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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xtremevarun - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Reviews of Nexus One on other sites were not as comprehensive as on Anandtech. You guys really explored all the features. Apple needs to do a major refresh to iPhone. And I do see Android becoming a major, major OS for phones if it's not already. WinMo7 also looks great. Good that competition is hotting up against the iPhone.xxNIBxx - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
What about Samsung's Bada OS? Samsung Wave s8500 beats the living crap out of all those Snapdragon devices. Also Samsung will release i9000 Galaxy S, which has pretty much the same hardware as with s8500, except it runs Android. Hardware wise, these 2 are the best phones in the world. Snapdragon is old news.Iphone 4g, which will come out in 2 months, will most likely use apple's a4, which from what i hear, is probably identical to samsung's 1ghz cpu(same cpu/gpu)/
sprockkets - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
If you receive a call over BT, does it1. Play the ringtone over the headset?
2. Play it on the headset only or both the speaker and headset?
3. Announce CID over the headset or even just the speaker?
sushantsharma - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Looks OK! But usability should not go for a toss! Or I am missing it and it is there?Chloiber - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
"It's got a Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8650 SoC"Thought the Nexus One (and the HTC Desire) use a Snapdragon QSD8250?!
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
You are correct :) Fixed!Take care,
Anand
Karl Brown - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
I will be receiving my Sony X10 on Tuesday.I hope the Sony will offer enough of the Nexus One's functionality to not make me regret not waiting longer for the Nexus One to become available in the UK.
jasperjones - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Thanks for the very thorough review. The one area were the review lacks depth is audio and video playback and syncing. Differences in this area are striking imo:1.) If you don't use iTunes as an iPhone owner, you're pretty much SOL. The Nexus One I could sync with iTunes using DoubleTwist. But I don't like iTunes. I can just use Explorer or Windows Media Player or Songbird (1.7 beta) to sync instead. The latest Songbird builds do an amazing job (they even converts WAV and FLAC files on-the-fly).
2.) Formats. I like that the the Nexus One supports OGG. FLAC support is coming (AFAIK it got added to trunk some time ago--idk if users will see it in FroYo or Gingerbread) Plus the Nexus One gives me everything the iPhone has (including M4A).
3.) The media player. I hate to admit it as a current Nexus One and previous iPhone owner, but here the iPhone with its iPod app wins hands down. The UI of the iPod app is infinitely more intuitive, whereas things such as playlist generation are a pain on Android (everything takes far too many clicks).
Because of 3.), I think the overall win in this category goes to the iPhone.
bstewart - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Outstanding review - really enjoyed your detailed assessment of the Nexus one compared to the IPone and Palm Pre. I have read a number of reviews on the Nexus one lately determining if it is the right device for me or not. After reading this review I am certainly more inclined to purchase it than before; especially based on it's pros and cons versus the IPhone. Thanks!Brian
cj100570 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
All in all I'm not feeling this review. There was way to much time spent comparing the Nexus to the iPhone. And your complaints about the notification system used by Android is just asinine. I'm the former owner of both an original and 3G iPhone and Android simply puts the iPhone OS to shame. The iPhone had it's 15 minutes of fame but it's time to face facts that Apples way of doing things is the biggest problem the iPhone has. As a smartphone it is a #FAIL. Sure it sells well but the honest truth is that most people buy it because it's an Apple product and because of all the apps, 80% useless, that Apple and AT&T trot out as the big selling point.