I recently spoke with Michael Powell about the new Nexus One phone from Google. Having had a chance to put it through the paces himself, he offers great insight — stacking the Nexus One up against the iPhone — in a guest blog post below. Thank you, Michael, and others who might comment, for your thoughts!After over a week of hard use, I am impressed, but I have decidedly gone back to my iPhone. While there are many impressive features on Android, the interface is not as clean, simple and familiar as the iPhone. It reminds me a bit of Windows—too many hidden ways to do any one thing. The icons are too small. The screen, while brilliant (better than the iPhone), is not nearly as responsive to the touch. It's also hard to edit text when you want to back up and correct something. I also do not like the multiple hard buttons permanently on the lowest half of the phone. When you turn to landscape mode, you still need to use those buttons, but they are sideways and less friendly. I love the simple elegance of the single external button of the iPhone. The Nexus One's user interface is just not as intuitive, simple, or elegant as Apple's.
I was, at first, very impressed with the Nexus One's thinness. It's very sleek for sure, but eventually I yearned for my iPhone as just the right size for my hand. The Nexus reminds me of the Razor—wow, but almost too thin for the average sized hand. A little more bulk translates to more comfort and the plastic back is warming in the hand as well, becoming especially noticeable in the freezing cold of winter.
Google brags a lot about open platforms, and surely it is from a developer's standpoint. However, the phone is definitely and consciously biased towards locking you in to Google Applications. The calendar only supports Google Calendar. You can only ever sync your contacts and email — not the calendar. If you work in any business not using Google Apps, you are out of luck. The photo gallery has a great cloud feature of accessing your photos, but only if they are in Picassa— not Flickr, not MobileMe, not Shutterfly. Google Apps are wonderful, but Nexus One making them the only or best choice limits the phone’s utility for many people. The iPhone is much more accessible in terms of what email systems you can easily set up and other services you can sync with.
The services model also seems nuts to me. You have to buy the phone from Google’s online store — by the way you must enter Google Account credentials (lock in) and pay with Google Check Out (lock in). It is cheaper to buy the phone with service, but in the fine print it says that you authorize Google to charge you a $300 hardware fee if you cancel the service within the first 6 months. Worse, you may also owe T-Mobile a termination fee. I also cannot believe that if you use A&TT, you can only access 2.5g network and not the 3g network. The only hope for this phone is when it comes to Verizon in the spring. For now, it's pricey with very limited service options.
As to Apps, Android has a very long way to go to get anywhere near where Apple is. What I notice this means, in part, is that the phone grows stale. After admiring the wavy water wallpaper, and playing with all the buttons and features, you lose interest. With my iPhone, I make it new every time I add a cool new app.
Finally—for now—I lament that Apple and Google are going to war with each other. Apple with Google functionality makes for beautiful music. You can clearly see a hint of the hostility towards Apple on the Nexus One — no iTunes support, no easy sync with Apple apps or MobileMe. This device (and others) could be so much more if they worked together — Google and Apple are the two best innovators.
The good news is that Apple is watching, and the competition from Google raises the bar. I expect that the next iPhone and iPhone operating system will be amazing.
