The flourishing Android operating system has appeared on phones made by Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG and HTC. Now Google has launched its own handset, though it’s actually made by HTC, which has made the bulk of Android handsets so far. Google Nexus One Nexus One: hardware by HTC, software by Google The thing about …

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Wednesday 10th March 2010 12:47 GMT Tony Hoyle

Best phone I ever owned

The source code to the OS is available and there are many alternate versions around if you don't like the stock one (I run cyanogen's version). Only the google apps themselves (maps, gmail, etc.) are in binary form.

I can get over 2 days battery life, but generally charge every day. 3G is excellent and always has been.. the problems reported only seemed to affect the US and have been fixed for ages anyway.

Of course it multitasks.. This is the 21st century..

Also working ipv6 out of the box (over wifi anyway, as no mobile phone providers I know of give you an ipv6 address).

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Wednesday 10th March 2010 12:47 GMT Mark Wheadon

Lack of apps?

To the earlier poster: When's it available in the UK? It is, and has been from day one, you just need to buy it without the true cost hidden in the airtime agreement. I'm in the UK, running it on O2 pay and go.

As for a lack of apps -- I don't understand that. What's missing? It's not how many apps there are in the store, it's what's available that matters. If there _are_ huge gaps in what's available then please let me know as I've been looking (tempted to do some Android development as I have for the Psion platform in the past) -- but I can't find anything missing!

Mark

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Wednesday 10th March 2010 12:47 GMT Jim T

Pretty much there

One advantage I find with this phone is that it's completely stand-alone, you don't need any software at all on your computer for day to day usage. Even upgrading the firmware can be done entirely on the phone itself.

By using web based apps, like facebook and google mail/talk, everything is just automatically sync'd with what you see on your computer.

It does work best if you use a google account to sync everything up. Also, the failover mode is awesome, especially if you allow google to backup everything - if you reset your phone, or get a replacement, everything is re-installed and restored automatically on the handset once you log back in to your google account. (SD card contents may be the exception here).

One downside I've found is that the touch screen can be slow: you can't play musical instruments like drums or keyboard on this phone and have any rythym - even tho the apps exist to let you. And typing can be a problem as it occasionally chooses keys completely unrelated to where you pressed. This isn't always a problem, my phone tends to go through spurts of this.

All in all, an excellent attempt, and the first gadget I actually use on a daily basis for ages.

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1. Wednesday 10th March 2010 19:29 GMT matt 115
  
  RE: Pretty much there
  
  "And typing can be a problem as it occasionally chooses keys completely unrelated to where you pressed."
  
  I find this happens if I am accidentally touching the screen elsewhere (usually with my hand I am holding it with), then when you touch to type it kinda averages them out. As it can detect mutli touch they should be able to fix this
  
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Wednesday 10th March 2010 19:29 GMT Anonymous Coward

@Mark Wheadon

There is no lack of apps (certainly no lack of essential and decent ones) on the Android Marketplace, that's the last myth the iTards have left.

The bottom line, is you can get all the good apps.

ebay, Facebook, Twitter, Shazam, Google Shopper and ShopSavvy, Skype etc and almost all the good iPhone games.

The difference is there is nowhere the amount of crud (the dumb stuff like the iFart and crap liek that)

The best bit, is there is no lockdown on Apps that Apple don't like. You can install APK files locally even if it's not on the marketplace...

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1. Thursday 11th March 2010 18:36 GMT Gulfie
  
  Give it time...
  
  "The difference is there is nowhere the amount of crud (the dumb stuff like the iFart and crap liek that)" - Give it time, Android hasn't had the same level of maturity that the iPhone OS has. With the 2.x release and now the Nexus I fully expect a flood of pull my finger apps to appear in double-quick time...
  
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2. Thursday 11th March 2010 21:34 GMT ThomH
  
  Re: the games only
  
  You're completely wrong about the games. For that one segment of the audience, the iPhone is a much better buy. See, for example, Street Fighter 4, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Driver or Rayman 2. Major mobile games companies like Gameloft (who licence a lot of the 90s properties for iPhone ports — they're responsible for Driver and Rayman at least) were scaling back their Android involvement at least as recently as November (source: http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/44758-gameloft-chooses-iphone-over-android).
  
