iPhone v Nexus One Review (Might want to take the day off from work)

[SERB Z06]

3Gs vs. Nexus One

So first let me start by saying that I have owned 2 iphones, a 3G, and a 3GS. I am not an Apple nut hugger by any means (I own 4 PCs), however after being impressed with my ipod and finally giving in an letting itunes control my mp3s (I don’t pay for music) I decided that when the 3G came out I would see what all the hype was about.

Now I am the kind of person who gets bored of phones very easily. I got my first cell phone when I was 14 and I have probably had 2-3 phones a year since that time (I’m 23). I have owned Motorolas, Nokias, and experienced every kind of OS with the exception of Android. It’s also probably worth noting that both of my iphones have been jailbroken and my current 3Gs is jailbroken and unlocked running on T-Mobile.

On to the Nexus One review…

I ordered the T-Mobile version of the phone through Google’s website. Since I already have T-Mobile, I ordered the $530 version and not the subsidized version. I ordered the phone on a Wednesday afternoon and had it Thursday morning, Google gives you free overnight shipping on the phone, which I was very impressed with. Since I live in Colorado I had to pay tax on the phone (~$45) which made the total just under $580 (yikes).

When I opened the cardboard box, I noticed a very nice white box inside with “Google” labeled on it. I was very impressed with the packaging. I have always enjoyed the elegance of the iphone box and Google did not disappoint in this department. In the box you receive all the usual stuff, the phone plus headphones, a USB charge cable and an AC charge cable, as well as some instructions and a quick start up guide.

Assembling the phone was the first thing I did not like about the Nexus One. In order to get to the battery/sim card slot, you have to push the back cover off the phone. This was not an easy task and I honestly felt like I was going to break my brand new phone trying to get the cover off. Once it finally slides off, you can put the battery in and slide your sim card in there too.

When I got everything installed I fired up the phone via the power button. The power button is exactly like the iphone one except located on the other side. I was immediately impressed by the screen’s resolution and color quality as I saw the Nexus One logo being illuminated as the phone was booting. The Nexus One boots fairly quickly, much faster than my jailbroken 3Gs, but probably not too much faster than a non-jailbroken one. When you boot the phone for the first time there is a quick setup guide to setup your phone and link it with your Google/gmail account. This proved to be very easy and I really liked that a lot.

Once I got the phone up and running that’s when I really started disliking things. From the get go you can see the Android OS is much less refined than the iphone OS, a good comparison is OSX vs. Ubuntu Linux. Since I took my time swapping my sim card and all that other stuff when I got my phone setup I immediately started received texts from people, at this point I realized I had made a mistake buying this phone. Although the screen looks amazing the feedback when you need to type is absolutely horrible. The best way I can explain it is when you are at the grocery store or Wal-Mart and you are trying to enter your PIN on the machine when you are checking out and it doesn’t work properly, that’s what the Nexus One is like all the time. Trying to type more than 3 words in a reply ends up turning out to be a complete nightmare. To be fair, this is a problem with a lot of non-iphone touch screens. I will say this, the predictive text on the Android OS is MUCH better than what you get with the iphone.

Knowing that the keyboard was a common problem with the Android devices I went to their app store, which they call the marketplace, in order to find a better keyboard. When I went to the marketplace, I was half pleased and half disappointed. The first thing I noticed is that there are significantly less apps than the app store on the iphone. Luckily, most of the basic stuff people use is there: Pandora, Google Maps, Trapster, Shazam, etc. The second thing I noticed is that a lot of the apps that are supposed to fix what makes Android inferior to the iphone, you have to pay for. But I was here in search of a better keyboard. 5 minutes of Googling told me that the best keyboard is called Swype, but it’s not available via the marketplace, which I thought was odd. Well after some more searching I found out about an app called “Better Keyboard”, which was supposed to be much better. I spent I think $3 on the app and I was disappointed right away, it was marginally better, but the stupid thing is that it doesn’t convert all the keyboards to the better keyboard. For example texting might have one keyboard, email might have another one, notes might have another, etc. This pissed me off but led me to discover a cool feature about the Android Marketplace, you can return apps if you don’t like them. So I uninstalled Better Keyboard and got my money back. While I am on this positive note I figure this is a good time to talk about another thing I liked about the Android Marketplace, security. When you try to install an app, it tells you what kind of information the app will take from your phone. Apple does not do this, instead they rely on Nazi tactics and just decide what apps they will let in the app store, essentially denying all the good ones for non-jailbroken users.

