The exclusive unveiling on January 5th in Mountain View arranged at short notice, the new category “super phone” invented by Google, the new sales model over the Google web store and new features of Android OS 2.1 on the one hand - poor customer support, poor sales on the first week and a high purchasing price whereas manufacturing costs are low on the other hand: The Google phone Nexus One built by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC is the talk of the town. At www.teltarif.de we received one of the first Nexus One devices in Germany for testing. My first impression after being able to put my hands on the new smartphone for a few hours: The Google phone Nexus One (still) is just another Android smartphone.

Google Phone Nexus One, Pictures Phone Guide Germany

You begin to sense this at first glace: The Nexus One is solid and beautifully crafted, but because ot its conventional form factor surely no attention-grabber. Slightly slimmer and a little lighter than the Apple iPhone the Google phone Nexus One seems to be of neat workmanship. Instead of physical buttons the smartphone features a row of four sensitive keys for opening the menu, going back in the menu, starting a homescreen or conducting a search. Below the touchscreen there is a clickable trackball as a navigation toll like on the T-Mobile G1 or the earlier Blackberry smartphones. Unlike the Motorola Milestone (Droid) the Google phone does not sport a physical keyboard, just a virtual numeric and a virtual QWERTY keyboard.

Backplate and Camera of the Nexus One

The 3.7-inch AMOLED tochscreen with a resolution of 400 x 800 pixels is bright enough and shows popping colors and a very good contrast. However, the screen is still kind of reflective and hard to view from an angle. Somehow, the touchscreen can be very responsive at one time, but sluggish in reaction at another – sometimes the application screen even freezes. Unlike the Apple iPhone and some other smartphones, the Nexus One does not support multi-touch in order to zoom in and out of images and web pages with two fingers. It could be though, that a Nexus One for the European market will support multi-touch.

Virtual QWERTY Keyboard of the Google Phone Nexus One

The Nexus One is running on Android OS 2.1 (Eclair). Android OS 2.1 supports the turn-by-turn GPS navigation with Google Maps introduced with the Motorola Droid and offers additional features such as five homescreens, live animated wallpapers, an animated photo gallery and voice recognition capabilities for any kind of text such as emails, instant messages, social network status updates, navigation instructions or dialing a number. With the speech-to-text feature the user can input into any field by speaking, but this gimmick is hard to use. For example, voice recognition is only working in English and with clear pronounciation. Android OS 2.1 is easy to navigate and responsive – one can feel the power of the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 1 GHz. In my opinion, the Nexus One performes faster than all other Android smartphones.

Trackball and USB Port of the Nexus One

Because of the short amount of time for testing, I cannot confirm the 3G reception problems that have been reported. The Nexus One supports GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and HSPA with a data transmission speed of up to 7.2 mbps (download) and 2.0 mbps (upload). The Nexus One also connects to a secure WiFi (b/g) network. However, the background noise cancellation technology seems to work just fine. Voice quality of the Nexus One is good, the speaker phone sounds clear. According to Google, the Nexus One provides for a speaking time of up to ten hours (2G) or seven hours (3G) with a fully charged battery.

When surfing the internet, the browser can zoom in or out by double-tapping which is as easy as multi-touch zooming. The email client supports POP3, a Google Mail account is obligatory in order to use all the functions of the Nexus One. Synchronization via Microsoft Exchange is limited to email and contacts. I did not find any way of synchronizing the Google phone with a PC.

One Homescreen of the Google Phone Nexus One

The 5-megapixel camera sports an autofocus and an LED flash and can capture videos with a resolution of 720 x 480 pixels at 27 frames per second. There’s a microSD card slot under the back cover that you must remove the battery to access. The phone offers 190 MB of internal storage capacity, comes with a 4 GB microSD card and supports memory cards with up to 32 GB.

Menu and Apps on the Google Phone Nexus One

In Germany, the Google phone Nexus One will probably not be available before March. Vodafone will be one of the operators partnering with Google in selling the Android smartphone with contract over the Google web store, T-Mobile could be another. It will not be possible to buy at Vodafone or T-Mobile stores, though. The current version sold in the United States is compatible with GSM but cannot be used on UMTS networks in Germany. In the US, Google is selling the Nexus One to consumers for USD 529.00 without contract. Please, keep in mind: This is not a full reviews of the Google phone.

Specifications of the Google Phone Nexus One:
GSM: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
Operating System: Android OS 2.1 (Eclair)
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 1 GHz
Screen: 3.7-inch capacitive AMOLED touchscreen with 480 x 800 pixels
Keyboard: virtual QWERTY
Camera: 2,560 x 1,920 pixels with autofocus, LED flash and video capture
Storage: 512 MB + 32 GB microSD
Connectivity: GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSPA 7.2/2.0, WiFi b/g
Size/Weight: 119 x 59,8 x 11,5 mm / 130 g
Speaking Time: 10 (GSM) or 7 (UMTS) hours
Other: accelerometer, compass, GPS, media player, 3.5-millimeter headset jack, voice control