HTC Nexus One – greatest smart phone to date!
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Gorgeous display, fast processor. The phone has all the features that you look forward to in a smart phone along with some new innovative stuff.
Thumbs Down:
Applications must still be stored only on to the internal memory, no support for multi touch, Outlook calendar syncing is not supported currently.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM / UMTS
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband) / UMTS 900/2100 (Dual Band)
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Bluetooth, music player, camera, AGPS, EDGE, Android 2.1 OS
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
HTC Nexus One is a smart phone which runs on Qualcomm® QSD8250™, 1 GHz processor, has Android™ 2.1 (Éclair) as its operating system. The handset has 512 MB ROM and 512 MB of RAM.
The AMOLED display of the phone is 3.7 big and has 480X800 WVGA resolution. The 5.0 mega pixel camera with LED flash has features like geotagging and 2x digital zoom.
Supported audio formats are mid, mp3, wma, wav, awb, amr, aac. The supported video formats are m4v, 3g2, 3gp and mp4. The device comes with a 3.5 mm head set jack.
Other important features on the phone include digital compass, G-sensor, ambient light sensor and proximity sensor. The 1400 mAH rechargeable lithium-ion polymer battery has talk time of ten hours for talk time for 2G and seven hours for 3G. The standby time is 290 hours for 2G and 250 hours for 3G.
Razzle Dazzle:
The Nexus One is the sexiest phone ever, it even gets past the iPhone when it comes to looks. It is very slim because it doesn’t have a slide out keyboard and feels very comfortable to hold in the hand. It has an iPhone like look; there is no clutter of buttons below the display. The gorgeous AMOLED display hogs almost the entire surface and this phone will sure turn heads when you are flaunting it on the streets.
Inside Dope:
Google is proud of its latest offering, the Nexus One and with the downright sexy looks and high end features, we think Google are right when they said that the phone is not only a superphone but also a phone and web’s meeting place. The highlights of the handset include AMOLED display, super fast Snapdragon processor, Android 2.1 interface and never before seen feature of noise cancellation for calls. The voice dialing features have also been improved on the handset. However, it has some drawbacks like the unimpressive music player, applications can be stored only on the internal memory and no multitouch or tethering. The phone doesn’t have support for Outlook calendar syncing. But still we will call this phone an amazing piece of work from Google owing to the features inside.
The phone is available as a CDMA model under T-Mobile’s service (Verizon Wireless will roll out its own version in early 2010) and you can buy it as an unlocked phone. The latter choice will make a big hole in your pocket with its $529 price tag.
The gorgeous AMOLED display of the phone is 3.7 inch big, with resolution of 800×480 pixels and 16.7 million colors. Everything from text, videos, photos, games all rock due to its super sexy screen. AMOLED screen is better than standard LCD because of its high quality and low power consumption. To make it even better Android 2.1 OS gives us live wallpapers, 3D graphics and animated backgrounds that are sensitive to your touch and music. However, there are standard wallpapers available.
You get five home screens to put shortcuts to application that you use the most on the phone. You can move the screens back and forth with your finger. Other highlights of this display include proximity sensor, light sensor and accelerometer.
On the screen there is a shortcut bar that has dedicated buttons to toggle on/off the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, control brightness and syncing. For the display you can adjust backlighting and brightness and put a limit on the display animations. There is haptic feed and the touch screen is fast and responsive to our touches.
Below the display you get four touch sensitive controls search, home, notification menu control key and back button which are found in all Android handsets. Above these buttons there is a trackball navigator if you don’t want to use the touch screen.
On the sides of the phone, there is power control button, a 3.5 mm head phone jack and volume rocker (which is a bit thin). We were disappointed to see the card slot located behind the battery, it won’t be easy if you want to swap cards. On the bottom of the phone there is a proprietary port for USB cord and power charger.
There is no limit to the phone book entries, a single entry lets you store multiple phone numbers, postal address, emails, work info, IM handles, URLs, notes and nicknames. You can sync contacts from you Gmail account and you can also sync Microsoft Exchange contacts and Facebook. We tried all of this, it is really quick. For storing music, data and videos the phone has a 512 MB of internal memory, the phone comes bundled with 4GB card and the memory can be expanded up to 32 GB.
Calendar is a disappointment because it doesn’t have support for Outlook calendar and notes which makes the Nexus One short of a business phone.
Gallery feature was also impressive with its eye candy. When the gallery is opened, the photo groups are neatly arranged with their names. When you tap a group, you get grid with photos; it is like a thumbnail view.
The 5 MP camera is better than what we have seen before on any Android phone. You get control for color and white balance, auto focus, 2x digital zoom, three settings for quality and infinity focus. The camera also lets you record video. A single video can go up to 30 minutes and is recorded at 720X480 pixel resolution. MMS clips are limited to 30 seconds though. You can also select white balance, color effect and quality setting.
Photo quality was really great, there was a bit of image noise but the colors were natural looking. Video quality however was average. Nexus One supports geotagging feature.
The voice feature is one of the highlight of the phone; you can update your page on Facebook, write an SMS and search on the online Android market just by your voice. We were surprised to see that it worked well even in a crowded room.
The Nexus One supports POP3 and IMAP4 accounts connectivity besides Gmail. We had some trouble with this; we couldn’t add our Yahoo account. We tried it time and again and eventually gave up, frustrated.
Just like the calendar, the music player was another disappointment. Not that it was bad but it wasn’t high end like other applications on the phone. It has shuffle and repeat modes, playlists options and album art. To get music on the phone, you can buy directly from Amazon MP3 store or transfer it to memory card using USB cord. We would have liked FM radio on the handset too.
We were fully satisfied with the call quality. Our friends said that they could hear us very well and we could too hear them well. Speaker phone calls were a bit tinny but that is not unexpected in a phone. When in a call, you can switch to speakerphone or Bluetooth with a single touch of a button.
Though the phone is unlocked, the only 3G network supported is of T-Mobile. If you are going to use this phone with AT&T, all you get is EDGE. With T-Mobile, the 3G speeds were really good but we missed the multi touch while browsing the internet. On the bright side, the pages loaded quickly and the browser was fully equipped for all our requirements.
Nexus One, thanks to the Android 2.1 has Car Home feature which gives you local search and turn-by-turn real time directions with voice. Other features on the phone worth mentioning are multimedia and text messaging, Wi-Fi, A2DP stereo Bluetooth, text-to-speech feature, compass, speakerphone, and a calculator along with Google applications like Google Maps, Google Talk and Google Voice
The super fast 1 Ghz Snapdragon processor which is the secret behind its speed. Applications opened really fast and it didn’t take much time for the accelerometer to change from portrait to landscape.
The Nexus One has ten hours of rated talk time for 2G and seven hours of 3G talk time. The standby time is twelve days for 2G and a little over ten days for 3G.
Nitty Gritty:
HTC Nexus One comes with all the goodies that you expect in a smart phone along with some goodies like fast processor, great call quality and voice control features have been improved to give you a better experience while on calls. The phone comes in both locked and unlocked versions.