So now I am back to square one. I decide I will give the phone a chance and go get some lunch. The day was overcast and I decided to go to my favorite Greek place in Boulder called Daphne’s. After finding a spot to park I was walking to the restaurant when Colin (Wrinklechops) texted me. I pull out my shiny new Nexus One and low and behold I can see about as much as Stevie Wonder at a titty bar. This is when I decided that maybe the autodim feature on this phone just sucks that much, which it does. I found the setting to disable it and maxed out the brightness of the screen. This made it look AWESOME indoors but outside I still couldn’t see shit, and keep in mind this was still an overcast day. As I was waiting for my lunch I decided to play with the browser and other features of the phone. I already didn’t like it, but now I am convinced I am sending it back. Poking around on the internet I was trying to see how to copy and paste, a feature that many iphone owners complained about when the iphone first came out. To make a long story short I was never able to figure it out. Surfing the web made me realize something. You can not close out of applications on this phone. Instead, Google decided to take a page out of Apple’s book and decide when to close applications for you based on some arbitrary algorithm they probably paid a million dollars to some Indian guy in San Francisco to come up with. I Googled to make sure I wasn’t crazy and found out there is a way to force close applications by going into the settings, what a pain in the ass.

As I was eating my lunch I decided to open Pandora and listen to my music (through my Bose headphones). Immediately it was apparent that the sound quality on this phone was absolutely horrible, especially compared to the iphone. I tried Slacker Radio and it was the same shit, this was a huge deal breaker for me. Alas when I finished lunch I tried making some calls. This proved to be a pain in the ass because between not being able to see shit on the screen, and the horrible feedback of the touchscreen I could barely pull anyone’s contact up to call them.

I finally was able to call my ex-girlfriend (LOL). Once again I was very disappointed almost immediately. In order to hear her in a casual environment (quiet restaurant) I had to max the volume out completely. There is no way in hell you could ever use this phone at a bar, or a sports game, or even in your car if you are like me and have exhaust on every vehicle you own. I ended the call and drove back to work.

Next on the list was ringtones. Changing ringtones and setting up custom ones for different people is a total pain in the ass in Android, but once I figured it out again I was disappointed as soon as I did a test call from my work phone. The external speaker on the Nexus One is quiet as shit, once again I had to max out the volume in order to hear my ringer and at that point it was distorted as hell.

At this point I was not a happy camper and looked into returning the phone, thankfully this was a very good experience. I Googled how to return this POS and the Google help page was very clear and easy. I called HTC with and spoke with an actual American who actually lived in the United States and he was more than happy to help me. A few minutes later I had a return shipping label in my inbox. Google will refund the entire purchase price of the phone, minus $45 as long as it’s within 14 days, if you live in the People’s Republic of California, you have 30 days since CA has to make it’s own rules for everything. Anyway to make a long story long I slapped the return label on and sent it back the next day at work.

Cliff notes and things I observed about the phone for people who have a life:

Pros:
-Very light, much lighter than the iPhone
-Much better text recognition than the iPhone
-Camera SLIGHTLY better than the 3gs
-Screen much better than 3Gs, but only in the dark
-The Nexus One has a separate microphone to cancel out background noise when you are in a conversation, this is awesome if you talk with the windows down, or are cheating on your girlfriend LOL
-HTC has awesome technical support (on par with Apple)

Cons:
-Android OS has a long ways to go, the iphone is MUCH better in this aspect, it’s a much easier, more intuitive, etc. phone to use. Simple things like copy past, taking a picture or video and them emailing it, backgrounds, customizing contacts is MUCH MUCH easier on the iphone OS
-I was not impressed with processor speed, even though the specs are good, the 3Gs still has less lag than the Nexus One
-The iphone is (arguably) much more elegant. Switching the phone to vibrate and overall one handed operation is much better than the Nexus One

I’m sure there are a bunch of things I’m forgetting. To summarize, probably my biggest problem with this phone and Android is the lack of innovation and ingenuity. EVERYTHING for the Android is a copy of the iphone OS. For the 2 or 3 things they improved, the remaining 100 are significantly worse. Here is another epic fail on HTC/Google’s behalf. The phone only has 190 mb available for applications. What the **** is the point of a microsd card if you are limited to 190 mb for apps?!! The Nexus One is HORRIBLE for media playback, I’m really not sure what they were thinking here.

If you have any questions feel free to ask. I love my iphone and do not plan on letting it go anytime soon.

[Z88Z]

I no longer feel bad about the length of my posts

Good review though

[Ninergrad]

Great review man!!!
If it had some pics will be magazine worthy!!!

I am making it a sticky for a little while. Really good read.

[Wrinklechops]

So this is what you do at work, eh? lol jk

Glad you took the chance on the N1 before I did. I guess I might wait for the Evo 4G and play with it before buying it, but I don't know...

Apple better come out with something really snazzy for the next iPhone...