It’s been around 2 weeks since I’ve got my hands on my new Nexus One. I’ve got pretty excited when I saw the DHL vehicle parking in front of my office to deliver it (yeah! I was waiting for them). I’ve got the same level of excitement even now, writing this blog and I am really happy to say, this gadget has exceeded my expectations. That’s my review in short. It’s awesome and it changed the way I’ve been experiencing the web. On the downside, there isn’t a single day my friends haven’t asked me, “is this phone more important to you than us?” both joking and seriously.
As they say, this is definitely “Web meets phone”. Previously, there wasn’t a single day I don’t use my laptop. After I got Nexus One, I haven’t used it more than 4-5 times. I do most of my ‘web-things’ using Nexus One, such as mails, messengers, social networking, news etc. After I started using Nexus One, my ‘online presence’ has increased a lot.
Now to the review I’ve offered. I wanted to post this after the first couple of days, but I felt I won’t be doing the phone justice by an early review. That’s why I waited patiently and jotted down the points.
Disclaimer: This review is solely based on my experience as a consumer. This might not be true for any of the other Nexus One’s out there. I have tried my best not to be biased, but then again, I love this phone.
1. Device (General)Fast, fast, really fast: The thing I was sceptical the most was about the speed of the device before I bought it. I’ve got to admit, it’s really fast. Gone are the days when we press an icon and wait for the phone to load the application. I don’t know whether it’s android or the
hardware, which is also pretty impressive. I haven’t been much of a smart phone user before, mainly because I felt it was not the right time to get one. But I always tried to be updated and whenever possible tried different phones. None of the experiences matches with this one.
Multitasking: You can use anything with anything (use any app with any other app). This is really an awesome feature. I can talk over phone and at the same time share images or web pages or videos etc with them. And this is going to be a long post.
2. Web Experience“Everything is in the cloud, babe”: Since Nexus One is directly from Google, all of their services are tightly integrated to the phone. To me, it’s a boon as I use almost all their services except for a very few. For e.g. I prefer Flickr (to Picasa), Facebook (to Orkut), twitter (to buzz) etc. For some users, it might be a curse as you may have to rely on third party apps for things like contacts or reminder (calendar) if you don’t like syncing with your Google account. Some of my experiences are given below.
Contacts: If there is anything I don’t like about Nexus One, it’s the contacts. I had to spend around two days to get everything right. I used to store all my contacts in my SIM card. After I inserted it and copied the contacts, I couldn’t see them in the contacts list even after I disabled syncing with Gmail. But they all get added to my Gmail contacts (multiple times as I copied it multiple times) and my address book was in a big mess. After spending around one day merging and deleting the duplicate copies of my contacts to Google contacts, I added my Facebook account. It synced everything to my contacts and messed up everything again and I was back to square one. The same thing happened with my Orkut, twitter and other accounts. Finally I decided not to sync any of my accounts except my Gmail & Facebook account. Some of the other problems I faced (and still facing) with contacts are,
1. There is no option to set a phone number or email id as the default option. Some of my contacts have multiple numbers – personal, mobile, work, home and multiple profiles – Google, Facebook, Orkut etc. I cannot find the option to set a particular number or profile as the default.
2. Joining contacts from different accounts is also a mess. The phone automatically chose the default name for the contact. I have friends with multiple profiles. They have same mail id, but different display names in different accounts. I want to choose the display name, but I am unable to do so. Even if I edit my Gmail contacts, it may display another profile’s info as the display name.
Syncing: I noticed most of the syncs, especially YouTube takes some time. This happened when I favourite-d a video using my laptop and tried to accessing favourites via Nexus One.
Browser: The browser is really fast with features like the pinch to zoom, multiple windows, bookmarks etc. I cannot find much of a difference between a normal (PC) browser and the Nexus One browser. A double tap automatically formats the page to display screen after zooming which is really easy for reading. I am eagerly waiting for Froyo (Android 2.2) for flash support. Some of the features I wish for in the future version of the browser are,
1. YouTube video in browser restarts when switched to other tasks. It would have been nice if there was a ‘resume’ feature.
2. I haven’t figured out which fonts are supported by Android and how to install them. I read regional language news and that is one thing I miss as Nexus One doesn’t support Malayalam fonts.
3. Even though there is pinch to zoom capability in browser, it won’t work if the browser is opened from other apps, say twitter for example. That’s really annoying.
Mail: Since my main account is Gmail and my work accounts are also sync-ed with Gmail, I don’t have to use another email client. But to send using my work mail servers, I have to configure the email client provided. I haven’t been able to do that till now. The Gmail app is cool, but I would like to see a few additional features implemented in future.
1. I have configured multiple accounts in my Gmail account and when I compose mail from a PC, I can choose which account to send from. I cannot find this option in the Gmail app.
2. When I press the attach button during ‘compose’, it opens the gallery. Instead I would have loved if it opened the file system. Now I use a third party file explorer to tackle this issue.
3. Unlike the PC version of Gmail, there is no ‘frequency based email id selection’. If I want to mail a friend with multiple mail ids, I have to type the exact mail id, and cannot simply select the one on the top. Also the email ids won’t fit in the screen in portrait mode.
3. AppsLots of ‘em: I have seen iPhone ads which boast over 250,000 apps and Android store having only around 50,000. Come on people, do you really think you are going to install all the apps? I haven’t had any problems finding the apps I needed. One might argue its because I was not a previous smart phone user. In the worst case, you always have the choice of writing your own app since Android is an open platform. And believe me, it’s not that tough if you know java. (Yes, I have some experience with that)
Gtalk: We cannot change the “Available”/ “Busy” status without changing the current status message. There is no option of simply using the same status message and changing the status as in the Gtalk PC application. Hope they add this feature in the next release.
