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Video review
Google has bided its time but now, 18 months after unveiling its smartphone OS, Android, it’s finally gone the whole hog and put its name on a phone.
Admittedly the Nexus One is made by HTC, but you can get it directly from a Google webpage, confirming that the search meisters are ready to go toe-to-toe with Apple on this one.
Tempting package
While the Nexus One is no stunner, its aluminium casing feels reassuringly solid compared with the iPhone's plasticky back. The smooth edges make it comfortable in hand and pocket, too – and, crucially, the more you live with the Nexus One, the more you fall for it.
Despite being thinner and slimmer, the Nexus has a slightly bigger display than the iPhone – and over twice the number of pixels, which makes a real difference when reading text or browsing web pages. The AMOLED technology is wonderfully bright, too, although colours can often seem unnaturally oversaturated.
Live wallpapers
Making the most of that zingy screen are video wallpapers. How very Vista, you’re thinking. Fortunately, Google’s moving backgrounds are interactive: we’re particularly fond of making ripples in the zen pool.
Android 2.1 has a simplified user interface, and while it's still not quite as slick or intuitive as the iPhone, it's pretty close. It also has some very neat tricks all of its own, like Google Voice for speech control and Google Goggles for visual search.
Words and pictures
From the homepage you can search the web by speaking – amazingly it works brilliantly. Slightly less successful, but still mighty impressive, is composing texts with voice. While the iPhone’s voice control is a gimmick, Google Voice is the start of something beautiful.
Another game changer is Goggles, the ‘visual search’ tool that allows you to take a picture of an object and find out about it. At this early stage it works best with obvious things like book covers and barcodes. But in the future, Google will see all – and know all.
HTC has had some great phones with dreadful cameras, but fortunately this isn’t one of them. The 5MP autofocus cam produces snaps that are a match for Nokia’s smartphones, and low-light shots are less noisy than the iPhone. It takes good video, too, with direct YouTube uploads.
Review continues after the break...
Software frustrations
Enough of the eulogising; there are still some software frustrations to the Nexus. For instance, you can’t click on phone numbers in messages to dial them, and email accounts are confusingly separated.
Over-the-air software updates will likely fix these, leaving three outstanding issues: the unresponsive shortcut buttons at the bottom of the display, the lack of internal storage and the mediocre battery life.
As hardware, though, the Nexus beats the iPhone: it has a better camera, faster brain, nicer build. But Apple’s software is so slick, and its apps and accessories abundant, that the iPhone still edges it. Just.
The First Hour
-
1
Looks like a bland HTC phone and it’s heavy too
-
9
The screen is incredibly crisp
-
16
Google didn't get multi-touch in place from launch. Boo
-
46
Wow, voice search actually works
-
49
Android supports Exchange mail
-
60
Cripes…I might actually ditch the iPhone
Tech Specs
- Bluetooth
- Yes
- Dimensions
- 119x60x11.5mm
- Main camera resolution
- 5MP autofocus
- Memory card slots
- Yes
- Memory card type
- microSD
- Operating system
- Android 2.1 (Éclair)
- Quad band
- Yes
- Screen resolution
- 480x800 AMOLED
- Screen size
- 3.7in
- Standby time
- 250hrs
- Storage
- 512MB
- Talktime
- 7hrs
- Weight
- 130g
- Wi-Fi
- Yes
- Xenon flash
- No
Comments
MNC3333
1 year ago
The AMOLED screen looks great indoors, but that the screen is hard to see clearly in bright daylight. I'm not outdoors much anyway so I prefer the AMOLED screen to the Diablo 3 screen. Also there are some good Android Apps out there right now. Can't wait until my new lte phone.
-Dave
Thomas13
1 year ago
Google is boss for all time. So I want share my gratefulness to google. Lawyer Burnaby
Thomas13
1 year ago
Google nexus is one of the best device that I have ever seen. house painters san diego ca
p.whitelock
3 years ago
I have owned this phone for a few weeks now and think its great. I assumed it would have half decent internal storage and was surprised to find it didnt. I can still put in a large micro sd card but that is extra expense on an already fairly pricey phone. My last phone, the Samsung I8910 had a micro sd slot but also 8gb internal memory too which was just enough to squeeze my music onto. Apart from this i think the phone is superb. It looks fantastic, is very light weight and has some fantastic features. There is some good android apps out now from when i had my last android phone, but android is still lacking behind the apple app store frustratingly. I refuse to buy an iphone though as i just dont like the whole i tunes mess and the fact that the camera has no flash etc (which this phone does).I had a problem setting up my 3G and had to take it to a local Orange shop to ask about setting up and they hadnt a clue about this phone. I was stood around for about 20 minutes whilst the girls in the shop passed my phone around in amazement and asked loads of questions about it! If you do not take into account the apps available the nexus one easily beats the iphone in my opinion.
Android 6.0
3 years ago
hey stuff shouldnt this be above the hero?
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3 years ago
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kiritha003
3 years ago
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3 years ago
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Hugh Jarse
3 years ago
I have read in reviews from the States that the Nexus is a very good phone, and that the AMOLED screen looks great indoors, but that the screen is hard to see clearly in bright daylight (a claim also levied at the Zune HD's AMOLED screen) - what was Stuff's experience?