Google Nexus One

All droids are equal but some droids are more equal than others. Google it. You’ll get the Nexus One. There are around 50 smartphones and tablets running Android today. That’s right, out of all the offspring they fathered with the Open Handset Alliance, Google finally have one to proudly call their own.

What does it mean? Well, not that the ones we’ve seen so far are some poor half-blood droids but the Nexus One is supposed to be THE thing. For one, it’s the first Snapdragon-powered Android and it shows. The Nexus One is wickedly fast. The WVGA touchscreen is a treat to look at and it’s only the second AMOLED display to find on an Android handset. D1 video is sure to sweeten the deal too, and perhaps so will the Live Wallpapers.

Awash in rumors well before launch, the Google Nexus One was officially revealed in January 2010 and it became available right after the unveiling event. Of course, the first units were to sell only in a very limited number of countries (UK, Singapore and Hong Kong).

Anyway Google are to start shipping their Nexus One through various carriers across Europe, starting with Vodafone this spring. That’s about the time when Verizon subscribers will be getting a CDMA version of the device. Google have a phone to sell, so it’s a fair guess they’ll be seeing to it that everyone can have it. Now, will everyone want to? Let’s see.

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

Great retail package You may’ve seen the Nexus One Desktop Dock. Guess what, it’s not in the box. But pretty much everything else is. Along with the handset itself, you get a USB charger, standard microUSB cable and a quick start guide.

There is also a one-piece headset with music controls. The more demanding among you will probably get a replacement. Fortunately, the supplied headset isn't your only option since the Nexus One is kind enough to offer a 3.5mm audio jack.

Design and construction The Nexus One is made by HTC and it feels like Google didn’t have the face to ask them to really try and make it different. Or was it that HTC pinched the Google design and used it on a couple of their own phones. Whatever, the Nexus One is a solid, poised and good-looking gadget. We’re not sure though the uncanny resemblance to HTC Touch2 works in its favor.

Another inevitable lookalike is the HTC Desire. But there’s nothing out of the ordinary here: the Desire is HTC’s very own version of the Google phone with Sense UI and an optical trackpad instead of a trackball. The Desire has a subtle hint of a chin and hardware buttons, while the Nexus One goes for capacitive controls.

As most touchscreen devices, Nexus One hasn’t too much freedom to experiment with design but we’re happy Google chose to bet on quality materials and strong build. The slim and elegant body doesn’t take away from the solid gadgety look of the Google Phone, and the subdued color scheme is more than welcome.

The key design element of the Nexus One is the metallic front frame that extends asymmetrically around back. It’s got a soft brushed finish (could be teflon coated). The rear surface is rubbery and very pleasant to touch. It is slow to take fingerprints but when it does eventually get smudgy, the prints are very hard to clean.

The screen seems to have no oleophobic layer (like the iPhone 3GS) and gets all smudgy in no time. Our main concern though is the really high level of reflection, which makes it nearly impossible to use outdoors in the bright sun.

Anyway, indoors it’s a brilliant performer, quite what you’d expect in an AMOLED screen. AMOLEDs don’t use as strong backlighting as TFT displays, which makes them power-efficient, plus image quality is superior. The Nexus One can’t really match Samsung’s Super AMOLED-packing Wave but is still a great performer indoors. It is the highly reflective surface and weaker backlighting that make it a bad choice for outdoor use.

As to screen sensitivity, the Nexus One reacts to the gentlest taps thanks to the capacitive technology. The 3.7” AMOLED unit boasts deep, vibrant colors and excellent contrast.

The typical Android controls (back, contextual menu, Home and search) are right below the display. They’re touch-sensitive virtual buttons so it all happens on the touchscreen with the Nexus One – if you don’t count the trackball.

What might be a bit of an issue is the keys are capacitive, so they’re not usable with gloves. The four keys seemed to occasionally play up – it may be a unit-specific issue but response wasn’t the best. Some of the taps just weren’t recognized.

