My commute is roughly 15 feet.

For 9 years my commute was 15-20 minutes of easy country roads each way, then I was in Sydney and it was a 5 minute walk, then I moved back here and it was 1hr out, 45 mins back on dual carriageway and twisty A-roads.

Thankfully I bought a place closer (Farnborough) before the winter, I have driven back to my parents after work a few times and I think commuting that route this winter would have got seriously frustrating and tiring, not to mention hazardous.

Well, Google has sold only around 150,000 Nexus Ones so far. I'm fully aware of how bad those numbers are compared to the last iPhone or the Droid (which sold a little more than the iPhone in the first 74 days, BTW ). However, as the Google fanboy I am, I'll point out that this is without the giant advertising campaigns of those two phones, without the ability for consumers to even touch the phone before purchase, and without any in-store promotion. Considering all those challenges, and that I believe the majority of the phones sold are the $530 unlocked version, it's not an awful number of phones to sell. It's not great, but it's pretty good.

Besides, Google isn't banking their success on the Nexus One. This isn't like Palm. Pretty soon Google will have a Nexus One that works with all four major US carriers, and that's a big deal. I wouldn't be surprised to see the sales rate increase from here.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to write a quick post about the "state of the Nexus One" is that in the next couple days, you can add me to that 150,000-plus count. I am super excited to get my phone.

Having an ad on (what used to be) the #1 website doesn't count as giant advertising?

I knew that would be brought up, and no, I don't think it is. Not when you compare it to the competition. Just look at the Droid campaign. It's absurd!

Besides, that ad faded in with the rest of the page. I wonder how many of those people even saw it

Plenty of people do know about it, at least in the smartphone market. They just aren't buying it.

To me, it launched too soon after the Droid. People considering Android probably jumped on it when it came out, and some probably even switched to Verizon to do so. Then 2 months later, Google announces the Nexus One. People who wanted the best in class Android phone already locked themselves into a new contract.

In time releasing it for all 4 carriers will help, but I'm not sure it will help much. I think the best thing Google can do right now is start drawing up plans to try and pull in iPhone users this summer, when the people who came in on the 3G release will start having contracts free up. Touting the fact that you could pull your SIM out of the iPhone and put it into a Nexus One would help.

As far as the ad power of google.com, It's pretty up there. I bet most of the Chrome marketshare came from Google ads about it.

Time to burst some bubble Matt... (remember this smiley)



Motorola has only Apple to thank for their numbers. If it wasn't for the iPhone, that product would not exist. If it wasn't for the iPhone, the public would not be interested in that type of product to the same degree. If it weren't for the iPhone, people wouldn't have picked up the Droid thinking it was just "the next best thing." Apple had to tread into a completely new market and establish a new standard. That's the reason new products can come around and do better "first X days" sales - but they can't catch up.




This reminds me of another product. Yes, the iPad. Have you seen the estimates on how many have been pre-ordered? iPad numbers are going to blow away Android numbers very quickly. I won't be surprised to find out that the iPad has at some point in the future overtaken the iPhone. Oh, the iPad starts at $500.



That's a given. It's not like it's even their phone. It's just another generic HTC handset. And that's the problem. Google should be treating the product like they were banking their future on it. Unfortunately Google's apparent apathy toward their own product and the platform by some accounts, doesn't do much to inspire developers nor consumers for the products/platform.



True, but Palm has a better product in some ways, certainly more attractive. But it was too little too late.



They will? I've never seen a phone support GSM *and* CDMA. Maybe you mean multiple hardware versions of a branded "handset."



The iPhone weekly sales will still outpace Google's quarterly sales.

Everyone that pumps up these other products, and continues to bad-mouth Apple, always fails to realize (or simply ignore) that the iPhone is a platform and it's not standing still.

Apple called out the "competition" when they launched, which put a huge target on their back. Basically saying everyone else's faces, "YOU SUCK." They went so far as to show images of other products. And the best the competition could do is try to copy the look of the handset. They still pretty much keep making the same mistakes they always have though. I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" that even deserves to be called an "iPhone alternative."

Now MS is trying to toe the line (as well), but as usual they've missed the (entire) boat.



Let us know how it turns out long-term for you. That's the biggest measure of the platform or any given product. Right now, most people with an Android phone can't even get a semi-current OS for their handset.

You should borrow someone's Nexus One for a week or two (No, you can't have mine.) You'll probably (I know, I'm reaching here) be pleasantly surprised to discover that it isn't a huge steaming pile of fæces. It's rather quite nice.

But back to the above point, let me start by saying I don't consider a different radio in the same phone makes it a different phone. So with that in mind, then you clearly haven't been paying attention, because right from the very first announcement (you know, the one that made you start this thread), they announced that the phone would be coming to Verizon eventually. It hasn't yet, but it will. Last week it was announced that Sprint was expecting to support it as well. And lastly, as of last week you could purchase a Nexus One with AT&T bands. You can get one right now.


I'm sorry, but I don't find your first several points as relevant. They mostly dismiss the Droid simply because another product came before it. My point was that a single Android phone was getting better numbers in one area than the iPhone (something you'd do as well, given the chance), and this doesn't count the other Android devices out there.


