HTC Nexus One by Google has been predicted as the only gadget that can possibly outshine the facets that Apple’s Iphone has. The Nexus One is what techies call a super hyped Android phone for the simple reasons that it is both a hardware and software. Its astonishing applications have brought wonders not only in the mobile world, but also in the web planet.

Look, Design, Feel (8/10)

Nexus One is sleek, light and an exceptionally thin smartphone, but gives brilliant power to its visual applications to the delight of the user. The back cover is made from a rubber-like plastic, which boosts users’ grip of the phone and it has 4-set of touch-sensitive controls that can be found right under the touch screen.

The Nexus One, which is built by HTC for Google, has an Android OS 2.1 on a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor. As the Nexus One applies the operating system of Google, it gives easy and convenient access to a variety of Google’s online services such as email, calendar and navigation. It has a 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, 4GB microSD in-box expandable to 32GB. It has a 3.7-inch wide WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) AMOLED touchscreen with 100,000:1 typical contrast ratio and 1ms typical response rate, wherein its high resolution, high pixel density organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display is close to perfection. The picture quality is very impressive, with great contrast and profusion of colors! It is just one of the best displays in the mobile market! Nexus One’s 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and has a trackball navigation capability. It has a LED flash and a 720x480 video capture @ 20FPS, and dual microphones for noise cancelling. There is no slide-out keyboard for this smartphone because everything is done on its onscreen virtual keyboard.

There are 2 different shades of grey for the Nexus One. Physical buttons are almost invisible on this phone. The phone is grey, but it is available in two different grey shades. There are almost no physical buttons on the HTC Nexus One. It has only the volume rocker on the top left side of the phone and a power button on the top of the volume rocker. The front of the phone also features a trackball below the screen. The back of HTC Nexus One houses the 5 megapixel camera lend and a LED flash unit on its right.

Features (7/10)

The phone runs on the Android OS 2.1. The last version compresses the visual aspect of the OS and the 2.1 brings some fresh features such as Facebook integration, or Quick Contacts. With its 1GHz processor, it is not a pain in the pocket to buy all new hardware to take advantage of a smartphone’s high-end capabilities.

The small white trackball of Nexus One is seemingly fabulous because it can be used to scroll up and scroll down in menus, and using the trackball makes web browsing fun and easy. It lights up upon receiving messages or calls and even on missed ones. The power on/off button is placed on top left, while there is a 3.5mm jack port on the right. The power button can be used to lock/unlock the device. This is one nice feature for left-handed users because this is the only button that can change the power from standby.

The microUSB port for charging can be found on the bottom side of the phone. Above the display are two hidden sensors for the light and proximity. On the back portion of the phone is the 5-megapixel camera with flash and a little loudspeaker to the right side. A Google logo can also be found in the middle of the smartphone and the logo of HTC near the bottom.

Live wallpapers with animated backgrounds enables interactive feature with the phone. However, this may entail added consumption to the battery while playing the features of the wallpapers. Nexus One has smooth animations in its Image Gallery wherein transitions and sorting options are made easy.

The high quality 5-megapixel built-in camera of the phone has the maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. Taking photos at night time is never a problem with this phone.

With the Android 2.1 feature of this phone, it is possible to dictate messages such as SMS and emails to text, integrate multiple accounts in Gmail. There is also the QWERTY keyboard for those who do not choose to use the ‘speech to text’ feature. It easily plays H.263 videos, but unfortunately the phone has no DivX/XviD support. It can support .mp4, .3gp, .3g2, .m4v video formats though.

Other qualities of this smartphone include a calculator, a speakerphone, a compass, an A2DP stereo Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, text and multimedia messaging, and the user can access multiple Google applications like YouTube, Google Voice, Picasa, Google Talk, and Google Goggles.

Connectivity (7/10)

HTC Google Nexus One has all possible connectivity tools that must be included in a state-of-the-art device like the GPRS and EDGE class 10, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, and microUSB 2.0. Nexus One can perform speeds of up to 5595 Kbit/ download and 4023 Kbit/s on Wi-Fi connection, 835 Kbit/s download and 56 Kbit/s upload on the Orange 3G+ network and 149 Kbit/s download and 89 Kbit/s upload on EDGE network.

Nexus One can be connected through T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T and soon, Sprint. The user can use any of the mentioned telecom providers since the phone is an unlocked phone.

Performance (8/10)

The phone is easy to use, from power on/off button to the trackball. Its sensitivity to web connection is superb since it is powered by Google resources. Its multimedia features that include the 5-megapixel camera and video recording are impressive, except for the camera wherein taking photos during intense lighting is quiet a concern. However, capturing images at night time is remarkable. Crashing web connectivity is never a problem for this phone.

Value for Money (7/10)

Nexus One is quite expensive but with the features and applications included in this smartphone, its price is worth the purchase, especially for businessmen who will enjoy its fast and easy applications.

Pros

• Beautiful LED screen (high resolution to date)

• Responsive touch screen

• Fast processing speed

• Impressive Android 2.1 applications

• Easy email access powered by Google

• Easy to check messages

• Smooth and fast loading of applications

• Instant messaging runs in the background

• 5-megapixel camera with flash and zoom capability

• 3G capable

• Built-in Google Voice wherein you can access voice mail from computer, transcribe voice mails to text and make cheap international calls

Cons

• Tough if you don’t use Google resources

• Trackball doesn’t change colors

• Ringtone selection is horrible

• Battery life is okay, but you have to charge it every night from moderate use

• Flexes between 3G and EDGE, depending on your location

• Touch screen washes out in an intense light

• Uncomfortable use of bottom row of icon keys

• VoIP incapable