Review Of Jaq: Google Nexus One
Jono Bacon and Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge get their hands on some Google Nexus One phones and feed them into the brand new Review Of Jaq reviewing machine. We take Google’s new device through a Krypton Factor-esque set of challenges over the course of the week and report back with our verdict.
Of course, we are the very, very, very beginning of the conversation, and we are looking to you good people to share your thoughts on the Google Nexus One. Have you got one, and if so, what do you think? Are there any unanswered questions that we didn’t cover in the shot that we can answer in the comments? Share your thoughts in the comments below…
61 Comments to “Review Of Jaq: Google Nexus One”
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Really nice discussion, helped me get more in to the Nexus One thing. Would have been good to hear how it is compared to the iPhone for example, although thank you Mr Stuart for mentioning how it feels next to a Hero. (:
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I found this N1/iPhone review to be good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuVyExV8SYo
The guy who did the review is an iPhone fan, so he may be a bit biased. However, I am a Nexus One owner/fan, so I am probably biased as well.
And where can the average impoverished geek get ones hands on such a delight?? You don’t mention how it compares with ‘the competition’ other than how it is improved on the previous G-phone. I’m borrowing a Nokia N900 (lucky me!) and although it has pretty much everything all wrapped up in a nice Debian package environment complete with 28gigs flash storage, it is just a little too big to hide in your trouser pocket, but too small to be a comfortable text input device. Does the Nexus One do any better?
It does indeed. It fits fine in my trouser pocket; part of the reason for this is that it’s not bulked up with a hardware keyboard. I’ve also found ShapeWriter to be a big improvement over the stock software keyboard; if you don’t generally like software keyboards you should try it out.
When you say “where can the average impoverished geek get one’s hands on” the Nexus One…it doesn’t seem to me to be any more expensive than its competitors? Maybe I’m missing something here about your comment and it was complaining about the prices of all smartphones, not just the N1?
Now before I listened to that shot, I didn’t care that my Blackberry had an easily accessible apostrophy, and I quite like that it auto corrected cant to can’t. Now I furious about it. ARRRGGHHH!
What’s the deal then? How much is the phone in the UK? How do you buy airtime without the phone if UK carriers don’t want to let you do that? Can you get a Nexus in a traditional phone/airtime bundle contract?
I wouldn’t mind knowing the answers because I’ll be divorcing my tired and tatty old Blackberry later this year.
UK phone carriers let you buy airtime without the phone. The magic phrase you want to look for is “SIM-only”.T-Mobile do a SIM-only “unlimited” internet deal for £20 per month. I also believe that carriers are currently clamouring for the Nexus One, but to be honest I think everyone’s better getting out of that rat-race. Carriers do nothing but screw you. Buy your phones unlocked direct from the manufacturer, or from expansys, or something. Yes, it’s expensive. But you’d spend a few hundred on a camera; why not on a phone that you’ll use more than any device in your life except your computer?
So, I could order a $529 phone from google now and then use a SIM Only deal right now ? (t-mobile for example)
Which network are you testing on, and were there any problems setting up (or was that a freebie from google too?)
I’m on T-Mobile UK. I was on contract with my Hero, so I just took the SIM out of my Hero and put it in the Nexus One and it worked.
Nice. $529 + AC adapter $19 + Shipping $30 = $577 which is £370 at current exchange rates.
That is actually cheap as non-contract smart phones go.
Virgin do an unlimited internet deal for £18 a month just beating the T-Mobile offer (but T-mobile has better minutes and texts).
Hence my original comment re how expensive it is to get your hands on one; either buy it outright, which is more expensive than a decent laptop, or ‘hire purchase’ on a two year ~£25+ p/m contract. And what happens if you drop it in your pint??!! The potential of these is great, but the reality is it’s still spaceship kit for most of us.
It’s £337. I think that that’s a reasonable price to pay for perhaps the most important and most used device that I own. Others may not (and this is obviously influenced by how I have £337). This is the same as all other smartphones, though. If all smartphones count as spaceship kit for you then, well, yeah. I don’t see how that problem’s resolveable.
I did not know they did Sim only with internet. You learn something new every day.
Particularly when you’re as thick as me.