  You're right about all the other categories of app though. I guess maybe it's just that supporting multiple device configurations is harder for games, which puts Android into an artificially worse position than mere OS market penetration would suggest?
  
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Wednesday 10th March 2010 19:29 GMT Peter Townsend

@ Matt115

So you seriously expect a technology site like the Reg or Trusted to flash the ROM of a review handset just to see if Cynogen works on it? Get a grip man, that is what the likes of XDA Forums are for.

And three posts on the one review? You must be scintillating company at dinner parties.

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1. Friday 12th March 2010 14:08 GMT matt 115
  
  @Matt115
  
  At least a mention of it and the features it adds would have been nice. The more technical review sites will overclock processors/GPUs when reviewing them, i dont see much difference.
  
  Meh, I was just answering peoples questions
  
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Wednesday 10th March 2010 19:29 GMT The Avangelist

there goes my hero

being an early adopter to android (a mistake I think) I've been waiting for some time for a positive spin, the platform and what it has to offer is so so close to being perfect. But it's still not there yet, and I don't think that this handset is what is going to make it happen. As correctly stated, it's the OS and how you add to it that really makes android glow and until we start to see some more 2.1 releases that aren't unstable colab's I wouldn't endorse the phones.

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1. Friday 12th March 2010 14:08 GMT James Whale
  
  Android 2.1 on Hero
  
  Isn't Android 2.1 due out on Hero any time now? Or did I dream it?
  
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Wednesday 10th March 2010 19:29 GMT Anonymous Coward

So...

...it's just an HD2 but with a shite screen and a trendy OS then?

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Wednesday 10th March 2010 19:51 GMT rfdparker2002

Just a further note on VAT...

As someone else who brought this from google.com/phone to the UK (without regional charger - you instead get a US charger - a shaving adapter plug works fine as the charger supports our voltage, and saved me paying duty) - yes, you will get charged around £60 in VAT (mine was just under £60), but this isn't charged by Google - it's sent separately as an invoice by DHL around a week after delivery.

Maybe/hopefully, when Vodafone bring out support for the subsidised version, you'll be able to have a unlocked version shipped from within the UK, avoiding VAT and duty.

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1. Thursday 11th March 2010 18:36 GMT Gulfie
  
  You won't 'avoid' VAT and duty...
  
  ... the duty will be bundled into the handset price and then VAT will be added in the usual way. I finally caved and ordered one online yesterday. Vodaphone won't be selling unlocked handsets (I have an iPhone on O2 so a locked phone is no use to me) and I'm expecting, like all US-origin goods, that there will be a small but significant mark-up to cover currency fluctuations. About the only benefit of waiting for a UK launch will be that you get a mains charger with a UK plug on it, but you can charge from any USB port and (I imagine) an Apple iPod/iPhone charger will work just as well...
  
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Wednesday 10th March 2010 20:52 GMT Phillip Williams 1

It's the dogs

Best 'phone i ever had...

Cheers!

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Wednesday 10th March 2010 20:52 GMT chuckc

1GHz Snapdragon, 512MB RAM...

...and they can't get the home screens transition scroll at full frame rate?? Same for the main menu and multiple other bits. I own one of those and I'm quite disappointed in both the fact that those engineers can't get extremely powerful hardware to animate a simple horizontal scroll at 60fps and also the touchscreen, either the hardware or the driver, is not really sensitive and misses a lot of touches.

As much as I hate some things on the iPhone, Apple got this right: a touch is a touch and always a single touch, and scrolls run at the same animation rate as the LCD, perfectly fluid.

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1. Thursday 11th March 2010 00:20 GMT c 1
  
  performance
  
  @chuckc,
  
  I have a HTC Desire and the Sense UI is blindingly fast. Much much smoother/faster/gorgeous than the iPhone. It is one of the first things you notice.
  
  I love this phone.
  
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Wednesday 10th March 2010 20:58 GMT iamapizza

Speaking of keyboards

I bought a Nexus One, but I really wanted a physical keyboard purely because it's faster to type on them. But then I found Swype. This keyboard lets you swipe along the letters of the word and it uses its dictionary to get the word for you. THAT proved to be faster than a physical keyboard, so I would definitely recommend it. However, it's in beta right now, which probably means that it's going to be a paid-for product pretty soon. Since *I* am dependent on it now, I will buy it, but I definitely think you Android owners should give it a try.

