CES 2010: Hands-on with the Google Nexus One
Considering it successfully stole a good portion of CES' limelight this week, we thought Google's Nexus One would have been banned from attending Las Vegas' tech show. But deep in the backwaters of the CES meeting rooms we found one and took a quick tour of its Android 2.1 skills.
It's powered by a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor – which seems to be under the hood of about 95% of the gadgets at CES – making it extremely well-oiled and responsive round the menus.
The Nexus One is an underwhelming physical specimen – there's no signature chin like the HTC Hero, and it has a fairly drab silver-grey livery.
But despite this and the lack of a snazzy interface skin there are some nice visual touches, most notably the live, interactive wallpapers (like the one you can see above). There are also now five homescreens rather than three, so that's more screen estate to fill up with widgets.
The 3.7in, 480x800 screen looked very impressive – on a par with the Motorola Droid – but the Nexus One sadly doesn't have multitouch for web browsing. Still, we'll forgive if its 5MP snaps improve on the middling performance of fellow HTC-made phones like the Hero.
So when will you be able to audition a Nexus One yourself? Well, the rumours mill is churning with suggestions that it will be available in the UK on a Vodafone contract 'within weeks', so stay tuned for a full review very soon – in the meantime, check out the video below.
[by Mark Wilson]
For more Android-powered CES news, check out T-Mobile's Vega home tablet and Dell's Android tablet concept
Watch our CES Preview and CES Press Day videos
Comments
damagedave
2 years ago
I have been very enthusiastic about this device and up to this point curious as to how HTC would deal with what some call the next iPhone. My enthusiasm has unfortunately been met with a slap in the face.
To any considering a purchase for some $500+, I say caveat emptor (buyer beware). HTC has released a phone called "Dream" in some markets it is essentially identical to the G1. Dream was sold as a companion product to the HTC Magic under a campaign "Revolution" by Rogers Wireless (one of the largest Mobile companies in Canada). Since October 2009, owners of the $550 Dream have been attempting to get a promised upgrade for the OS of the phone. HTC has now officially released a statement that the Dream will not be getting an update. This makes a phone (less than 6 months into the market) obsolete. One cannot run many apps and cannot purchase from the Market. Here is the statement allegedly made by HTC on Androidforums
http://androidforums.com/rogers/10647-rogers-dream-1-6-update-23.html#post235970
This thread has been very active and if you read back you will see that it has never been used as a smear campaign. Users were simply trying to get the most from their provider and hardware manufacturer.
I pose this question to anyone thinking of dropping $500 on the greatest new gadget to hit the market, would you be satisfied if HTC terminated all upgrades to your 6 month old Nexus One? Would you buy from a company that was known to do this?
Don't take my word for it read the thread or search Google for iwantmyonepointsix
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Device - HTC Dream
OS - 1.5
Carrier - Rogers Wireless
Contract obligation 3 years
Offer to for clients upgrade or swap - none
Unique exceptions - two (after complaints to the office of the president, at Rogers) reference forum for alleged exceptions
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Android 6.0
2 years ago
CES man can you tell me if you have any idea of what GPS navigation the UK version of the nexus one will offer?