Hands on: Google Phone Nexus One review

Will this mobile propel Android into the big time?

By Gareth Beavis

Snappy movement

As you will have probably heard, the two main points of interest on the Nexus One Google phone are the super speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor, and the upgraded Android 2.1 firmware.

Well, the former is certainly on show to good effect, as the Nexus One is quite the nippy beast. From the 'Living' wallpapers (which will react to your touch, or other elements on the phone, such as music playback) to menu opening and Gallery browsing, everything moves instantly under the touch, as you'd expect it to on a high end phone like this.

The new menu screen, which does away with the drag-up tab in favour of a more conventional menu button, is nice enough, with a weird 'falling away' motion for the icons at the top. We were a bit nonplussed by this, but Google got very excited by it, so we thought we might mention it.

The Gallery has also been overhauled as well, and makes good use of the Snapdragon processor. Not only do you get easy access to all you photos at once, grouped by a number of options including date, but zooming in and out of them is a cinch, with very little lag in the time taken.

Google is also offering the option to tilt the phone in the Gallery to see your pictures slide around – we have to admit we're not fans of this action since Samsung brought it to its phones and we had to spend a long time looking at our photos with a very still hand.

Easy browsing

The internet browser is similarly top notch, rendering pages with awe-inspiring speed over Wi-Fi, and pretty handily over 3G too – much, much faster than your average smartphone, and on a par with Apple we reckon. We didn't have the opportunity to test Flash video on the device, but we assume it's not going to be present as multi-touch pinch and zoom is not included either.

This omission is particularly annoying as the Hero and the Milestone both carry it, and we can see no godly reason why the Nexus One wouldn't follow suit.

However, the good news is that the Hero-style smart fit text algorithm is back on the internet browser, so no matter how much you zoom in on the text, it's always going to stay within the confines of the screen.

We also had a little bit of a dabble with Google's much-touted 'voice to text' function, where you can speak any words you would normally write down on the device. The accuracy of this was mixed, with a longer text message unable to make out our mumblings into the microphone.

However, for text search boxes, such as those found on YouTube, it worked every time, which was a real plus.

Big deal?

It's hard to say whether the Google Nexus phone is going to be a big deal in 2010 – it has very strong HTC leanings apparent in the chassis, but none of the good stuff underneath; how amazing the phone would have been with a spot of Sense UI running along below the surface.

The lack of multi-touch also rankled with us – how can a phone expect to compete with the iPhone if it's not going to be able to perform the coolest tricks its Apple counterpart can?

But on the other hand, irrespective of all this Google hype, it is still an awesome phone. Android is just getting better and better and better, and the addition of things like live wallpapers and the forthcoming Google Earth application just show how cool the OS has become.

We'll reserve judgement until our full and in-depth review, but we're quietly confident that when people ask 'which phone shall I get?' we'll be pointing a few in the direction of the Nexus One.

Sulamérica Trânsito

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