Nexus One Review – Hardware and Software Review
Nexus One is a nice Snapdragon powered, one HTC phone that cleverly combines the friendly user interface with a slick industrial design. The phone can easily go head to head with iPhone 3GSs, or the Droid phones of the whole world. This mobile phone works with Android (2.1 “Flan).
Right now many are wondering if Nexus One is going to live up to the all the expectations that were made around it. Also, are we going towards Android autocracy?
Hardware
Anyone can tell that Nexus One is a handsome phone with some interesting edges, curved design, that makes you lust. The body is ultra-thin and no detail has been left to chance.
The Design
HTC has managed to reduce the thickness of this phone. Now it measures only 11.5 mm in thickness and 59.8mm and 119mm across, up and down. Also, the phone feels comfortable due to its curved edges and the tapered top. There are four hardware buttons, touch sensitive, on the display, laid out just like the four hard keys of Droid: home, back, menu and search. This looks like a new trend for the Google devices.
Internals
Nexus one uses on 1GHz Snapdragon with one CPU from the Qualcomm. It is the same type of processor that powers the HD2. Plus, the phone comes with 512MB of both RAM and ROM. But the downside is that you are still limited to a small partition dedicated to applications. The phone’s display is an AMOLED, a nice 480 x 800 capacitive touchscreen. It also comes with a proximity sensor, a light sensor and one accelerometer. Not to mention the fact that it has an HSPA-capable GSM radio, WiFi, one micro SD slot [preloaded with one 4 GB card] and AGPS chip.
The Snapdragon processor makes this phone a very fast one. But even if the applications open up quite fast, the phone does not bring an entire new Android experience, which for some users can be disappointing. Also, this phone does not have multitouch support, dual-mode capability for GSM and CDMA networks, and also the native tethering. Right now, the Outlook calendar syncing can not be used either.
The Display
Among the things that users seem to love about this phone is the display. The 3.7-inch display looks really good Speaking of touch sensitivity, the mobile phone seems to be the best one with Android. The resolution is quite high also, (480 x 800). But on the downside it does not have the 54 pixels that we were expecting, taken the size of the screen into consideration. But that is not so dramatic. It may bother you sometimes, with some Google applications. For example, if you use Gmail you will have to scroll a bit down to see the menus. But the main concern are the colors on this touchscreen. There are some over saturated colors used, some reds and oranges. This is one common effect that happens with the AMOLED displays. Many people consider it is a predefined setting making the colors appear brightly than they are, especially the oranges. Plus, if you want to take pictures outside in a sunny day, better forget about it. The light settings will not help you and your pictures will be a disaster.
But the fact that the phone has a gorgeous display, super fast lightning processor, take the edge off. Also, the enhanced voice capabilities are working flawlessly, giving the phone solid performance.
All in all, even if the phone has some features missing, Nexus One is a nice addition to the Android family and it brings good quality, with an improved voice control and the fast processor.