The trackball is underneath, and outside the touchscreen. It’s the only hardware control on the Nexus One. It’s not essential really – the touchscreen is more than enough to get you around the interface. We like trackballs though – the precise response and the nice tickle on the tip of your thumb.

The trackball can come in useful if you need to jump links on a webpage that’s zoomed out to the max. The other obvious application that puts it to use is the camera. The Nexus One hasn’t got a dedicated shutter key and users get to choose between two options: a virtual on-screen shutter and the trackball. If you go for the trackball, you’ll need to press to lock focus and release to capture.

Android goes up a notch The Android meter is ticking pretty fast, isn’t it? We only just managed to review a single handset running Android 2.0 and along came the Nexus One on 2.1.

The Android 2.1 official changelog says there are no new user features. Instead things are stirred up a bit on the developers’ end. The truth is Google have put a few of the newly released APIs to good use already but the update should be most evident in the Android Market.

Here goes the Android 2.x changelog showing the new stuff in the last two Google OS iterations. It's not the full technical changelog, but only highlights we've hand-picked for you.

Messaging and typing

Multiple accounts can be added to a device for email and contact synchronization, including Exchange accounts. (Handset manufacturers can choose whether to include Exchange support in their devices.) Quick Contact for Android provides instant access to a contact's information and communication modes. For example, a user can tap a contact photo and select to call, SMS, or email the person. Other applications such as Email, Messaging, and Calendar can also reveal the Quick Contact widget when you touch a contact photo or status icon. Combined inbox to browse email from multiple accounts in one page. Search functionality for all saved SMS and MMS messages. An improved keyboard layout to makes it easier to hit the correct characters and improve typing speed. The framework's multi-touch support ensures that key presses aren't missed while typing rapidly with two fingers. A smarter dictionary learns from word usage and automatically includes contact names as suggestions. Camera features

Built-in flash support Digital zoom Scene mode White balance Color effect Macro focus Web browser

Refreshed UI with actionable browser URL bar enables users to directly tap the address bar for instant searches and navigation. Bookmarks with web page thumbnails. Support for double-tap zoom. Support for HTML5: Geolocation API support, to provide location information about the device. video tag support in fullscreen mode. Media Framework

Revamped graphics architecture for improved performance that enables better hardware acceleration. Bluetooth

Bluetooth 2.1 New BT profiles: Object Push Profile (OPP) and Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP) To that list we should also add a host of newly released APIs. The most interesting of them from user's perspective is without a doubt the Live wallpapers feature that allows developers to make interactive and animated wallpapers for the homescreen.

Phonebook does well The Nexus One phonebook can store quite a lot of information. It lets you input numbers for work and home, and you can even create custom labels. There is of course an email field and you can assign a custom ringtone.

The quick contacts available since Android 2.0 let you use the contact photo in the phonebook and to call, text, or email the person with a single click.

When viewing a contact, the various details are displayed in sections. There is a Dial number and a Send SMS/MMS tab with the numbers for the contact listed. Each number fills an entire horizontal row so that it's more thumbable.

Email also has a dedicated tab that works just like the one for numbers. The rest of the information (if any) is displayed underneath.

You can "star" a contact, which puts it in the Favorites tab. Also, in each Gmail account there's a special group called "Starred in Android" where these contacts go automatically.

Adding a photo to a contact is quite easy: when you select a photo, a cropping tool comes up allowing you to use any part of the image you want. Adding a photo has another pleasing "side effect" - if you put a dialing shortcut for the contact on the screen, it uses the photo as an icon.

Searching for a contact in the phonebook is quite easy - just hit the search key and a search box pops up.

Telephony doing good The Google Nexus One had no issues with reception and in-call quality. The sound is loud enough so you don’t need to always set the volume to maximum.

Unfortunately, the Nexus One, just like the rest of the Android crowd (except for the HTC Hero) doesn’t feature smart dialing (or voice dialing for that matter).

Messaging monster with no (QWERTY) teeth The Android SMS and MMS departments are quite straightforward and simple - there are no folders here, just a new message button. Under that button is a list of all your messages organized into threads.

