPad bashing and cram it into your lowest puckered orifice, no-one's interested.
"And thus there is a departure between how Apple with the world was, and how the world really is. "
Gosh, that will explain why the iPhone is such a flop in the real world. How many have Apple sold, about 150 units so far? And no wonder!
Thanks for pointing this out, you have done the real world a great favour.
"There’s little to dislike with the Nexus One. To wake the screen from sleep, you have to press the power button rather than the trackball, which would be more convenient. "
I am certain that is by design to prevent the Android awakening by accident in your pocket and drain your battery.
In general it's a nice phone, but this review reads a bit too positive. There are a number of downsides to the phone:
- The screen is impossible to see in direct sunlight, no matter how you hold it or try to shield it with your hand, you won' be able to make out anything (it just looks completely blank), so can't make phone calls, look at the map, etc.
- It doesn't do smooth scrolling, compared to Apple's products, the browser is quite jerky.
- The phone's software is temperamental. When it works, great but I've known it to lock up, incorrectly interpreting my finger actions, etc. 3g is hit and miss.
- No Google Navigation in the UK, so you don't really get to use the GPS to it's maximum potential.
- No multiple Google talk accounts, so if you different accounts at work and at home, you're stuffed.
- Soft keys are unresponsive if don't know the exact right place to press them. Even then it can be hit and miss at times.
@AC 09:21 (or anyone else who's used an N1)
If you've used a G1 with it's physical keyboard how does the N1's on-screen keyboard compare for writing long texts, etc.? I'm wondering about accuracy, speed, and how annoying you find the loss of screen real-estate (to a picture of a keyboard).
It looks lovely, but I'm torn between the N1 now (or very soon) and waiting for an N1-alike with a real honest-to-goodness keyboard attached.
The shame is that if Google hadn't crippled the G1 from birth (with it's too limited flash space and laughable battery life) and ignored it starting with the Android 2.0 round of updates I'd have no reason to upgrade from the G1 I love.
But maybe that's the point...?
The source code to the OS is available and there are many alternate versions around if you don't like the stock one (I run cyanogen's version). Only the google apps themselves (maps, gmail, etc.) are in binary form.
I can get over 2 days battery life, but generally charge every day. 3G is excellent and always has been.. the problems reported only seemed to affect the US and have been fixed for ages anyway.
Of course it multitasks.. This is the 21st century..
Also working ipv6 out of the box (over wifi anyway, as no mobile phone providers I know of give you an ipv6 address).
To the earlier poster: When's it available in the UK? It is, and has been from day one, you just need to buy it without the true cost hidden in the airtime agreement. I'm in the UK, running it on O2 pay and go.
As for a lack of apps -- I don't understand that. What's missing? It's not how many apps there are in the store, it's what's available that matters. If there _are_ huge gaps in what's available then please let me know as I've been looking (tempted to do some Android development as I have for the Psion platform in the past) -- but I can't find anything missing!
Mark
One advantage I find with this phone is that it's completely stand-alone, you don't need any software at all on your computer for day to day usage. Even upgrading the firmware can be done entirely on the phone itself.
By using web based apps, like facebook and google mail/talk, everything is just automatically sync'd with what you see on your computer.
It does work best if you use a google account to sync everything up. Also, the failover mode is awesome, especially if you allow google to backup everything - if you reset your phone, or get a replacement, everything is re-installed and restored automatically on the handset once you log back in to your google account. (SD card contents may be the exception here).
One downside I've found is that the touch screen can be slow: you can't play musical instruments like drums or keyboard on this phone and have any rythym - even tho the apps exist to let you. And typing can be a problem as it occasionally chooses keys completely unrelated to where you pressed. This isn't always a problem, my phone tends to go through spurts of this.
All in all, an excellent attempt, and the first gadget I actually use on a daily basis for ages.
"And typing can be a problem as it occasionally chooses keys completely unrelated to where you pressed."
I find this happens if I am accidentally touching the screen elsewhere (usually with my hand I am holding it with), then when you touch to type it kinda averages them out. As it can detect mutli touch they should be able to fix this
There is no lack of apps (certainly no lack of essential and decent ones) on the Android Marketplace, that's the last myth the iTards have left.
The bottom line, is you can get all the good apps.
ebay, Facebook, Twitter, Shazam, Google Shopper and ShopSavvy, Skype etc and almost all the good iPhone games.
The difference is there is nowhere the amount of crud (the dumb stuff like the iFart and crap liek that)
The best bit, is there is no lockdown on Apps that Apple don't like. You can install APK files locally even if it's not on the marketplace...
"The difference is there is nowhere the amount of crud (the dumb stuff like the iFart and crap liek that)" - Give it time, Android hasn't had the same level of maturity that the iPhone OS has. With the 2.x release and now the Nexus I fully expect a flood of pull my finger apps to appear in double-quick time...
