Brain Sparks

Nexus One – An owner’s review March 13, 2010

I am going to take my cues from Anthony Ford and do what he plans to do with his Droid Eris review. First he wrote afirst impressions of the phone and then he plans to write a second review having having the phone for awhile. The second part of this review should be coming soon he tells me.

The ordering process:
I have a confession to make I have never ever bought a phone without playing with it first and until this one I always felt it was a mistake. I think it is very important to know how the phone feels in your hand how it works and if you can be happy with it. I suggest you always goto the local store and play with the device before buying it, this however is not an option with the Nexus One. It is sold directly from google and can only be purchased online at http://www.google.com/phone. The process is easy and straight forward. I went with the 2 year contract option with T-Mobile rather then paying the $529 for the unlocked phone (although I was willing to do just that). During the order process I was offered the dock station for an extra $45 and now they offer a spare battery for $25. I glad they did not offer the spare battery as I would have gotten it and it would have been a waste. I will explain why later. I was then given the option to engrave my phone. My initials in binary on the first line and Do NOT drop on the 2nd. Yea I am a geek and proud. Oddly enough and something that struck me as odd a few hours later I was not given my new T-Mobile number. I didn’t find out what my number was until I received the phone a few days later.

The Device:
When I got the device I hastily unwrapped it, something I now regret not recording to share with you, although I did get a few pictures from my old phones 3 mega pixel camera, that I will be posting at the end of the article. I really admired the look of the device and was happy that unlike every other phone I have had it felt better in my hand. Although almost an ounce heaver and bigger then then the LG Dare I had the device felt better balanced and more natural feeling. I loved the engraving on the back and felt the Neoprene sleeve with the Android robot on it was something I would be happy to carry my device in. I hooked up the dock and placed my phone on it to charge. The first signs of life a tiny little orange light to let me know it was charging. At this point I had to fight all the urges to turn the device on I knew the best thing I could do right now is wait for the device to full charge before playing with my new phone. (Thanks Joshua for this reminder)

Now a lot of blogs including me have talked about the specs of the phone so I wont right now, but needless to say the device is peppy. It really takes full advantage of the 1ghz snapdragon processor. It is fast with little or no hesitation when moving around the screens and menus. By default the wall paper is set to the loud Nexus One live wall paper with the laser beams shooting around the screen, this was the first thing I changed quickly switching to the much more subtle grass, which updates with the time of day. Having played with a number of Android phones from the G1 to the new Moto Droid and Driod Eris I was already familiar  with the basic of the OS, although I feel that even someone new to the OS could use the phone with ease, although not as simple to use as the Iphone OS.

One thing that I have found really nice and surprising about the device is battery life. I use the device a lot often going 14 hours days of consistent  usage with only basic task managing (Android Central just did an article on task manager usage that I highly recommend) and most the time when I set the device in the dock to charge for the night I still have around 40%+ battery charge. The draw back of every smart phone is the battery and I am happy with what I get from the Nexus One, which is a lot more then I expected. To give you an idea of what I consider consistent usage. Twidroid checks for updates hourly. Emails are checked every 15 minutes. All radios, but bluetooth are on (I don’t use bluetooth) and I watch youtube or listen to Pandora for about two hours every day during my commute to and from work. I also will read news blogs in the evening while in bed. All this and the device has only give me a 30% battery power warning once and that was the day I started the day two hours earlier then normal.

First Impressions
Overall I am happy with the device. Although it is not perfect (what device is) it fills my needs I knew I had and showed me a few I didn’t know I had. The phone has become my personal assistant of sorts and every day I learn something new about it and find new ways for it to be used every day. I find the few draw backs it may have (the battery door is a pain to get off) and greatly out weighted by the awesomeness that is the Nexus One.