How Does the Google Nexus Phone Rate?
The Google Nexus Phone
How much more anticipation can you get in a mobile phone?  We thought the launch of the Apple iPhone was big, but the hype and excitement over Google's entry into the smart phone market has been unprecendented.  So what is this phone?  The HTC-built device runs Android 2.1 ona 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 3.7-inch, 480 x 800 display.  It has 512MB of ROM, 512MB of RAM, and a 4GB microSD card, which can be expanded to 32GB. The phone is a T-Mobile device, which will mean it is not 3g mobile if you want to take it to AT&.
 
The Nexus One has a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, and we have to say so far the pictures it snaps look pretty decent (and the camera software is much faster than the same component on the Droid). The phone is incredibly thin and sleek -- a little thinner than the iPhone -- but it has pretty familiar HTC-style industrial design. It's very handsome, but not blow-you-away good looking. It's a very slim, very pocketable phone, and feels pretty good in your hand.
 
So what do the People say?  Let's look at some of the reviews:

Boy Genius Report (Jan 2010):  There are so many fundamental issues with Android’s OS that still haven’t been addressed and it really makes my head spin. Uniformity is not a word you’ll find in Android’s dictionary. How about the fact that the application icons aren’t the same size. Uh, why? Since there’s no transparent padding around the icons — you know, something that might be smart — there’s no uniformity in the touch areas when you go to tap on an icon. The fact that the Clock and Camera icons have different touch areas than the Facebook and Email icons is mind blowing. It’s not like you’ll always end up not triggering a touch event if you go to hit the Camera icon instead of the Maps icon real fast, but more than once I’ve had touch events not register due to icons not being uniform in size or at least in touch. It’s a small, but very important point that really reflects how poorly Android is designed in some areas.  

CNET Reviews - Bonnie Cha - (Jan 2010): "Items like the durable unibody construction, the blazingly fast Snapdragon baseband processor and the bright and sharp Active-Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display all have been seen in previous phones, but never before combined into a single design," Kevin Keller, senior analyst for iSuppli, said in a statement.  The most expensive of the 17 components in the HTC-built phone is Qualcomm's 1GHz Snapdragon processor, which rings in at $30.50, or nearly 20 percent of iSuppli's estimated bill of materials. Snapdragon debuted in February 2009 in the Toshiba TGOI, which is based on Windows Mobile. But iSuppli found the ARM-based processor to be better utilized in the Nexus One.

Engadget - (Jan 2010):  Now, of course everyone seems to have one question about the device -- is this the be-all-end-all Android phone / iPhone eviscerator? In two words: not really. The thing that's struck us most (so far) about the Nexus One thus far is the fact that it's really not very different than the Droid in any substantial way. Yes, we'd say the design and feel of the phone is better (much better, in fact), and it's definitely noticeably faster than Motorola's offering, but it's not so much faster that we felt like the doors were being blown off. It is very smooth, though we still noticed a little stuttery behavior (very slight, mind you) when moving between home pages.

Reader Reviews (Jan 2010):  Lee Lup Yuen of ZDNetAsia ordered his new Google Nexus One superphone from Google as soon as the handset was announced and received it in Singapore on Saturday, and after having a play with it over the weekend he gives his first impressions...
 
Harry H - Forget all the hype and hysteria over Google pushing out their so called Nexus One superphone because it simply doesn’t warrant it as the Nexus One is just a nice mobile phone that isn’t revolutionary or an iPhone killer.  
 
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