Despite generating near-iPad levels of hype Google doesn’t seem to have been in any particular rush to introduce its first branded handset, the Nexus One.
In the meantime the HTC Hero, T-Mobile G1 and Motorola Milestone have won plaudits on the Android platform. Well the Nexus One is here and it&rsquos worth the wait.
Built by HTC in close cooperation with Google, it’s equipped with the latest Android OS 2.1 (or Éclair). Although we’re not a fan of the colour, pictures don’t do its sleek lines justice. At 11.5mm deep, it makes the Hero look chunky, borrowing more stylistically from the iPhone.
The OS is incredibly intuitive, easily as smooth (if not quite as slick), as the iPhone’s, and with animated wallpaper and (gimmicky) 3D graphics. Customise five homescreens using widgets and shortcuts and scroll through them with a simple flick, or via the four dots at the bottom of the screen. The touchscreen is very responsive; rarely did we have to keep jabbing like with the Nokia N900 and multi-touch support to the US version, means you should soon be able to pinch zoom in on more complex websites like the iPhone. The virtual keyboard is a little cramped in portrait mode for large fingers, but reasonably accurate using the haptic feedback, with a banner of word suggestions.
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More on the Google Nexus One
- Google Nexus One hands-on pictures
- Google Nexus One video review
- Top tips for to get the best from your Google Nexus One
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The Nexus One is brought to life by an all-powerful 1GHz Snapdragon processor, accompanied by 512 megabytes of memory, ensuring the Android OS is a very smooth experience. There’s no waiting or stuttering for apps to load, web pages load quickly and you can swap quickly between applications. In terms of day to day tasks like browsing, it’s not dramatically faster than the iPhone 3Gs, but where the Nexus One draws plaudits is with multitasking support. Simply hold a button down and swap between programs that are open.
The 3.7-inch AMOLED screen is gorgeous. It’s exceptionally bright, contrast is excellent and colours are bold and vibrant; the blue of T3.com literally bursting out of the screen. It’s particularly good for viewing videos and photo’s which are crisp and clean, although is less effective in bright daylight.
Setting up push email and synching to your Google account is simple. Log in and it downloads all your contacts and appointments, it can synch with Facebook, so you can download profile pictures and status updates. You also get Microsoft Exchange support.
The Nexus One features speech recognition that translates text to speech via the microphone button or Car Home menu (as a handsfree option). Say a short sentence and it will be decoded by Google’s servers. ‘Pizza Express’ shows Google Search results, while ‘directions to London Bridge’ uses your location and launches Google Maps, with options for foot and car journeys. If you speak loud and clear it’s pretty accurate, although fail rates are much higher with people’s names.
The built-in web browser is fast and easy to use. It loads and renders big and complex web pages in mere seconds, easily comparable to the iPhone 3GS. Despite the UK version not having multitouch, double tapping works very effectively. Android 2.1 includes support for Google Navigation, a free sat nav application. Sadly it doesn&rsquot work in the UK yet, but with voice search, 3D satellite images and even traffic status, it&rsquos potentially a serious rival to sat nav apps.
The built-in music player works great and makes it easy to create and customize playlists as well as control settings such as shuffle and repeat. It supports album artwork and actually creates a dynamic background based on the artwork when browsing album contents. You can control playback through the supplied music widget or get directly to the player through the top pane in Android. A nice detail is the option to click the artist, album or song name and search Amazon Ṃ, YouTube, Google or even Pandora. Sound quality is excellent and you can use your favourite headphones thanks to the built-in 3,5 mm jack.
The 5-megapixel-camera takes decent pictures in favourable conditions and there’s a LED flash, although if we’re griping a Xenon flash would have been preferable. The Nexus One also captures 720 x 480 pixel videos, with a somewhat choppy 20 frames per second. Sharing your pictures and videos is easy. You just mark one or more in the impressively easy-to-navigate gallery and press the "Share"-button and you can upload pictures to Picasa or videos to YouTube.
Battery performance is comparable to other smartphones, lasting a day even if you really dig into it and use all the features. With more moderate use, you can get away with just charging it every other day.
 
With superb hardware and software that’s a joy to use, the Nexus One is the best Android phone to date, with support for multitasking and the powerful processor outstripping the iPhone 3Gs. It’s not quite an iPhone killer, because the UI isn’t as slick and lacks the wide app choice. But by adding multi-touch Google’s addressed an early criticism, when this and Google Maps Navigation arrive in the UK it’ll get even better.
Link: Google Nexus One
Review co-written by Jeppe Christensen and Hannah Bouckley
Price based on current Play.com pre-order site
