My Thoughts On Nexus One

I’ve had my Nexus One for a few weeks now, and I thought I’d weigh in a bit.  I guess you could say I’m a bit of a cell phone guru, as I’ve had close to 20 cell phones in the past 10 years.

In terms of the physical hardware, I’m beyond impressed.  It oozes class and sex appeal.  It’s sleek, light, comfortable to hold and attractive to the eye.  The screen is simply stunning to look at, which leads to it being the biggest battery culprit.  I like the track ball, which is functional to use at times, but more importantly, extremely helpful when it lets loose its little pulses to let me know that a notification is waiting.  This is a feature I yearned after for months on my Palm Pre, which is STILL only available as a hack.  I also enjoy the soft buttons at the bottom of the screen, which add another layer of usability and helps save on screen space.  All in all, I’d give the design an A+, with the only thing I’d have changed is the addition of another button on the side to map functionality to (the camera in my case).

The OS itself is a truly solid.  It contains all the functionality that I could think of, and more. It is designed in a way that is simple to use, yet extremely customizable.  You can get your fingers into all the little nooks and crevices, and if you can’t, there’s an app that allows you to on the marketplace.  I’ve had very few issues with lockups or crashes, but there are still hiccups.  There will be times when I’ll have to force quit an app, or something won’t respond appropriately to my input, but it’s few and far between.  Android 2.1 on the Nexus’ Snapdragon processor is blazing fast.  I can move with ease from screen to screen, app to app.  I initially didn’t think I would use the multiple screens, but it definitely makes things easier and less cluttered.  I haven’t dove into widgets too much, but the few I have are very useful, in particular the widget that lets me turn on/off WiFi/Bluetooth/GPS/sync and adjust screen brightness -  I absolutely love that feature.   Notifications are done great, and in an unobtrusive way.  The transcribing tool built into any text field makes life easier, in particular because of the fact that it WORKS.  I sent a friend a text the other day that said “Off to see Doctor Parnassus, will let you know”, and it transcribed the entire message including Parnassus without any intervention from me.

Some things that need work:  UI design, and the marketplace.

The UI needs a redesign to compete with Apple.  I’m guessing Google wants to let the TPM’s put their own UI flavors on their devices, but with the birth of the Nexus, the onus is on Google to improve the look and feel.  A lot of the apps are lacking in the beauty department, in particular third party apps.  Say what you will about functionality, but the sex appeal of a phone is a huge selling factor.  Many developers seem to be dropping the ball on this front.  I’ve seen very few developers pay attention to design in any meaningful way, and I’m left yearning for more.

I’d really like to see more of a direction of how the gallery app looks in 2.1.  It’s clean, it’s beautiful, it’s simple, and it’s functional.  There’s just another level of fidelity that you don’t find in the other applications, and it’s something that I think many iPhone developers would be jealous of if they were to implement this into other applications.

But most importantly, is the marketplace.  The success of any (smart)phone at this point is directly related to its application support.  So far, Google has dropped that ball into a well, and covered it with a lid.  There are some great apps on the marketplace, but I’m talking about maybe 15-20, that I’ve found that are not made by Google themselves.  If I search for “top apps” on Android, I see the same apps listed on every site.  Very few games look appealing to me, and very few of the major publishers have titles on there.  Apps that I’ve used on the iPhone or even in some cases the Pre just lack the polish on Android.  Google needs to make a massive push for developers, and soon.

Aside from that, this is the best phone I’ve ever owned.  I could not be happier with my purchase, and I strongly believe that Android has a long and healthy future ahead of it, especially if they can tackle the developer issue.