First off, there's already no possible way it will be anything but a step up from my current phone. I already love the operating system, I just need better hardware.

And to address the second part of that statement, as it's a different idea altogether, you're right, fragmentation has become a big issue. I might eat my words later, but I suspect it'll be a long time before the Nexus One gets left behind like this. In nearly all of those other situations, the reason the phones haven't been updated has been the carriers. Google wants to update the Droid, Motorola wants to, but Verizon is the only thing in their way. The Nexus One isn't tied to a carrier like that. There's nothing stopping Google from giving it the latest updates. But believe me, I'll be pissed if they don't.

The Nexus one isn't a steaming pile. But it's also not an iPhone killer by any stretch of the imagination - as so many like to believe it is. So far, IMO, Android has been very lack-lustre. We'll see how things shake out. I still think it stands a good chance against anything Palm does and against Windows Phone (MS is hell-bent on fucking that one up, seemingly not learning nearly enough lessons from the success of others).

Anyway, bottom line is credit where credit is due. The iPhone revolutionized the cell industry and handset design. Everything since is, for the most part, riding on Apple's coat tails.

Dude, no one bad-mouthed Apple. Take your weird victimization complex somewhere else.

People compare other smartphones to the iPhone because it is the archetype for the current generation of smartphones. Take it as a compliment. There are a variety of reasons I prefer Android to iPhoneOS, but that doesn't make one better or worse.

Plenty of people are bad-mouhting Apple and the iPhone elsewhere, if not on this forum. If you don't see it, I don't know what to say.

Other than outright bad-mouthing, or trash-talking, there's also a significant amount of indifference or lack of recognition for its significance. It comes up each and every time anyone talks about other handsets in pretty much every blog and forum. You'll see more times than not, people comparing what may be in store for one platform 6 months to a year down the road, to the current or past iPhone. The platform has been moving pretty slowly, but only because the rest of the industry is still a few years behind.

It is the archetype and it deserves to be recognized as such - that's not what happens much of the time.

Oh, crap! I knew I forgot something this morning... I didn't pay my homage to the iPhone! I'll have to build a little makeshift altar on my desk at work, now. Do you think it will be okay raised up and sitting on a cube wall, or does it need an iPedestal for proper worship?

Not the kind of recognition I had in mind. :P

Nexus One users: I'm curious, when you ordered yours, what were your shipping options? I had three available to me, including the already-selected overnight FedEx. All were $0. I found this odd...

My receipt claims free overnight, but I don't recall if there were any other options, much less what they might have been.

Did you ever get a chance to see one in person?

Nope! I'm going on faith here (and on the 14-day return period).

And naturally, as expected, right after I ordered the best Android phone on the market, Sprint announced that HTC EVO, their 4G WiMAX phone with an 8MP camera that shoots 720p video and has HDMI out. But I'm not too upset. I wouldn't have wanted to change to Sprint. I have a much better plan than they can offer.

Well FedEx delivered the package early this morning! I've been getting it set up all this morning, and I couldn't be happier. Particularly with the speed. I don't know if anyone else here upgraded to the Nexus One from the G1, but the difference in speed is simply unbelievable.

I'll say more once I've calmed down a little, but so far I can't express how excited I am to have a fully-functional and capable phone.

Oh, and I bought the dock along with it along with a spare battery. Question: how long do you think a fully charged cell phone battery will retain any sort of charge if kept out of the phone? Oh, and if you own a G1, I highly recommend this dock. Instead of plugging in, it uses the three little copper contacts on the bottom of the phone. Apparently those also include audio out...

It plays audio via Bluetooth somehow. I haven't set it up, so I'm not totally sure how that works. But, yeah, I love the contacts for charging instead of a plug. Soooo much easier, and likely significantly reduces wear-and-tear on the USB port.

I expect that the car dock will be similar, if and when it comes out.

Words cannot express how much I am loving this phone, and how superior it is to the G1. I am over the moon with this thing and couldn't be happier. Before, I was severely limited in what I could do on a mobile device, and now it feels like my shackles have been removed.

I am very happy for all you iPhone users out there, but there's no getting around the fact that this is the phone for me.

Interesting article about the screen on the Nexus One, probably accounts for some of the quirks people are seeing:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010...-and-hacks.ars/

Oh, for fuck's sake. I have yet to hear anyone with a Nexus One complain about the screen. It's amazing. It, without a doubt, looks better than any other handheld screen I've ever seen. I also can't imagine what sort of lack of text crispness they're talking about, and I have really good eyesight. (Used to be 20/15. Not as good now, but still very good up close.)

There are occasionally some rendering issues, but they're clearly software related.

There are occasionally some brightness issues, but this seems more to do with the automatic brightness not doing the right thing. That is, if I force it to max brightness in the daylight, I have no trouble reading it.

Those are certainly irritating issues that should be fixed, but they have nothing to do with the display hardware.

Wow. I wasn't posting that to say anything bad about the phone, I just found it interesting. Shows the difference between LCD and AMOLED.