When viewing a thread, the newest message is placed at the bottom, just like on the iPhone. At the bottom of the display is the tap-to-compose box and the send key.

There is a counter on the right which is displayed once you have 16 or fewer characters remaining of the 160 limit. It also shows the number of parts the message will be split into for sending.

Gallery: image zooming flawed by design The Google Nexus One gallery automatically locates the images and videos, no matter where they are stored. Images and videos placed in different folders appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the folder, which is very convenient - just like a file manager.

The Google Nexus One gallery packs cool 3D effects and transitions, which we find rather attractive. The different albums appear as piles of photos which reorganize in neat grids once selected.

The gallery supports finger scrolling or panning so you can skip images without having to return to the default view. Just swipe to the left ot to the right when looking at a photo in fullscreen mode and the previous/next image will appear.

The pinch-zooming is also available here thanks to the Nexus One multi-touch support. There is no double tap zooming however.

Video player refuses to walk the extra mile For some unknown reason, video playback has been one of the hardest things to do on an Android handset. First, there was no video player at all and then things started to get worse. No, we are kidding – the video player app found on the contemporary Android phones isn’t terribly bad it’s just that the supported formats a pretty limited.

Okay, looks and functionality aren’t great either but all the basics are covered. You get a list of all videos available on the phone and play/pause, skip controls, as well as a draggable progress bar.

Music player needs taking care of Sadly, the music player saw no updates on the Nexus One either. Nexus One is not too bad at managing your audio files but there’s definitely room for improvement.

The first screen of the music player has four large buttons, which offer the four main ways to search your music collection - by artist, album, song or the playlists you've created.

5 megapixel camera is nothing to rave about On the hardware side of things Google Nexus One has a 5 megapixel camera module for a maximum image resolution of 2592 x 1936 pixels and a LED flash. It also packs a few extra features and settings not to be found on its Android predecessors.

The new stuff includes built-in flash support (apparently the Samsung Galaxy made use of some home-brewed drivers to get around that OS limitation), digital zoom, scene mode, white balance, color effects and macro focus mode.

And if you think that all this sounds so 2004 you are right. Android still has a lot of catching up to do but the good thing is they are actually doing something about it.

The user interface is pretty decent, although not exactly perfect. You have all the options on a retractable tray at the left side of the viewfinder which can either be dragged out by a finger sweep or by pressing the menu key. With so few options at hand we don't see why most of them aren't available as onscreen shortcuts to begin with.

Plenty of connectivity Connectivity is certainly an area where the Google Nexus One excels. For starters you get quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE for worldwide roaming and dual-band (900/2100 MHz) 3G with HSPA. The HSDPA is quoted at 7.2Mbps and the HSUPA can reach up to 2Mbps.

We then move on to local connectivity – the Nexus One offers USB v2.0, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP support and Wi-Fi. The USB interface is standard microUSB, which makes finding a suitable cable a lot easier. And now that they have enabled Bluetooth transfers, there is very little more to ask for.

Back on the positive track, we have to mention that the built-in microSD card slot can also be used as a data transfer tool. Card-readers are going for peanuts these days so having one around is quite likely and they give some pretty impressive speeds.

Web browser stops just short of great: no flash support YET The Nexus One is the Google Phone and an excellent web browser is a must. Web meets phone say Google themselves but, come to think of it, this is the standard these days. Anyway, with the exception of Flash, the browser performs brilliantly – no big surprise given the hardware specs and the latest version of Android.

The user interface, Google through and through, is completely minimalistic – all you get on the screen is an address bar and +/- zoom buttons. The address bar is placed on top of the page, so scrolling down moves it out of view and the zoom controls autohide – that’s essential for web apps because they need to get the whole screen estate all to themselves.

GPS navigation The Nexus One comes with a capable GPS receiver, which coupled with A-GPS, gets a sattelite lock decently fast.

It comes as no surprise that Google Maps come preinstalled. Unfortunately, voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation through Google Maps is available in the US only. Still, even without Navigation, there is some kind of guidance: your route and current location appear on the screen so you'll reach your destination eventually... assuming you can read maps of course.