No tethering? Even my hundred year old Nokia with IR could do it, and to be honest it saved my life a couple of times, when I had to set up some new network connections…
Hence my annoyance. You can do it by installing apps, but it’s not out of the box, and it’s harder than it should be. Bah.
I highly recommend the third party Android build http://cyanogenmod.com. It has built-in USB tethering which “just works” with Ubuntu. It also lets your phone utilize twice as much RAM as the stock build, and has other goodies as well. The N1 bootloader has an unlock feature for getting root access, so you don’t have to jump through the hoops that you would with a G1. The people in the #cyanogenmod channel are rather helpful too.
If you want tethering and fancy a bit of warranty voiding, here’s one way of doing it…
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/23/howto-unlock-your-ne.html
One annoying thing I forgot to mention: Google Listen, the podcast app, doesn’t have Shot of Jaq in its list. Does anyone know the team over there?
It is of course very easy to add the rss feed manually to Google Listen… i do it on my HTC-Magic with Android 1.6
well, yeah, but that’s not the point
agreed…
I’ve been considering a new phone for some time, and this confirmed a lot of my thoughts that the Nexus One may be the phone for me.
I’m still pissed off that they announced the Nexus One about a month after the Motorola Milestone was released. Which I bought, full price, unlocked.
And the Milestone is ok, but it feels slooooooow compared to, say, a first-gen iPod touch. Scrolling around is very choppy. Even though its hardware is roughly equivalent to an iPhone 3GS. This I do not understand. I’m really hoping the situation improves when we get Android 2.1.
That’s just how it goes with tech. Future phone will always beat today phone. Since you bought it outright, just sell it on ebay and get yourself an N1.
Well sure, the cool new gadget is always obsolete in about six months. But this was Google themselves releasing a phone, when they had previously rejected such an idea. It was guaranteed to crush the just-released Droid/Milestone, which it does on tech specs alone.
I mean, the HTC Hero was on the top of the Android heap for quite a long time. Longer than a month.
Anyway. I’m happy enough with my rooted Milestone, and I’ll just wait for the Nexus Three or Four.
I dunno about “crush” the droid/milestone.
I fall into the group that wanted a h/w keyboard and android so the droid fits my requirements whereas the Nexus was discounted immediately because lack of a physical keyboard
Maybe im part of a dying breed and h/w keyboards will be dead in 12months time?! Time will tell
When I held a Nexus One it didn’t feel incredibly solid to me. I didn’t get to play with it though.
Check out the HTC Legend which was announced today with a unibody aluminium case! http://www.htc.com/www/product/legend/overview.html Mmm. It doesn’t have the 1GHz Snapdragon processor in it though.
If I could decide which Android device to buy (and sell my car to pay for it) I would give up my Nokia running Symbian series 40.
Incidentally, have you guys seen MeeGo (the merger of Maemo and Moblin) and the recently open sourced Symbian? The mobile distro wars continue…
Mind if I steal a joke from you? That’s a rhetorical question obviously.
Why do you hate freedom so much? How can you give praise to an android based phone which is best describe by the tag line “open but not really” without even mentioning this sorry fact?
Oh, yes, you got them as freebies
Speaking purely for myself and not for Jono, it’s because I do not care. There are no phones, none, on the market which are entirely free software and actually work. So, if you want, assume that every review and every comment about every phone that exists or has ever existed contains somewhere within it the phrase “this phone does not use entirely free software, despite Android itself being open source”.
I’m being a hypocrite because I’d buy a N900 if it didn’t cost over 500 quid and that’s got proprietary bits as well. I guess I’d rather sell out to Nokia (and soon Intel) than to Google but that’s another argument altogether about me being paranoid about Google stealing my thoughts.
Pity about openmoko. I think it’s more likely that one of these companies will release an open phone before they manage to get the freerunner right. I feel bad about not buying one from them because I hope they succeed but I’m a stingy bastard and will not buy something just to support it. For 300 quid I want a fully working and competitive phone. I’m ashamed of being such a dick, but not enough to change.
Enough of this self-deprecation. I would like to end by saying I’m awesome and right in every possible way.
