Anand's Google Nexus One Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 3, 2010 3:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Barcodes & Goggles - Making Science Fiction Reality
The best way I can put this is that the Nexus One likes to do math on things. If anything it’s a testament to Moore’s Law and the fact that we can do more in the palm of our hands today than we could do on our desks a decade ago.
Android has a built in barcode processing library that it can use alongside the Nexus One’s integrated camera to act as a fancy barcode scanner. The combination has two major implications:
1) There are many applications that allow you to scan any barcode (e.g. off a book at a bookstore or an Xbox 360 at Walmart) and return pricing results. Google’s own shopping website when browsed with an Android phone has a scan barcode button that will activate your phone’s camera and return Google Product Search results. This doesn’t bode well for brick and mortar retailers, but it’s great for walking into Best Buy and quickly finding out if something you want is cheaper online.
2) You can also use the barcode scanner to download apps from the Android Marketplace. You may have seen QR codes before:
Open any barcode scanner application and point the camera at the QR code and your phone will automatically take you to that application in the marketplace.
While the iPhone does have barcode scanning abilities, the infrastructure doesn’t appear to be as well built as what’s in Android. That being said, I thought I’d be using this feature a lot more than I ended up doing.
Such interwoven barcode scanning is super neat at first. I found myself scanning everything physically possible.
Price comparisons in stores are nice, but I rarely shop in brick and mortar stores. If I do, I usually need whatever it is I’m shopping for right then and there so any mobile price comparison doesn’t help. I suspect that for a slightly more mainstream user, this feature has more value.
In downloading Android apps, I find it faster to simply use the marketplace. The exception being if I see a news post about an app I’d like to try out, usually there’s a barcode I can scan in the newspost. The capture and scan of the barcode usually takes long enough (gotta hold your hand still) to make it no faster than just using the marketplace app though. In this case, the Nexus One gets more points on paper but not as many in real world usage.
Google also ships the Goggles app on the Nexus One’s Android build. Similar to the barcode app, Goggles performs a rudimentary image search for anything you point the camera at. It works really well for things like logos right now, but it’s not powerful enough to do much more.
Ultimately the strength in these two apps comes in their ultimate end goal: the ability to point your smartphone camera at anything and find out exactly who or what it is. See a funny looking animal walking around? Point, search, ah-ha results! Does that person look familiar to you? Point, scan, done. We’re not quite there yet but given Google’s data mining origins, it makes sense that its start begins with Android.
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Antioch18x - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Not only that but I didn't see mention of using a background task killer with "auto kill." (But, granted, I didn't *read* the whole article as I already own a N1 and didn't need to see your impressions of it). Due to the Android's method of multitasking, many times you don't actually exit an app when you think you do - it continues running in the background. You really do need a background task auto-killer to get the best battery life. This is one flaw, I think, in Android.Anyways, keeping this in mind I find that your battery life tests may be off. I get better battery life on my N1 than the old iPhone 3G.
spideryk - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
There are alternative keyboards available for the android. as of right now swype keyboard is the best available means of entering text on a smart phone. once you get used to swype, you only need one hand to type and most of the time do not need to look at the keyboard to type. a must have on android.bob1939 - Sunday, April 4, 2010 - link
Great review as usual but you missed something I consider critical. The lack of support for hands free bluetooth dialing.Where I live it can cost $180 if you are caught using a handheld phone while driving, so Hands Free dialing is a must.
Worse Google insists in calling his shortcoming an enhancement and shows no sign of fixing it in the near term.
For me this is a showstopper.
Bob Benedetti
dvinnen - Sunday, April 4, 2010 - link
Not sure what you mean by blue tooth dialing but there is certainly voice dialing. The whole voice integration in Android is really fantastic as Anand said in his review.bob1939 - Sunday, April 4, 2010 - link
I mean leave the phone in your pocket and press the button on the steering wheel, on the bluetooth speaker or bluetooth earpiece and say call whoever and the phone dials the number.My understanding of the N1 and other Android 2.1 devices is that you have to press something at least twice on the phone to operate the voice dial. Where I live that will cost $180 if you are seen by a cop fiddling with the phone while driving.
Bob Benedetti
LongTimePCUser - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link
I have a Motorola Droid and a 2006 Toyota Prius.The Droid connects via BlueTooth with the Prius.
I can dial a phone number on the Droid from the Prius touch screen.
joe6 - Sunday, April 4, 2010 - link
1) Good: Nexus One has a microSD card slot. Big advantage in my book.2) Bad: Nexus One doesn't support Exchange/Outlook calendar sync without going through the Google cloud services. This is just silly and frankly, kills the deal for me. I think most Nexus One RMAs come from this bullet alone.
Pitne - Monday, April 5, 2010 - link
There an app for this. How do you people miss the point that is android? Android is all about being open and not LOCKED DOWN like apple. So go download the more functional exchange apps and STFUCali3350 - Sunday, April 4, 2010 - link
Not sure if you posted it and I missed it or if you simply don't want to say in a public forum (which is understandable) but which do you , Anand, see yourself using in the future - the Nexus One or the iPhone 3GS? That sort of message says a lot about the current state of the platforms.Anand Lal Shimpi - Sunday, April 4, 2010 - link
Honestly, I'm torn.After the review I switched back to the 3GS because of the simplicity and the keyboard (I type a *lot*). In doing so, I miss the screen, form factor (ugh it was painful holding the iPhone to my head for an hour long phonecall vs. the Nexus One), some of the apps/features and the speed of the Nexus One. Today my answer would be the 3GS, but after using the Nexus One so much over the past few weeks I have to say that some aspects of the iPhone really do feel archaic.
What I may do going forward is continue to alternate between the two to get a better feel for their respective strengths and weaknesses.
Take care,
Anand