Anand's Google Nexus One Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 3, 2010 3:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Camera
The built in camera on the iPhone is frustratingly bad. It’s better than no camera at all, and the improvements made to the 3GS camera are welcome, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what’s in the Nexus One.
The camera app launches quicker on the Nexus One and seems to boast a higher framerate while you’re just panning around preparing for your shot. There is no tap-to-focus control like what you get on the 3GS, just point and click the shutter button. The (virtual) shutter lag is still present, but far less than what’s on the 3GS. From a performance standpoint, it’s good.
Image reviewing in the camera app is silly. No gestures are supported, you have to tap left/right arrows to cycle through images.
As far as picture quality goes, it’s not bad at all. Definitely an improvement over the iPhone 3GS, but not as good as a standalone point and shoot. The built in “flash” is useful in improving picture quality in less than ideal lighting conditions, but it can’t work miracles obviously.
Indoors. Shot using the Nexus One (cropped & scaled)
Switching between still and video modes on the camera is so much quicker than on the 3GS. It’s almost to the point where you shouldn’t need to switch modes at all and just choose picture or video with a different shutter button.
The Gallery Application & Music Playback
All of your photos and videos are stored and played back using Android’s Gallery app. Google toyed with some neat UI effects to make this much less of a boring app, but fundamentally it just gets you to your content.
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MP3s are played back using the Music app, and again its function is pretty straight forward. The iPhone uses iTunes as its obvious music store of choice, while the Nexus One uses the Amazon MP3 store. You get the same basic functionality for searching, previewing and purchasing music.
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Mr Alpha - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
To me it looks like the percentages in the website and app loading table are backwards.Dark Legion - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Is there any way you can perform a test to see how long the battery lasts while the GPS is being used? Thanks...Barack Obama - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Nice article, thanks...Will be interesting to see WinMo 7 when it comes out. Definately an exciting time for smartphones.
dguy6789 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Very thorough, very informative. Probably the best N1 review I have read.Just wanted to point out two things.
When you web browse on the N1, double tap the text that you want to read and the website will shape up to be perfectly readable on the N1 in portrait mode. Landscape isn't necessary for web browsing.(I thought it was at first too until I learned of the aforementioned feature)
Typing on the N1 is infinitely better if you use landscape mode. I pretty much always turn it sideways and type with a dual thumb method very quickly when I need to type something lengthy such as a text message or email.
A5 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
The voice recognition system does more than just what you mentioned - you can use it to launch some other programs, especially Nav. For example, if you say "Navigate to (Wherever)" it'll open Navigation and (if it's ambiguous) show you a list of options based on a Maps search of what you said - pretty cool stuff.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
The NExus One LACKS multi touch in its keyboard. That's why its 100x harder to speed type than on the iPhone. Trust me. I've spent HOURS in front of my Droid and Nexus one testing multitouch, comparing it to an iPod Touch/iPhone 3GS. It's night and day without multi touch.This is the REAL multitouch many people forget. Sure you can pinch zoom maps and pinch zoom browser, but honestly those aren't as important as having a multitouch keyboard. If you really want to type on an onscreen keyboard, you NEED multitouch. Currently, the only market solution is Smart Keyboard Pro that offers Android 2.0's multitouch capabilities.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
I did neglect to mention the missing multitouch on its keyboard, I'll add that in. But if you remember, the iPhone lacked multitouch on its keyboard at first - something that really bothered me after using a Blackberry for so long. For me, that's not what's limiting my typing speed today though. The predictive text/autocorrect on the Nexus One by default just isn't as good as the iPhone's.Take care,
Anand
spideryk - Sunday, April 4, 2010 - link
Swype is the answer to text input on a smartphone. once youve gotten used to swype, you can type one handed with out looking at the keyboard.strikeback03 - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
Maybe it is just how Swype works on my Diamond, but I certainly can't reliably type one-handed without looking. Swype is the only keyboard I have found that does not require rotation to portrait mode on the Diamond to type, but just testing a Droid in-store I would say I was about as fast using the software keyboard as I am after 5-6 months with Swype.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Also Anand, if you read up a little abou the choppiness in scrolling it's due to the dithering of images and stuff. If I recall correctly, 2.0 had dithering implemented properly so smooth scrolling was not an issue.2.0.1 and above has failed to deal with this. There are fixes for this, and I've seen Droid and Milestone users use it. I'm almost positive it can be applied to the Nexus One.