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Thursday 11th March 2010 00:16 GMT Big_Ted

It looks to me just like

A shrunk down Ipad..........

Even has the little button at the bottom

Will Stevo threaten to sue them on style ?

Would still have this than am iphone though.......

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Thursday 11th March 2010 00:17 GMT Anonymous Coward

Better?

I still find it hysterical that folk bash the iPhone despite the fact EVERY one of these new phones is basically an almost exact copy of the iPhone with a few tweaks in terms of faster processors or whatever. Its taken 3 years for the other companies who to get to a point where any of there phones is even a serious competitior, this being the first that can seriously be considered a "better" phone in terms of overall use but even then its got nothing really new, its just another iPhone clone with a faster processor allowing multi-tasking, aside from that for the day to day user theres really nothing different (if you put away silly irrational brand hatred) to make them consider switching.

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1. Thursday 11th March 2010 22:47 GMT konstructa
  
  Not True
  
  The I phone is not the first phone to do stuff. Its just the first phone to look nice. At the launch of the iphone my buddy had a windows mobile phone. It could, and still can, do everything the Iphone can. Remote logins, music, downloading torrents, administration,web browsing, etc. Instead of a finger you would use a pen and it looked no where near as good as an Iphone. It sounds weird when apple fanboy's say the Iphone is the first smartphone. It's not. TBH Apple needs to stop spending money on lawyers and start upgrading there product. The world now has phones that people think look as good as the i phone so deal with it and stop thinking Steve Jobs is from the future.
  
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Thursday 11th March 2010 00:56 GMT Goat Jam

Hard to Resist?

Hardly.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/industry-sectors/googles-nexus-one-smartphone-bypasses-australia/story-e6frg9hx-1225816762196

This is one thing that apple does right, at least for those of us in Oz.

Devices available in Australia;

Palm pre - NO

Google Nexus - NO

MS Zune - NO

Kindle - NO

Motorola Droid - NO

HTC Hero - YES

Jesus Phone - YES

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Thursday 11th March 2010 18:36 GMT Sometime

iphone 3gs vs Nexus

Friend has both, his job requires him to have latest gadgets for designing products and switched back to the 3GS after 2 weeks. Compared to the 3GS the Android has a pretty sluggish touch menu interface. Can't comment on how brilliant it is from a technical standpoint, but just looking at how sluggishly the menu behaves isn't likely to win consumer converts from the iPhone; the reason why iPhone / Xbox360 are doing so well is precisely because they are closed environments where the quality of the experience is fairly high. Unfortunately, the real world values slick > substance.

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1. Friday 12th March 2010 16:49 GMT chuckc
  
  Re: iPhone 3GS vs N1
  
  Same here, as mentioned in an earlier post of mine, I own a N1 and also a 3GS and gave the N1 a decent chance: 2 weeks of exclusive use with the 3GS in the drawer. After those 2 weeks, I went back to the 3GS for similar reasons: sluggish scrolling and touch detection, very inferior on-screen keyboard and... no games and decent applications! no Plants vs Zombies, no Final Fantasy, no powerful multilingual dictionaries (I have several of those on my 3GS), nothing.
  
  If I may add, the mail client is also pretty lame on the N1, and yes I have tried the free alternatives from the market, but they just don't cut it, the Mail.app on the iPhone OS just works better and is more intuitive to use.
  
  All in all, a great phone but for daily tasks, the 3GS is just better.
  
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Thursday 11th March 2010 18:36 GMT Anonymous Coward

HTC HD2

Personally I'll get the HD2, which has a better screen and battery life, then hack it to use the Android OS (the "unofficial" developers are already working on this) and have the best of both worlds.

My iPhone contract is up in just over a week - I can't complain as it's been a decent phone, but having had my fill of all the apps I could ever want, I want a more functional phone.

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1. Thursday 11th March 2010 22:39 GMT Shades
  
  I've just got one...
  
  and I don't regret it in the slightest! I've been a WinMob user for years (though I definitely wouldn't class myself as a fanboy) so I'm used to the quirks of WinMob. To be fair HTC have worked miracles with their SenseUI and only very occasionally do you get dumped into traditional WinMob style GUI's (which have been tweaked a little to take advantage of that HUGE screen real estate and resolution). The SnapDragon CPU flys, everything is smooth, the touchscreen is nice and responsive, the on-screen keyboard is really good and there is a plethora of other cool stuff in there too.
  
