Smartphones competition really hots up with Nexus One
In the gadget world, last week was al l about Apple’s iPad.
But there was another huge product launch earlier this month:
Google’s Nexus One smartphone.
As the only Irish media organisation to receive the device, The Sunday Business Post has had a chance to review its capabilities and examine how it works on Irish networks.
Looks/design
The Nexus One is most definitely a boys’ phone. That is to sayth at everything is black and grey. No silver, chrome or colours. No artisan touches.
This is a slab of technology. In our pub test – where the phone was put down on the table beside others – the Nexus One didn’t raise a comment. It is slim, it is sleek. But so are a dozen other smartphones at this point.
Aside from its large touchscreen, it has the now-standard four Android function buttons on the bottom: return, menu/ option, home and search. It also has a trackball navigation tool (which glows when in sleep mode) at the very bottom. Presumably, this is included for those with very large fingers (some of the icons and application controls are quite small) or those uncomfortable with a complete switch-over to touchscreen operations. We found it to be slightly redundant.
There is no external slot for the required Micro-SD memory card, which is a shame. The recessed earphone port could be better, too; while our basic iPod earphone set just about fitted in, it won’t work with all shapes of MP3 earphones. However it does include stereo Bluetooth and there are a lot of these earphone sets on the market now.
Screen
The phone’s 3.7 inch A moled screen is a highlight.
Compared with al l other smartphones, it’s huge. This makes an appreciable difference in getting the most out of the apps, web browser and preloaded software on-board. The definition of the screen is at the top end of the market, at 800×480. Finger smudges do show up, but the screen has proven to be resilient enough to resist scratching in the time that we have had it.
Touch sensitivity
Four out of five touchscreen phones launched so far on the Irish market have an Achilles’ heel: their touch sensitivity just isn’t good enough. To date, major manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have struggled to match the early standard set by the iPhone. So it is a delight to use a handset that delivers the same smooth scrolling and sensitive tactile control as Apple’s model.
The Nexus One definitely delivers in this area.
Usability/operating system
The Nexus One uses the latest version of Android, which is (largely)Google’s mobile operating system. Aside from its easy navigation, the best thing about it is its multi-tasking. Instead of just one home screen, you have five: just scroll left or right to switch homescreens.
You can customise each screen with almost any feature or application you like. This sounds geeky, but it becomes addictive.
Once you get used to it, it’s hard to return to a more restrictive operating system.
Texting does take a little getting used to. However, when you adjust, it can do everything you want, including forwarding and copying and pasting words and lines from individual SMS messages.
Power/speed
This phone is the most powerful phone device to come into our hands so far.
This is mainly due to the Ferraripowered processor under the hood: a 1Ghz Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm. This is almost twice the speed and power of most of its smartphone rivals. And it shows.
Opening and closing applications happens in a split-second. Moving from screen to screen is instantaneous.
On the memory front, it has 512MB of Ram, a sizeable chunk for a machine so small.
As you’d expect, it’s a full 3.5G phone for fast connections.
Apps and downloads
Other than its large screen, this is the Nexus One’s key selling point. There are almost 25,000 apps available in Android’s online Market Store (the equivalent of the iPhone’s App Store).
Most large developers now create an Android app whenever they create a new iPhone app. The Nexus One is a Porsche at downloading and running these apps, mainly because of the power of the handset and the updated Android operating system. As for the apps themselves, there is enough choice to keep anyone happy. Besides the iPhone, there is scarcely a better phone out there for those looking for an apps companion.
Battery life
Google and HTC claim a battery life of over two days on the Nexus One. You won’t get this, especially if you use it as often as Google wants you to.
But in our experience, using the web and apps continuously, it always had plenty of juice to spare at the end of a full working day. So all in all, that is a decent performance.
Voice controls
Among the Nexus One’s ambitious features is the integration of voice control into most of the phone’s important functions.
The two biggest examples of this are its voice dialling function (you say the name of a contact or a number) and its voice-activated web-search (it converts your spoken words into a Google search).
While both sound terrific (and car-friendly), I should say that neither worked particularly smoothly on the handset I was using. But as this is a prelaunch model, it might be ironed out by the time it actually launches.
Maps
Normally, features such as maps would be mentioned in the ‘miscellaneous’ folder of reviewing features. But the maps and navigation on the Nexus One are so well integrated and clear that they warrant their own special mention.
What is most impressive is the way that Maps goes all the way to Street View, Google’s photo-based 360-degree navigation software.
Once again, the handset’s graphics power is the ace up its sleeve, with photos and scrolling rendered clearly and smoothly.
Camera
The camera is not this phone’s strongest feature. The five megapixel resolution is not bad, but doesn’t match up to rivals from Nokia, Sony Ericsson or Samsung.
However, it does allow you to ‘geo-tag’ photos using the phone’s GPS feature.