You're completely wrong about the games. For that one segment of the audience, the iPhone is a much better buy. See, for example, Street Fighter 4, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Driver or Rayman 2. Major mobile games companies like Gameloft (who licence a lot of the 90s properties for iPhone ports — they're responsible for Driver and Rayman at least) were scaling back their Android involvement at least as recently as November (source: http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/44758-gameloft-chooses-iphone-over-android).
You're right about all the other categories of app though. I guess maybe it's just that supporting multiple device configurations is harder for games, which puts Android into an artificially worse position than mere OS market penetration would suggest?
So you seriously expect a technology site like the Reg or Trusted to flash the ROM of a review handset just to see if Cynogen works on it? Get a grip man, that is what the likes of XDA Forums are for.
And three posts on the one review? You must be scintillating company at dinner parties.
being an early adopter to android (a mistake I think) I've been waiting for some time for a positive spin, the platform and what it has to offer is so so close to being perfect. But it's still not there yet, and I don't think that this handset is what is going to make it happen. As correctly stated, it's the OS and how you add to it that really makes android glow and until we start to see some more 2.1 releases that aren't unstable colab's I wouldn't endorse the phones.
As someone else who brought this from google.com/phone to the UK (without regional charger - you instead get a US charger - a shaving adapter plug works fine as the charger supports our voltage, and saved me paying duty) - yes, you will get charged around £60 in VAT (mine was just under £60), but this isn't charged by Google - it's sent separately as an invoice by DHL around a week after delivery.
Maybe/hopefully, when Vodafone bring out support for the subsidised version, you'll be able to have a unlocked version shipped from within the UK, avoiding VAT and duty.
... the duty will be bundled into the handset price and then VAT will be added in the usual way. I finally caved and ordered one online yesterday. Vodaphone won't be selling unlocked handsets (I have an iPhone on O2 so a locked phone is no use to me) and I'm expecting, like all US-origin goods, that there will be a small but significant mark-up to cover currency fluctuations. About the only benefit of waiting for a UK launch will be that you get a mains charger with a UK plug on it, but you can charge from any USB port and (I imagine) an Apple iPod/iPhone charger will work just as well...
...and they can't get the home screens transition scroll at full frame rate?? Same for the main menu and multiple other bits. I own one of those and I'm quite disappointed in both the fact that those engineers can't get extremely powerful hardware to animate a simple horizontal scroll at 60fps and also the touchscreen, either the hardware or the driver, is not really sensitive and misses a lot of touches.
As much as I hate some things on the iPhone, Apple got this right: a touch is a touch and always a single touch, and scrolls run at the same animation rate as the LCD, perfectly fluid.
I bought a Nexus One, but I really wanted a physical keyboard purely because it's faster to type on them. But then I found Swype. This keyboard lets you swipe along the letters of the word and it uses its dictionary to get the word for you. THAT proved to be faster than a physical keyboard, so I would definitely recommend it. However, it's in beta right now, which probably means that it's going to be a paid-for product pretty soon. Since *I* am dependent on it now, I will buy it, but I definitely think you Android owners should give it a try.
I still find it hysterical that folk bash the iPhone despite the fact EVERY one of these new phones is basically an almost exact copy of the iPhone with a few tweaks in terms of faster processors or whatever. Its taken 3 years for the other companies who to get to a point where any of there phones is even a serious competitior, this being the first that can seriously be considered a "better" phone in terms of overall use but even then its got nothing really new, its just another iPhone clone with a faster processor allowing multi-tasking, aside from that for the day to day user theres really nothing different (if you put away silly irrational brand hatred) to make them consider switching.
The I phone is not the first phone to do stuff. Its just the first phone to look nice. At the launch of the iphone my buddy had a windows mobile phone. It could, and still can, do everything the Iphone can. Remote logins, music, downloading torrents, administration,web browsing, etc. Instead of a finger you would use a pen and it looked no where near as good as an Iphone. It sounds weird when apple fanboy's say the Iphone is the first smartphone. It's not. TBH Apple needs to stop spending money on lawyers and start upgrading there product. The world now has phones that people think look as good as the i phone so deal with it and stop thinking Steve Jobs is from the future.
Hardly.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/industry-sectors/googles-nexus-one-smartphone-bypasses-australia/story-e6frg9hx-1225816762196
This is one thing that apple does right, at least for those of us in Oz.
Devices available in Australia;
Palm pre - NO
Google Nexus - NO
MS Zune - NO
Kindle - NO
Motorola Droid - NO
HTC Hero - YES
Jesus Phone - YES
Friend has both, his job requires him to have latest gadgets for designing products and switched back to the 3GS after 2 weeks. Compared to the 3GS the Android has a pretty sluggish touch menu interface. Can't comment on how brilliant it is from a technical standpoint, but just looking at how sluggishly the menu behaves isn't likely to win consumer converts from the iPhone; the reason why iPhone / Xbox360 are doing so well is precisely because they are closed environments where the quality of the experience is fairly high. Unfortunately, the real world values slick > substance.
