My First 20 Days with the Nexus One

In the nerdiest sense, I love Google, respect Microsoft, and loathe Apple.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll be taking time out to watch their impending announcement on today (and I even own a Mac), but prefer the corporate altruism of Google over the shininess of Apple, even if I open myself up to ridicule and mockery. I’m of the opinion that all companies require savvy business practices and need to make money, but Apple cannibalizes its customer base through seductive plastic and aluminum that reminds me of the siren Medusa.

In that light, I was frothing at the mouth when Google was rumored to be collaborating on a phone last year. Being that I hate contracts and was saying my goodbye’s to my awesome Nokia N85, I plunked down $600 and purchased a personalized, unlocked Nexus One.  These are my thoughts of the last 20 days.

Keyboard, Trackball, Buttons
I’ve done some iPhone development and am familiar with the OS. While revolutionary, I never really signed on to a virtual keyboard. I knew a capacitive touchscreen was the way to go, so I was surprised how responsive the Android 2.1 input mechanism was. I was even more impressed that the suggestive, corrective input incorporated names and phrases that were used in memory from songs, contacts, and text messages. This was evident when it kept suggesting my name in its correct spelling even though I know it isn’t the most common.

It has misfired a couple of times, as people have reported. But it isn’t anything unnerving and is easily fixed with delete.

The rollerball is hit or miss. It helps when trying to insert or correct a few letters and you want to scroll through a sentence, but its hypersensitive. Since it doubles as a button (and message notification beacon), sometimes that registers instead of a ‘roll right’.

Apps, Games, OS
Coming from Symbian, Android 2.1 is a godsend. I love the flick and scroll. I love the intuitive navigation buttons and screens. I really like that you can shut down and monitor running processes, just like Task Manager in Windows or Force Quit in OS X, without having to install any kind of app. It makes optimizing any running processes easy.

Being able to quickly brighten the screen, turn on/off bluetooth, turn on/off wireless, turn on/off gps, and turn on/off sync from one of the 5 home screens is awesome. The news and weather widget (akin to news.google.com) is a quick way to check in on the world and the live wallpapers are a nice touch.

I know the App Store boasts an obscene amount of games, but I don’t really understand why having a billion is better than those who have 100,000, especially if the important stuff is available. The thing has native Facebook, native Google everything, and native basic Office which I know they can’t legally count as apps. If you’re life is in Google, like me, you’re probably not going to install more than 10 non-Google apps anyway.

Google Voice and native Google Apps integration, by itself, is hands down a key. Google Apps already can handle any attachment and integrates nicely with Picasa, Maps, Calendar, Contacts (Facebook contacts too!) and Docs.

Twidroid works. I can make icons for all of my mobile sites I visit. Robo Defense, Baseball, and Flight Director are fun games that will waste some time when you need it to. Pixelpipe Pro will allow you to connect your media to all of your social media, StreamFurious Pro and Pandora pretty much meet any and every music need outside of your own library, and you can do the Amazon comparative shopping app if you’re into that.

Phone Quality, Network
What’s interesting, and something I didn’t see mentioned a lot in the reviews, was the second noise-canceling mic on the HTC. This makes for really clear calls, both receiving and sending, and is definitely noticeable from other phones I’ve had. It’s funny how we forget how important that is when we invest in a smartphone.

We’ve all heard the issues with networks and T-Mobile has its issues. Nothing that has me pulling my hair out, but I’ve had every service at some point. All of them. The tipping point is customer service and ease of use with their online tools. I’ve seen the switching from 3G to Edge, but what really made me jump ship from AT&T and Sprint was the possibility of 21+ Mbps down speed on HSPDA by this summer from T-Mobile. Yowzer!

What Sucks (or is Weird)
Not everyone gets it right and the Nexus One doesn’t escape this.

When connecting to a PC (either OS X or Windows), I whole-heartedly blame Apple for this; we’ve been so used to having some sort of desktop application to synchronize music, playlists, and other media, that you’re almost surprised you don’t need anything with Android. While T-Mobile is compensating for this by suggesting the use of doubleTwist, dragging and dropping is an overlooked feature that helps when using media from multiple machines. Plug. Mount. Drag. Unmount. Go…without any arcane naming of system folders and insane iTunes playlist folder creation.

Battery life is just ‘ok’. I’m not getting anything consistent and I feel like it’s probably because some apps tend to open on their own (when syncing) or never actually close. Again, you can check the ‘Running services’ within the OS and even see which parts of the phone are draining the most battery, so, there is a workaround.

The non-consistent 3G connection does suck when I’m listening to streaming radio, especially my beloved NPR. They haven’t determined whether its software or network, but the dropped connection doesn’t play nicely with apps that use it and tend to require a bare-hand confirmation of ‘force close’ in the -5 windchill weather of Chicago.

The headphones that shipped with the Nexus One are actually really nice, but the buttons that are attached to the cord are useless. I’m used to being able to control the volume and call features from the little remote, but it looks like HTC skimped on just play, forward, and rewind.

You’ll also notice that I’m not providing screenshots with this review. For some wickedly stupid reason, taking screenshots with Android requires the hand of God. Unlike the iPhone, a simple hold of power and menu button do nothing. You have to connect it to your desktop, download developer tools, etc. etc. Whatever. Hopefully that gets updated.

Verdict
All in all, I’m really, really happy with my purchase. News is coming out that people have begun releasing fully packaged ROMs for those who want to root their phones and push the Snapdragon processor to the brink. That will probably be something I’ll explore later this year, but right now Google has a winner with the Nexus One.