Not entirely. It doesn't show what you yourself would perceive.

At this point I'm mostly done criticizing phones or saying one is better than the other for such and such reason. So all I'm going to say is that the screen on my phone is gorgeous, and I've never seen one better (I've seen one on par, though, which is the Zune HD - another OLED screen).

Also:

I know he said "at least to me," but I just don't see what he's seeing at all. Just this afternoon I was reading the empeg board in zoomed-out mode, and had no problems reading all the new posts. And that's with slightly-gray text on dark blue, which I would think would be tougher for the phone to display. So far I haven't had problems reading text on any site in any zoom level.

You guys didn't read the (whole) article Tom linked to. I read the whole thing and it was quite enlightening. They're not damning of the screen at all, they're only interested in pointing out the fact and clearing up some possible reasons why other testers found what was previously reported.

The author owns a Nexus and quite likes it. He doesn't appear to have an inclination to switch to a different handset and in conclusion he's only disappointed that the screen's design/technical details weren't communicated at all in any spec sheet prior to purchasing.

I'm not sure this is an indication of what all OLED or AMOLED panels are or will be like, but the PenTile element arrangement is important to know about, especially for developers.

Okay, good to know. I guess I didn't find it interesting enough to read all the way through. I only made it through about half of it and got bored. I still disagree with him, though. Did he not say that text was hard to read on his screen?

His summary was this:

The main reason I was interested in the article is that it exposes a lot of the low level engineering going on in todays displays, both on the hardware and software side. The work on this reminds me a lot of the work Microsoft put into Cleartype. It is also a tech that factors in how a display is made to take advantage of it and produce a certain effect, by doing sub pixel rendering. In the game graphics space, there is a lot of sub pixel tricks being done these days to render special effects and other components.

Anything OLED interests me quite a bit, since it's likely to be the new display standard in the future for many devices. I'll just have to make sure my interests apparently don't push Bitt off the edge though.

Sorry. I had been aware of the subpixel thing for many weeks now. It just seems like everyone's trying to come up with a reason the N1's screen sucks, when it simply doesn't.

I realize I'm far from impartial, but I've tried living on a Nexus one several times since it was launched but despite being an avid google user (well, search, gmail and calendar), I just find it hugely frustrating to use.

I can't read the screen outside. Even though I know I have to press above the softkey legends to make them work, it bugs me that they didn't put the sensors in the right place. The speaker is simply awful. The fact that when I ask it to power off it gives me extra dialogs bugs me. I don't like the text rendering on the pentile OLED. The application launcher is clunky. The pinch zoom feels wrong and inaccurate, especially on web pages. Having my work and Google email in totally different applications is strange. Everything seems to take more steps than I'm used to. And so on...

Initially I wasn't so convinced by the iPhone (thought it was too big and heavy) and I expected to be continuing to use the candybar/numeric keypad type phones I knew and loved... but as soon as I was actually using the thing it became very clear that I wasn't going to be switching phones 5 times a year to the latest bleeding edge feature-stuffed gizmo from Nokia/HTC/SonyEricsson/etc. I thought that more features made a better device, but hadn't realized that I'd been overlooking how badly implemented and frustrating the basics were on, well, every phone I'd used previously (though I still have a soft-spot for my Nokia 6320... the original one).

It's the software. Android isn't it, at least not yet - and the direction they're heading isn't promising, looking at how they moved from 1.0 to 2.0 to 2.1. The basics aren't polished in the base distribution and then vendors are attempting to differentiate their products all over the place by piling yet more ill-conceived UI concepts into their phones. It's software by engineers, for engineers.

In my opinion, HTC get what phone software should be more than Google do. On Android they don't need to be limited to building a parallel universe of slickly implemented widgets like they have been doing on winmo. They understand how things need to "feel" right.

On the other hand, the fact that the HTC HD2 glitches the playback of its boot-up sound shows a spectacular lack of attention to detail, so maybe they're doomed after all

I'm not saying you're wrong about any of that, I'm sure it's all true for you, but I just haven't had the same experience you did.

The one thing you said that I do wonder about is when you said "The fact that when I ask it to power off it gives me extra dialogs..." Do you mean when it asks if you want to go into airplane mode or power off? That only happens when you hold down the power button. You're supposed to be able to just tap it to put it into standby. I will admit, however, that occasionally when I tap that, the phone doesn't go off like I asked. Another tap usually takes care of it.

So yeah, I think Android has a ways to go. It's only been about 15 months since the first product, after all. But I think it will improve, and I don't know how you can project where the OS is headed.

Don't get me wrong, I have small complaints about the Android experience. For example, I have two GMail complaints. The small one is that I can't seem to tell what time a message was sent. That's annoying. The big issue is that I can't choose different addresses for the "from" field like I can in GMail. I'd like it to be able to pull down my other accounts.

But neither of these are deal breakers. The phone didn't appeal to you, and that's fine. For me, it's a perfect fit, and there is simply no way for the iPhone to fit my use case better. And that's primarily because no other phone out there can do GMail better. That's not the only reason I like Android, but it's the one thing that makes it impossible for me to switch to another platform.