Same here, as mentioned in an earlier post of mine, I own a N1 and also a 3GS and gave the N1 a decent chance: 2 weeks of exclusive use with the 3GS in the drawer. After those 2 weeks, I went back to the 3GS for similar reasons: sluggish scrolling and touch detection, very inferior on-screen keyboard and... no games and decent applications! no Plants vs Zombies, no Final Fantasy, no powerful multilingual dictionaries (I have several of those on my 3GS), nothing.
If I may add, the mail client is also pretty lame on the N1, and yes I have tried the free alternatives from the market, but they just don't cut it, the Mail.app on the iPhone OS just works better and is more intuitive to use.
All in all, a great phone but for daily tasks, the 3GS is just better.
Personally I'll get the HD2, which has a better screen and battery life, then hack it to use the Android OS (the "unofficial" developers are already working on this) and have the best of both worlds.
My iPhone contract is up in just over a week - I can't complain as it's been a decent phone, but having had my fill of all the apps I could ever want, I want a more functional phone.
and I don't regret it in the slightest! I've been a WinMob user for years (though I definitely wouldn't class myself as a fanboy) so I'm used to the quirks of WinMob. To be fair HTC have worked miracles with their SenseUI and only very occasionally do you get dumped into traditional WinMob style GUI's (which have been tweaked a little to take advantage of that HUGE screen real estate and resolution). The SnapDragon CPU flys, everything is smooth, the touchscreen is nice and responsive, the on-screen keyboard is really good and there is a plethora of other cool stuff in there too.
For me the HD2 seems to be the lesser of three evils... iPhone is too closed (and seems very toy-like compared to the HD2, and side by side, the iPhone now looks VERY dated!!) and the Nexus is, well, just an opportunity for Google to grab even MORE of your personal information for it to sell to the highest bidder. No thanks Google!
This review, and others, seem much more positive than the Milestone review, yet the Nexus One still only score 85%. The same as the milestone.
Are you seriously telling me the LG Viewty Smart is a better phone than either of these? It got 90%.... Maybe ratings should be reviewed over time, but your league table of phone reviews looks mighty odd.
I have no experience from Android, but wish I had. I've been an iPhone 3G user for a bit over a year and even if the iPhone shines in certain areas, it's still a crap mobile phone! A better name would be something like iPod Voice. It lacks all the decent features that you would expect from a good phone, such as a ring signals that you can hear, vibrations that you can feel, location awareness, etc etc etc. I just bought a new car with Bluetooth handsfree support and even that has problems using the iPhone without sporadic problems. So my question is - are Android-based phones like Nexus proper phones or are they just walking in Apple's footsteps?
I've had the nexus one for just over a month now. I have a contract with 3 and have signed up for their £5 a month internet service. I've found some good points and bad points about the nexus one.
Bad points:
The four buttons at the bottom. I've had trouble with these as they are not part of the screen, which is very nice and sensitive, they react differently. I've often found myself pressing them more than twice until it's actually reacted to the press.
Software glitches: I'm not sure if this is isolated to version 2.1 but occasionally I would have reset the handset as any reaction with the screen will send me to home. I always get the haptic feedback as well in these instances so they might be related to the four buttons again.
Battery life: This is to be expected from smart phones but the first few days I had it it ran out even during the night. I use my phone as an alarm and had a few days of getting up late because the phone died just by being on standby. I've since resolved this by downloading an app that can switch off some services that might drain the battery during the night and I get about 2 days out of it without charging and heavy use.
Good Points
Sync: The first thing I did when I booted the phone up was to check whether my google contacts were synced or not. They were all there and I entered a new contact via gmail on another computer, then used voice recognition to call the contact on the phone and it was there instantly. Very impressive!!
Mulit-tasking: to be able to have services running in the background I personally think is an absolute must for smart phones. To be able to have skype logged in constantly is great and I don't know how "other" smart phone users cope without it.
Speed: The nexus one is so fast and nippy. This is the first thing that people notice about the device. It's fantastic.
One last good point, and to summarise, is the apps. Even though the market isn't as large there are tons of other apks (android's install packages) out there. I've come across some great apps that resolved a lot of the bad points that I haven't mentioned.
All in all the hardware design has some flaws as mentioned but the software will improve as time goes on. Hopefully there will be a perfect design for the nexus two. :-)
I am appalled by the pain inflicted on buyers of HTC Magic. This phone is made by the same manufacturer HTC, it makes me wonder why any customer would want to be treated like this by the originator of ANdroid when many other phones work, have built-in fm stereo radios, can use skype over WIFI, have flash LEDs for the camera, and do not waste batteries within half an hour.
the dictionary definition of android is "an automaton in the form of a human being"
it seems the more accurate definition in this context is "a human with the stupidity of an automaton"
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