Nexus One Unboxing-Review

Three weeks, and counting, of using Google Nexus One and loving it!!!

I’ve been holding out on purchasing the Nexus One since its release due to the fact that I _know_ new gadgets will always have bugs, and I was right.. there are and still have issues, from 3g connection issues to touch screen issues to bluetooth issues etc… So, I waited close to 3 months and see if this is really a hardware problem or software and as far as I observed, its more of a software problem.

Below are my un-boxing pics, and my review will follow.

Nexus One Review:

Form Factor:

Nexus One’s form is pretty slick and clean. The only ‘real’ buttons are the power and volume buttons plus the trackball. I’m a minimalist and I prefer having a simple interface and simple layout and this really drew me in. Thickness was also a plus, thinner than the iphone. What can I say? I doesn’t bulk up my pockets and easily hide it from plain site. Yes… hide, considering that this is a $530+ phone, I wouldn’t want this to be stolen from right under my nose.

The screen is 3.7 AMOLED, superb color!! The different colors really stand out!

Whats inside:

• 1ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor
• 512 internal mem
• 4gig (expandable to 32gig) microSD
• Multitouch Capacitive Touchscreen
• 5.0 megapix camera

More data here…

Apps:
Android market… 30,000+ apps and counting… What else is there to say? Pretty much far from iphones app market but technically its already gaining ground. I have the apps that I needed to be mobile all the time… twitter app ( Seesmic ), facebook app, WoW Armory, SSH client, gmail, Gowalla, WordPress, Foursquare… ok I’ll stop there.. you get the picture.

Usability:

Keyboard-I’m technically a Nokia phone user and got used to the numberpad alphabet typing ( ‘a,b,c’ is under the number ‘2’ and has to be pressed multiple times to get the correct letter, you get the idea ). The qwerty keyboard took some time to get used to but its actually faster after some practice. Though a warning, if you have large fingers, you will be having problems pressing the small buttons in portrait mode.

Wifi/Bluetooth – no issues to wifi, connects to my Linksys WRT54G2, rooted to DD-WRT, flawlessly. I have one problem though, no option to add proxy server and authentication, which is a small let-down. I had problems sending calling card from my e51 to my Nexus One via bluetooth, never found reason why it cannot connect.

3G – Globe Telcom, my service provider, has 3G already but seems like Nexus One is not supported by them yet. Have to add the APN manually, which was automatically sent to my old Nokia E51 phone. 3G stability is really a hit-or-miss kind of a game. Depending of my location, I either get full 4 bars or I drop to 2 – 3 bars or no 3G at all and transfer to GPRS or EDGE. Regarding the 3G problem that happens after covering the bottom part of the phone, it does happen to me BUT on low signal or a lot of building or walled location.

Touchscreen – Capacitive touchscreen is responsive enough. Though there is a small problem with the bottom menu buttons not sensitive enough, sometimes I need to touch it more than two times to trigger it, not much of a biggie for me but some are not that patient. Multitouch do get wonky at times (i.e. maps), doesn’t affect me that much. Though I would like this to be fixed on later OTA. I have only encounter the touchscreen issue only once (knock on wood), pressing a button triggers the button below it, and hope that will be me last.

Overall:

Overall rating… I’ll give it an 8 out of 10. Why 8? One is the trackball, would have preferred a flat phone, rather than having a small bump at the bottom. Two… small touch screen issues, not much of a biggie but it does sometimes affect my overall experience. Three… Android Market not open to my location yet, I can only download free apps and non of those paid apps that I want. Yes, I can VPN to a country that is supported but that’s beside the point of having it right there and then without any of the hassles. Four…build-in memory is still limited, out of 512mb I only got somewhere 150+mb, which is unacceptable. I do know that rooting it will open up this limitation but I don’t have plans in rooting and voiding my warranty and future OTA will remove this limitation.

To top it off, it’s a great buy for me. All worth it! Though take note I’m more of a geeky, techie type and loves the control that Android gives me. I’m doing stuffs my colleague’s iPhone can’t, which uplifts my spirit a lot *grin* 😉

What I would like to see in the future, though, are compatible accessories for the Nexus One other than docks, that are already available (desktop and car). Flash 10, ok… I know this is coming but cant wait for it to arrive.

So, there you have it, Nexus One from Google.