Google Nexus One Android: 5 things to die for, 5 things to cry for

After 5 years of Windows Mobile, this is my first Google phone. The Nexus One is better than anything that came before it, but it can still be improved.

This review is written on the Nexus One after my first weekend with it. Besides the various Windows Mobile phones that I used over the years, I have the habit of taking a different phone with me on each yearly holiday. In this way I have played with the likes of Nokia N95, iPhone, LG Cookie, etc.

Summary

This is the best smartphone on the market. It is fast, good looking and it has a rich feature set. It is the first phone that gives truly usable access to regular websites. I can just surf to blogger and type this review, right in the built in browser. What makes it stand out is that everything in and around the device is designed for each other, something that up till now only Apple succeeded in.

The review

Yes, the screen is marvelous, the voice search is amazing and it is stupid that you have to click a little bit above the hardware buttons in order not to miss them. I will not elaborate on that. There are already tons of reviews discussing those properties. Instead, I will present you with 5 good and 5 bad properties that might not be so obvious at first glance.

5 things to die for

1. Usablity
I'll start by telling you this is a very intuitive device to use. Yesterday I was visting friends who had just bought an iPod Touch. They formed the ideal test audience, since they didn't have any previous exeperience with neither an iPhone or an Android device. They made less mistakes on the Nexus. The iPhone left them more puzzled when something didn't work out like they expected. In brief, they found the Nexus easier to use.
Of course, most people will tell you the opposite. It is normal that when you are used to one way of working (be it iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian or Blackberry) that having to change your habits is difficult at first. But for someone who has not yet developed a habit, the outcome will be different.

2. Speed
Can you say blazingly fast? This phone responds faster then anything before it. It absolutely rocks. No matter how many applications you open (yes, it does do multitasking) it remains just as fast. For a device that is used for short periods of interaction this makes a very important difference. It is faster then an iPhone, and it certainly is faster then my Tytn 2.

3. The Nipple
I don't how what the official name is for the protrusion at the bottom of the the phone that is used to navigate around the screen, but let's call it "The Nipple". I read some people find this an unnecessary device and would prefer the inverse-optical-mouse of the yet to be released HTC Bravo. I couldn't disagree more. I very much like the haptic feedback that this controller gives you when scrolling around the screen. It is made of a sort of sticking material that grips your skin when you move over it. The feedback you get gives you much more accuracy in your movement then what you get from a flat, frictionless controller. I use it a lot for one handed operation. When you're reading a website without zooming in (yes, the high-res screen makes this entirely possible) it is much easier to use the controller to select a button then to hunt around with your fingers pecking on the screen.

4. Camera
This is not the best cameraphone. Sony still rules in that department. But it is a major step up from what we have seen before with HTC and on the iPhone. Compare to the latter, the addition of the flash makes all the difference in the world. Below you can see an image I took at a birthday party. It was completly dark when they brought in the birthday cake. The only illumination you see is from the candle and the built in flash. The image is not perfect and I would perfer less noise. But I managed to get a usable image that reflects the atmosphere and that is what counts in casual photography.

5. Marketplace
You can argue that Apple's Appstore has far more applications than Google's Marketplace. On the day where I compared the iPhone to the Nexus with my test-audience, we downloaded more then 50 applications on the Nexus and none on the iPhone. Why? Simple. The Nexus presents you with a lot of good and free applications. Whereas the iPhone presents you with mostly paying applications without a try-before-you-buy model. This makes the Marketplace a lot more attractive to endusers, which in the end will inevitably mean that there will be a stronger ecosystem around it and better applications generating more revenue.

5 things to cry for

1. Email
Yes, you can have Microsoft Exchange and Gmail mail pushed to your device. But both Blackberry and Windows Mobile manage this better. There is, for example, no way to tag multiple emails and delete them all at once. I'll probably look out for a better email client over the next week. But for most users, the built in capability will be OK.

2. Keyboard
There is no keyboard. The on screen keyboard and word suggestions work remarkably well, but I can type faster on a real keyboard. On the other hand, as a keyboardless device, the Nexus is a lot sleeker then my former Tytn II. I will probably get faster at using the on screen keyboard, but I will keep wondering if a Droid wouldn't have been a better choice for me. Like with cars, you don't buy a phone based on pure specs. The feeling and X-factor of the device certainly have to be taken into account (and the Droid is butt-ugly).

3. Default Homescreen
Don't get me wrong. The 5 homescreens that can be populated with icon's and widgets are a blessing. But why not already populate them with interesting presets, instead of putting seemingly random icons on them? Another thing I will never understand is why Google picked the annoying and ugly "Nexus neural network" live wallpaper. This will put off so many users. I quickly switched to the "Grass" background, giving a subtle effect that also gets darker when the night falls, reminding you it is time to go to bed.

4.Power Button
Packed with this much technology, I can't understand why there needs to be a power button. I would much prefer to just unlock the device with a swipe across the screen. Instead, I now have to press the power button and then unlock the device. A unnecessary two-step procedure.

5. Multi Touch
Google should not have left out multi touch features in the UI of the home screen, browser and media gallery. I understand the device hardware has the functionality and you can unlock the software to use it. If there is a patent problem with Apple, solve it.  But please, don't make users jump through hoops to get where they want to. BTW, I kind of like the double-tap to zoom in (just like in Opera Mobile) and the +/- buttons to zoom a picture. But I feel that multitouch will be essential for other applications so it should have been clear from the start that this is a genuine multi touch device.

PS: Pictures are available on my Flickr account with the tag Nexus under a Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons license