Anand's Google Nexus One Review

Performance: Faster but Choppier

Much like the display, the Nexus’ performance can be frustrating at times. First, the bad. Switching between pages on the home screen and scrolling through applications is downright choppy. The scrolling process isn’t slow, but the animation isn’t smooth - which makes the phone feel slower than it is. It’s a framerate issue that’s been present on every Android device I’ve used (for the life of me I can’t remember whether or not it was present on the Motorola Droid). It varies depending on the app as well. Scrolling through contacts is perfectly smooth, scrolling through Facebook isn’t. I doubt it’s a hardware issue but rather a software optimization/driver problem. Why it hasn’t been fixed by now is anyone’s guess.

Another inexplicably slow part of the Android experience involves getting the virtual keyboard to appear. The keyboard appears whenever you tap in a text input box. Doing so upon first entering an application (e.g. the SMS app) usually takes several taps before it’ll actually respond. It’s frustrating beyond belief and inexcusable given the horsepower of the Snapdragon SoC in the Nexus One. Again, this just seems to be a software optimization issue rather than an inherent platform limitation.

Now the good news. When launching and interacting with an app the Nexus One feels lightning quick, going back to the iPhone 3GS afterwards feels much slower. Applications respond with a sense of urgency that no other smartphone I’ve used can offer. This is a pure clockspeed thing thanks to the 1GHz Snapdragon from Qualcomm.

Loading web pages proved to be anywhere from 3 to over 50% faster than the iPhone 3GS. Launching simple apps didn't move any quicker on the Nexus One, but firing up the Maps and Camera apps (and waiting for them to be usable) was much faster on the Nexus One. The more processor intensive the task, the more the Nexus One can flex its muscle.

Those applications that spawn other apps (e.g. clicking on a Google Maps link in the browser and having it spawn the Maps app) also do so very quickly. If it weren’t for frame rate issues, the Nexus One would be perfect from a performance standpoint.

It’s weird, the flexibility that Android offers is very PC like. And by that, I mean that the platform really does feel like a condensed version of Windows or Linux running in a smartphone. Unfortunately, the weird quirks also seem to come with the package. In fact, I’d say Android really does feel like a more modern version of what Windows Mobile used to be rather than an iPhone, webOS or Windows Phone 7 competitor.