Hands on with Google Nexus One – briefly

I should be talking about Windows Phone 7 Series, but there's plenty of comment on that unreleased mobile OS so here's a brief hands-on report about the Google Nexus One. I had the opportunity to check out the SuperGooglePhone for a few moments recently, and my initial impression is that it's damn nice. The form factor is totally right:



As you can see, the phone sits nicely in your (well, my) hand. It's nice and slim too:



Slightly blurry picture of the back shows the phone's 2D bar code, which is unique for each device:



Next to the iPhone:



Made by HTC, the Nexus One feels nice and tactile, and well-built. It passes the "scrunch test" with flying colours.

The combination of a sharp 800 by 480 pixel AMOLED screen, 1GHz Qualcomm QSD 8250 "Snapdragon" processor and Android 2.1 "Eclair" OS makes for a bright and snappy user experience on the Nexus One. There's a 5Mpixel camera that the phone's owner says is pretty good, and it does have an LED flash too.

According to Google's specs, the Nexus ones comes with half a gigabyte each of Flash and RAM, and a 4GB Micro SD card - the phone can take up to 32GB SD cards. I forgot to check if it's now possible to install apps on the SD card, and not to just to the phone's memory.

 

Unfortunately, the Nexus One I had in my hand didn't like the Vodafone SIM I inserted into it, so I couldn't try out 3G and voice. I tried a few websites over Wi-Fi, and the phone rendered them quickly and well. Pinch to zoom too.

Again, reading Google's specs, the Nexus One seems best suited for Vodafone's network, with 900 and 2100MHz UMTS/HSDPA and HSUPA, with 7.2/2Mbit/s down and uploads maximum speeds. Voice-wise, the Nexus One does GSM at 850, 900, 1800 and  1900MHz, with EDGE support too. The hardware list seems otherwise pretty complete with AGPS, digital compass, accelerometer, Bluetooth 2.1 and EDR, stereo AD2P, etc.

Be interesting to see what the Nexus One will go for in New Zealand. Some of the online shops here are advertising it for $1,230 to $1,245, which seems steep as it's available in Australia for A$840 retail. Either way, the Nexus One looks like a capable device that's worth checking out.

 

 



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