Google's Nexus One

FINALLY! Sitting here in my hands, I happen to have one shiny new Nexus One. Does it live up to all the hype? Is it everything I’d hope it would be?! In a word, yes. And in another word, no. Haha, this is one seriously sweet piece of hardware but the experience as a whole has been a bit of a disappointment. Now, I had originally intended to write a lengthy three-part article to discuss the hardware, software, and carrier performance I’ve experienced since my Nexus One was delivered. I even had a good chunk of it written last night before bed  but today I came across this article which does an excellent job of saying everything I’d wanted to say and it even has benchmark info to boot!

For those not wanting to read through all of that though, let me summarize my first impressions of the Nexus One:

- Wow!

- Excellent build quality. The outer casing has a wonderful textured finish which helps keep the device from slipping out of your sweaty, greasy, Dorito-stained hand. It’s a little heavy but not obnoxious. Overall it feels like an expensive, well designed piece of gear. It’s also thinner than a bulimic super model addicted to meth.

- The trackball is nicer than the one on the Hero and it’s more “crisp” and responsive in those rare times when you actually need to use it.

- The screen – holy crap it’s nice. This is my first AMOLED device and I can see what all the fuss has been about. There’s no comparing it to the LCD on my Hero or other recent phones. Touch input works great on the Nexus One and two handed typing is a cinch. Speaking of typing, the onscreen keyboard works like a charm. Text prediction is surprising accurate and they virtual keys are very responsive.

- Speech-to-text does a great job of transcription. It’s not always spot on but being able to dictate text messages is such a cool feature!

- Google Navigation RULES! It’s far better than the Hero’s Sprint Navigation app. Don’t get me wrong though; I love Sprint Navigation but Google Nav is just sooooo much more refined. Thankfully Google Nav will be coming to the Hero soon once the Android 2.1 update is pushed out.

- The live wallpapers are a neat feature. True, they serve no purpose and probably do wonders for draining your battery, but they look sweet! My favorite is the black and white cloud.

- The beefy Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 512 MB of RAM (to my knowledge, this is more than any other phone on the market) enable Android 2.1 to cruise on the Nexus One. You can have several programs open simultaneously with literally no decrease in performance. Menus and transitions are as silky smooth as the iPhone 3GS, or possibly even smoother.

- Great camera! The speed reminds me of the Palm Pre (one of that phone’s few strong points) and photos come out pretty darn clear. Likewise, video is nice and smooth even at the highest resolution. Playback is flawless via the Android album app.

- Did I mention how fricken smooth everything runs?!

So, by now it should be fairly easy to see that I’m very impressed with both the Nexus One and Android 2.1. Neither are perfect but the phone is definitely a wonderful device. Android 2.1 has lots of potential too – I can’t wait to get it on my Hero along with an updated Sense UI. The phone and its OS are only part of the equation though. The other part of the experience is the carrier the phone is paired to and unfortunately, T-Mobile’s service around here turned out to be a major letdown. I knew going into this that their coverage is laughable (especially their 3G) but I’m experiencing call distortion even when I have three or four bars of 3G signal. That’s not the worst of it though; for some odd reason, right out of the box I was able to receive calls, send and receive text messages, and browse via EDGE but I wasn’t able to make outbound calls! No matter what I tried, I constantly got “Network busy” on the phone’s display and an earful of fast busy signal. I knew it had to be a network or provisioning problem so first I spoke with T-Mobile. The tech was friendly and tried to be helpful but in the end she didn’t know what she was talking about and referred me to HTC for further troubleshooting. I decided to play along though and called them via the number the T-Mo tech gave me. The gentleman who answered wasn’t at all shocked to hear that T-Mo sent me his way but said exactly what I’d been saying all along – that this was a network or provisioning problem. He got me through to T-Mo again and I proceeded to work with a gentleman in their tech support department. Let me just say, it’s highly frustrating when you know more about the device and network than the person that’s supposed to be helping you does, but again, I played along. He went through his checklist of things to try and after roughly 20 minutes he gave up and got me through to T-Mo’s Tier III troubleshooting department. The Tier III tech was noticeably more knowledgeable but it still took him half an hour of investigation before he resolved the problem (a provisioning issue in their system – go figure). The stories I’ve read about T-Mo, HTC, and Google all referring customers to one another during troubleshooting seem to be true. I honestly don’t know how the average person is going to put up with it if they should ever need assistance. The most annoying thing is that each of the three companies should have a very clearly defined role in the customer service process; Google should provide all assistance with Android OS related issues, HTC should provide help for hardware problems, and T-Mo should be responsible for network troubleshooting. The three companies really need to get this worked out or they’re going to be in big trouble. Someone who just spent $500+ on a phone is not going to want to be told repeatedly that they need to call another company for help.

Sigh.

You know, I hate to keep harping on T-Mobile because I think they’re generally a good company, but several things about the cell service irritate me. First, my voice calls just don’t sound very good. Other reviews extol the Nexus One’s great audio quality which makes me reluctant to blame the phone for the distortion I get while on a call. It seems purely network related to me. Aside from that, T-Mo’s visual voicemail kinda sucks compared to Sprint’s. It’s definitely a nice feature but it just doesn’t seem to measure up (a minor annoyance but one I felt worth mentioning nonetheless). Then there’s T-Mobile’s pricing. The cheapest you can get away with on the Nexus One is $60 a month plus tax (500 anytime minutes, nights and weekends starting at 9pm, unlimited everything else). That’s not terrible next to the outrageous amount you have to pay for an iPhone plan but you have to realize that right now I’m paying $65 a month including tax through Sprint. For that $65 I’m getting 500 anytime minutes to landlines, unlimited minutes to and from any mobile number in the US, nights and weekends that start at 7pm, unlimited everything else – AND – vastly superior coverage and performance. It’s not really a tough decision folks, even if it means I have to live without the Nexus One.

Yes I sound like a broken record, but I’d like to say one last time just how impressed I am with the hardware and software on the Nexus One. It’s a shame that your only real option for a carrier is T-Mobile because their service is just woefully inadequate around here. The unacceptable alternative would be AT&T and they’ve consistently proven that they’re crooked and inept, so I don’t really consider them much of an alternative at all.

I anxiously await the arrival of the Nexus One (or something comparable) on Sprint’s excellent network but in the meantime, my T-Mo Nexus One is getting boxed up and shipped back to Google.

Say, is it just me or is my Sprint Hero doing a happy dance?