Maps: I would love to see the map data stored locally in the phone, so that I don’t need a data connection while travelling (especially when I am at sea).
4. Display, Camera & GalleryThe display is gorgeous. The colours are so beautiful that you won’t feel like taking your eyes of the screen. The AMOLED screen can be used smoothly even in bright sunlight. It’s got a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash. Normal users (who need some/any camera) can use this as a replacement for their point and shoot cameras. Unfortunately, I - being a power user - don’t fall in that category. I feel phones are not yet ready to replace even point and shoot cameras.
Don’t get fooled by the appearance. To test the camera and the display, I took 2 similar snaps with Nexus One and Canon IXY910 IS during one of my recent trips. The shot with Nexus One looks awesome in the phone even better than the canon one. But when seen in a normal display, it doesn’t look that great. Check their properties (attached) for the details. (Notice the time difference between the two shots, as they were not taken exactly at the same time)
Taken with Nexus One
Properties of photo from Nexus One’s Camera
Taken with Canon Digital IXY 910IS
Properties of photo from Canon IXY 910S
Some of the other comments are,
1. The camera settings menu gives only very basic settings. Atleast a custom timer option can be easily implemented, I guess
2. As for the image editing part, after I crop an image to set as wallpaper, I noticed the images losing their clarity. I didn’t dig much in to this, so it may be a problem with what I did.
3. There is also the issue of photos not being loaded to the gallery immediately after they are taken. Sometimes, when the gallery is opened right after the photos are taken, they may not be there. So, it would have been nice to have a refresh button for the gallery.
5. ConnectivitySince I do not have a data plan, I depend heavily on Wi-Fi. In Singapore, you will find connectivity almost everywhere. At shopping malls, there is Wireless@SG program and one can easily find data access.
WiFi Stack: It’s fast and almost perfect. Yeah, almost perfect. There are many features I would like to see in the WiFi utility/stack in the future,
1. The main one being the ability to set priority for hot spots. There are two hotspots in my office and I want to set the priority between those two.
2. Most of the hotspots these days use web captive portal method for authenticating users. So it would have been easy if Nexus One could remember the user names. This is not the “remember username and password” feature in the browser I am talking about, but the “Adding to dictionary” feature. My login ID is a weird combination of my name and the department name. Every time I have to manually type it rather than selecting from a set of choices shown. It’s a pretty basic feature I have seen in other phones, but not in Nexus One.
6. BatterySpace for improvement: Hmm, this is one place all the smart phones need improvement. With Wi-Fi & GPS turned on all the time and on medium display brightness level setting, I have to charge the mobile once every 12-18 hrs on an average. While charging, it gets a bit hot, but not as much as my previous Nokia handset.
7. Music PlayerSimple and Plain: The main functionality I wish for in music players are the ability to sync manually, which is already there. I love the Nexus One player for just that reason. I haven’t tested any third party music players. Some of the features I am looking forward in the future version are
1. MP3 tag editing option
2. Wireless Synching like Microsoft Zune
8. Miscellaneous ExperienceSome of the features I am really looking forward which cannot be classified in to any of the above categories are
1.
Undo: The most important feature which is applicable everywhere in Nexus One is the ‘undo’ feature. When I tap the textbox and if it selects an already typed text and if I accidentally touch the keyboard, it’s gone forever. I can’t find the undo option anywhere.
2.
Search: When I click the search button, the search box comes with the previous searches. When I select any of the previous search terms, it directly start searching, I want it to wait till I press the search button, so that it will enable appending of additional search terms, before it start searching.
3.
Wireless mounting: Accessing of Nexus Ones storage over WiFi. I don’t want to carry my data cable everywhere I go.
4.
Landscape Dock: The dock available now is only for the portrait mode. If there was a landscape dock available, it would have helped for watching videos.
5. The fact that to enable simple speed dial we have to install a third party app is a bit irritating. I hope the android team will include speed dial in the future revision.
ConclusionI have barely scratched the surface of the things I wanted to write here about Nexus One, especially why I love it so much. At the same time, I didn’t want this to be a long post which even I don’t want to read. Since I had time & space limitation, I mainly focussed on the features which are not currently there in Nexus One. The experience Nexus one offers far outweighs all the missing things I had mentioned above. Then again, there is not much point in writing about all the features which is already very well covered in the common technology blogs. Over all, I love my decision of going for a Nexus One.
I hope this post helps some of you who is confused about which phone to go for. I would definitely say, go for Nexus One.
Just after I bought it
One of the very first photos which showed me IXUS’s potential
A beautiful moment from my life back in 2006 - taken during our trip to Kalakayam, Trivandrum
X’mas celebrations at my old office
Underwater Self-Portrait - One of my first experiments with the underwater photography
Water-vision – This is how you will see sky if you look up under water
Fireworks – I never got enough of ‘firework’ photography
A nostalgic moment
Time standing still – Saying goodbye to one of my best friends, ever.
Family Reunion – My grandmother’s 80th birthday celebrations at my home
Vishu – A local festival
I always loved colors...
Panoramic View – I was breathless when I first saw what this camera was capable of
Another X’mas at home
After a rainy morning
Playing hide ‘n seek
Singapore!
Friends forever – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Nemo and his father – it’s a totally different world down there
Me, after my first set of dives
One hell of a start – New year celebrations at Phuket, Thailand
Final moments – I think that’s when water started getting in the cover
Last shot – The last shot which my IXY 800IS took