Check talk.maemo.org >devices>buy&sell for dissatisfied customers selling their N900s, here is one such fellow http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=51019&page=3 for £300 I should mention
It is a shame about the freerunner, I bought a neo1973 to support the project but didn’t have the skills to contribute
If Aq thinks that he lives in the middle of nowhere, then he should come out here to North Dakota. Tempted to rant about the state of wireless comms out here on the plains, but will instead ask about the accessibility stuff in Android 2.1. Being visually impaired, stuff like screen magnifiers, TTS and such are really important – like deal breaker. Is Android going to be the first chance I have to not have the cell phone equivalent of can and string? Anybody played with this stuff?
I didn’t get a chance to play with with this. Anyone else?
The default Android keyboard is certainly a bit of a disappointment. However, there is an easy way to hide the keyboard when it is up: swipe the keyboard down quickly.
The great thing about Android is that no one forces you to stick with the defaults. I really like the Better Keyboard app, which can be found in the market for a few dollars (or pounds). The one issue I have with it is that it’s voice input is broken, so I’ll often switch to the default keyboard while driving. That will probably be fixed soon though.
Also, there are some good note apps in the market. No need to send grocery lists to yourself in an SMS
yeah. I’m an AK Notepad person myself, although I shall switch to Tomdroid the instant it supports note editing, since I can then have my desktop notes on my phone as well
It’s good that you’ve got your devices for free, otherwise you would have probably chewed your elbows off after hearing HTC Desire announcement today. It’s called “Nexus One for the masses” or “Nexus One done right” (c) Cyanogen.
Going back to N1, I think it’s weird to rants about the lack of software when there’s Android Market and you can get variety of notepads there. For all I care, Android phones could come with no extra software except for the Market.
I agree on the “nothing but the Market”, but afaict Google are specifically shipping some stuff directly as part of Android precisely so that they’re not available in the Market (google mail. the Car Home, etc). If you’re gonna do that, and ship some software, then having the ability to take notes out of the box wouldn’t hurt.
OK,so have been thinking about getting this phone for a few weeks and I’m probably going to order now based on what I’ve read on the web and your review.
My question, did you take up the free engraving and if so what did you have?
We didn’t (to be honest, after Google sent us devices for review, asking for them to be personalised might have been construed as taking the piss a bit
)
I’ve just gotten my N1 today, but played with it extensively when a Google employee friend of mine was in town over Xmas:
The noise cancellation is kickass. I called a friend and left my desktop speakers going and he could barely hear the sound but could hear me just fine. This is rather awesome.
The earbuds are pretty horrible. I’m going to need to get a new set of skullcandy’s for it.
The software keyboard is particularly decent. This was my strongest reservation about moving from a G1. In landscape mode it’s quite easy to type on.
Disappointed that the mp3 player isn’t seeing any love.
The performance is quick, no issues here.
Surprised that it had those live wallpapers by default, you’d think they’d be more conservative battery-wise ootb.
If you have a G1 I recommend it as a nice upgrade, let’s see how I like it long term.
well I just bit the bullet and ordered one, not sure how long the shipping will take to the UK
Do let us know back here what you think of it when you get it.
well have had the phone for a couple of days and I’m impressed so far
My biggest worry was the lack of keyboard I was a big g1 keyboard user and very rarely used the virtual one, but so far so good.
Battery life appears to be a big improvement on the g1, considering I’ve hardly put it down since I got it initially charged… it will need a charge today.
The only thing I didn’t realise was it uses micro usb connector, I had just assumed it would be the mini connector same as the g1, it means I have to replace all my charges I have dotted around the place, work, home, parents etc
I got the update (pinch and zoom) within half hour of switching the phone on.
I’m slowly getting all my apps installed as it didnt seem to remember what I had installed on the g1, but I could probably do with culling a few anyway
ha! Yes on the connector front. I ranted about how every time I get a new USB-chargeable thing it’s a slightly different kind of small USB socket. I am told that the one on the Nexus One is the new standard and that’ll be the standard from now on, which I do not believe for a moment!
My Hero, brilliantly, came with a wall plug which has a USB-out port on it, and a USB lead to connect to it. So I charge my N1 by plugging its USB lead into the Hero’s charger. I wish the N1 (and all phones) came with this.