  For me the HD2 seems to be the lesser of three evils... iPhone is too closed (and seems very toy-like compared to the HD2, and side by side, the iPhone now looks VERY dated!!) and the Nexus is, well, just an opportunity for Google to grab even MORE of your personal information for it to sell to the highest bidder. No thanks Google!
  
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Thursday 11th March 2010 18:36 GMT Baldychap

I don't get it.

This review, and others, seem much more positive than the Milestone review, yet the Nexus One still only score 85%. The same as the milestone.

Are you seriously telling me the LG Viewty Smart is a better phone than either of these? It got 90%.... Maybe ratings should be reviewed over time, but your league table of phone reviews looks mighty odd.

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Friday 12th March 2010 14:08 GMT st2430

Phone or not a phone - that's the question

I have no experience from Android, but wish I had. I've been an iPhone 3G user for a bit over a year and even if the iPhone shines in certain areas, it's still a crap mobile phone! A better name would be something like iPod Voice. It lacks all the decent features that you would expect from a good phone, such as a ring signals that you can hear, vibrations that you can feel, location awareness, etc etc etc. I just bought a new car with Bluetooth handsfree support and even that has problems using the iPhone without sporadic problems. So my question is - are Android-based phones like Nexus proper phones or are they just walking in Apple's footsteps?

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1. Tuesday 23rd March 2010 18:04 GMT fordon
  
  androids and iphones
  
  if the iphone is the jesus phone becasue you have to believe in apple to buy it, the android is the devil phone because you have to believe in google to use it, to your detriment.
  
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Tuesday 16th March 2010 14:50 GMT lateriser

Personal review

I've had the nexus one for just over a month now. I have a contract with 3 and have signed up for their £5 a month internet service. I've found some good points and bad points about the nexus one.

Bad points:

The four buttons at the bottom. I've had trouble with these as they are not part of the screen, which is very nice and sensitive, they react differently. I've often found myself pressing them more than twice until it's actually reacted to the press.

Software glitches: I'm not sure if this is isolated to version 2.1 but occasionally I would have reset the handset as any reaction with the screen will send me to home. I always get the haptic feedback as well in these instances so they might be related to the four buttons again.

Battery life: This is to be expected from smart phones but the first few days I had it it ran out even during the night. I use my phone as an alarm and had a few days of getting up late because the phone died just by being on standby. I've since resolved this by downloading an app that can switch off some services that might drain the battery during the night and I get about 2 days out of it without charging and heavy use.

Good Points

Sync: The first thing I did when I booted the phone up was to check whether my google contacts were synced or not. They were all there and I entered a new contact via gmail on another computer, then used voice recognition to call the contact on the phone and it was there instantly. Very impressive!!

Mulit-tasking: to be able to have services running in the background I personally think is an absolute must for smart phones. To be able to have skype logged in constantly is great and I don't know how "other" smart phone users cope without it.

Speed: The nexus one is so fast and nippy. This is the first thing that people notice about the device. It's fantastic.

One last good point, and to summarise, is the apps. Even though the market isn't as large there are tons of other apks (android's install packages) out there. I've come across some great apps that resolved a lot of the bad points that I haven't mentioned.

All in all the hardware design has some flaws as mentioned but the software will improve as time goes on. Hopefully there will be a perfect design for the nexus two. :-)

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Friday 19th March 2010 10:21 GMT Alex Walsh

HA!

Expansys have emailed me to tell me that I can buy a Nexus One off them for £599! Wow, thanks but no thanks O_o

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Tuesday 23rd March 2010 18:04 GMT Anonymous Coward

androids

I am appalled by the pain inflicted on buyers of HTC Magic. This phone is made by the same manufacturer HTC, it makes me wonder why any customer would want to be treated like this by the originator of ANdroid when many other phones work, have built-in fm stereo radios, can use skype over WIFI, have flash LEDs for the camera, and do not waste batteries within half an hour.

the dictionary definition of android is "an automaton in the form of a human being"

it seems the more accurate definition in this context is "a human with the stupidity of an automaton"

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Tuesday 23rd March 2010 18:04 GMT Anonymous Coward

Just my ha'pennyworth

Nice phone, but Cafe Fanny - priceless!

(Keep it up Reg, I am so your target audience)

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