There is actually a charger standard on the way – see http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-10165603-78.html for details.
So out of curiosity, do you know how much of the nexus requires non-free software to function as a phone ? Can it make phone calls if you remove the non-free components ?
With Cyanogenmod you can choose not to flash the proprietary Google bits. However, I know that with HTC they tend to always use proprietary drivers. Even if you had open source drivers, I’m not sure if there is a single phone (other than perhaps the OpenMoko) that uses open source on it’s baseband processor. So with the N1 you are probably using at least 90% open source software, but some of the bits in that last 10% are rather important.
Although a few apps have been mentioned, I haven’t heard that much discussion about what they’re like, especially non-default apps from the Marketplace. I’m sure there are thousands to choose from, but is it hard to sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of quality of apps (cf Apple’s App Store and their, rather vague, apparently, definition of ‘quality’)?
In particular, games are an obvious thing to ask about. I’ll assume all the map and search based apps are good because of Google’s infrastructure. Any standout apps other than the note-taking ones mentioned?
theres a vibrant Android community where apps are discussed etc.
I’ve got some great tips from digging around forums and also sites like androidzoom
I have found there to be a wide and diverse range of Android apps and the quality is generally really good. I have been digging playing with the location based apps in particular.
Hmm… one thing I would be quite interested in would be how much settings this phone has. Recently I got a Samsung Tocco Lite as a new phone. However im quite disappointed with the lack of settings in the phone and the music player is awful in comparison to my last phone. (Vodafone 710)
What do you mean here by “settings”?
So Google sent you 2 free N1 phones: $530 x 2 = $1060/17 minutes of discussion) = $62.35 per minute of review.
Well done Lads!
Maybe I should start saying Chris DiBona looks like Kevin Smith on my podcasts
Regardless I’m looking to upgrade from my G1 in the next few months. The newly announced HTC Desire looks like a new revision of the N1.
I don’t think the Desire is coming to the US though is it?
LOL! I never thought of it that way. Also, I actually think Chris looks like Penn Gillette.
Well, I’ve had my Nexus one for about 2 weeks now, and I’m just coming out of the “new toy” phase.. It’s a pretty decent phone. I also ordered the dock, which I’m kind of regretting, but it’s pretty useful for work, at least… but that’s about it.
The phone itself is pretty awesome, and while I am having minor 3g issues (speedtest says my upload is quicker than my download) – I’m happy, because at least it does better than my previous phone (Nokia E71) did.
I actually live not too far away from Aq, and to be honest – 3G coverage around here is pretty crappy…
By default, also, when I put in my T-Mobile Sim, the phone picked up the wrong APN settings for the 3G, which put me on the “wap” rather than the “web’n'walk”.
Probably the best phone i’ve had – can’t wait for the UK to have some of the features that are only available in the US (which is pretty annoying, to be honest) – but am loving Android, and loving the Nexus One
settings: For example in my music player settings I only have 2 options!
In all the settings I can’t even find a way to increase my call volume. (persons voice)
Most of my frustration is with the music player though. It doesn’t go to the next song when its finished playing. The arrows on the side only change volume so I can’t switch song that way.
Also I can’t fast forward in lots of podcasts because it only detects audio length of about 40mins!!
Is there not a better player in the Marketplace?
Thanks for the great shot.
A few important questions:
Will installing a hacked rom void warranty or is this like the G1 dev phones? (really important to me) Are the touch buttons at the botom of the screen really that hard to “press”/touch?(I read it and saw it in the YT video above) Is the 3G reception really that bad? Is the trackball really useful or is it just Sergey or whoever who loves them?
I don’t know about installing a hacked ROM, since I don’t plan to do that, but if you find out, do please let us know! I haven’t found the touch buttons hard to touch at all; the 3G reception is, I think, not as good as it could be (which I commented on in the review), and … I don’t use the trackball much, myself
Google just gave 10 nexus one phones to my college – i wont get to use them as I am not in cs yet – but that is so cool.
They are really trying to push development.
Unfortunately any apps you develop in Ireland will have to be free – as paid apps are not accessible to people in Ireland and most countries yet.
http://thumbla.com/images/images/nexusoiri.png