Google Nexus One Unlocked Phone with Android–U.S. Warranty (Brown) - Official New Excellent Gadgets, Tools & Accesories

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rejuvenationmd “evolutionary trailblazer” (La Jolla, CA USA) –

  

  

I almost cried when I returned the Motorola DROID A855 Android Phone (Verizon Wireless) to Verizon due to connectivity problems but now I am glad I ended up with the Google Nexus One Unlocked Phone! This Nexus One hasn’t failed me yet; it has strong 3G connectivity with T-Mobile and strong Edge connectivity with AT&T. The phone is gorgeous (AMOLED display – Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) and amazingly fast (snapdragon processor) and fun (Android 2.1 interface enhancements)!

I love the droid platform that you can customize and aren’t stuck with the rigid iPhone experience.

I love Google’s turn by turn navigation which usually works for me by voice command such as “Navigate to Fry’s Electronics” and it will give me choice on screen of which two locations in my city do I want directions to? I touch screen my selection and it starts telling me how to drive there. I have found Google’s Navigation better than Garmin in that it gives a better gas-saving route and tells you the turns before you get to them rather than after you already passed them. I do prefer hard keyboards which Nexus One doesn’t have so Verizon’s Motorola Droid wins out there! I was hoping they had used the money saved on no landscape keyboard to put in BETTER microphones and really fix the Voice Command making typing obsolete, but no. However, Swype and other keyboard apps can improve your virtual keyboard experience. The phone has been dissected and the parts apparently come to $174 in change and the rest is Google’s profit.

Another reviewer said low battery on Nexus One, to fix that, just download free app Advanced Task Killer and shut down running software that you don’t need running and it will last longer. Also, you can make it run edge instead of 3G which will save on battery. There are a lot of settings you can easily adjust to conserve your battery life. Battery life for the Nexus One is as follows: 10 hours of 2G talk time or 7 hours of 3G talk time; 12 days of 2G standby time or 10.4 hours of 3G standby time; 5 hours of Internet use on 3G or 6.5 hours on Wi-Fi; 7 hours of video playback and 20 hours of audio playback. According to FCC radiation tests, the Nexus One has a digital SAR of 0.867 watt per kilogram.

Also, another reviewer said that low privacy due to syncing with his desktop, but you can turn off syncing in your settings if you don’t want them to sync. The syncing is actually one of the features that I think appeals to most Android/google fans.

I love the Amazon ap and being able to scan UPC codes to do comparison shopping and read Amazon reviews!

The 3D AMOLED screen is breath-taking. The interactive wallpapers are fun.

I bought the Nexus One unlocked from Google for $529 plus tax. I have always been impressed with how innovative google is but the experience of buying a phone from them is horrid. I would not do it again. They are not providing any customer service other than to tell you to call TMobile about the service or HTC about hardware questions. Google will not provide a customer service telephone number even AFTER you have given them almost $600; there is no customer service on the packing slip or anywhere to be found. They have a help forum where supposedly you can get help from other CUSTOMERS but they themselves will not help you out. TMobile CSRs say they will have this phone available for sale in their store by the end of January and I would definitely recommend buying it from them instead of Google. Also if you buy it from Google, TMobile insurance against damage, loss, theft, etc is unavailable; the only insurance you can get on the Google phone when you buy from google is from square trade which has a deductible and is limited in what it will cover. I do really like and use the UNLOCKED status of the phone and don’t know if TMobile will be selling it unlocked as that is something new to be offered in USA. It is so great for traveling abroad; just pop in a prepaid SIM card from that country and you are ready to roll without roaming fees! I suppose if TMobile doesn’t sell it unlocked you just need to go to the same little bit of extra trouble to unlock the phone so you don’t end up having to turn over the farm to TMobile/AT&T for roaming fees!

I received my phone 01/08/10 and am thinking it is a definite keeper but I am still playing around with it and learning it. Nexus One is FUN! It is pretty! It is fast! It is so enjoyable I have almost forgotten the awful Google buying experience.

UPDATE jan 17 2010 – I brought my Nexus One to the AT&T Kiosk and…

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Daniel S. Kim “technology enthusiast” (Anaheim, CA USA) –

  

I know, I know. I gave this product 5 stars yet my review title seems to be quite a bit contradictory, but theres plenty of reasons why. First and foremost, I have dreamed of this product ever since I got into the PDA game in 1999 with my Palm IIIc. Since then, I’ve used a veritable warehouse of different units, anything ranging from the aforementioned Palm IIIc to pretty much any Android handset out there that offers service in a GSM flavor to this point. I purchased the Nexus One on day one, and received it over night, so I am by far one of the earliest adopters in the market. As you can imagine, my expectations are quite high for an all-in-one PDA, and even though my title may be emitting a bad taste in my mouth, I can assure you thats not the case.

With PDA’s/Smartphones bridging the gap between our Laptop’s/PC’s, the functionality all needs to be there to really be a full on mobile replacement. With the insurmountable amount of internet discussion that this device received prior to its official announcement and release, one couldn’t help but get their hopes up. Did the Nexus One hit its mark? Yes, I believe it did, and with style and poise to be frank. But, is it that all-one-device that has the power to leave your laptop at home for the road warrior? Nay, I wouldn’t go as far to say that. The device itself and Android put together are a powerful duo of open-source-goodness, but it still has a ways to go, which I’m sure Google will stand behind and push forward.

DISPLAY 9/10

Overall, the 3.7 inch AMOLED display is a sight to behold in and of itself. The colors are brilliant, blacks couldn’t be more rich and dark, and video is even crisper than my dedicated laptop, the ASUS UL30Vt-X1 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium) which is currently for sale on Amazon as well. Watching HD video on YouTube is no doubt an impresser, and website viewing and navigation couldn’t be more pleasing, especially with the new multi-touch update that Google pushed out to its user base, which provides that functionality inside of Google Maps, the browser, and the gallery.

The capacitive touch screen works just as great as expected, except for a few minor issues which do not hold any ground in this review and score of the display. For one, being a male of average height, I don’t exactly have that big of hands. Therein lies the problem with one handed use, as the device is a wee bit too wide for my hands, which occasionally causes my palm to touch the screen when I try to reach too far. As you can imagine, this causes a problem sometimes, but you really just have to arch your thumb when using it which takes some time to get used to.

The 1 gigahertz Snapdragon is definitely awe inspiring in its performance, and typing on the screen is definitely better than its other Android predecessors. Whether Google will admit it or not, typing on the screen would be greatly enhanced by adding multitouch capabilities to the keyboard and allowing for adjustment in that regard. Some people like myself type literally at a speed of 70 words per minute on a QWERTY phone keypad, and this would definitely be appreciated.

The only downfall of the gorgeous display is the fact that there is a bit of tinted red hue if you look closely. It is ever more apparent when taking video of the device itself, as it greatly pronounces this fault in the screen. For the most part it doesn’t affect the user experience of the device, which is why I only slighted the score by 1 point. The other thing to watch out for is the fact that AMOLED’s perform horribly in direct sunlight compared to their LCD counterparts, but this is something that is somewhat widely known and it shouldn’t be knocked for that.

PERFORMANCE 10/10

With the amount of RAM included in the device and the newly praised Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, this is where the Nexus One definitely puts it shine on. Applications open swiftly like the device has extra sensory perception, and you couldn’t be more satisfied with the overall speed increase compared to any other Android device, or any other Smartphone on the market for that matter. 3D games perform admirably, and there isn’t much else to say other than yes, it will knock your socks off.

Web browsing compared to my other Android devices is a joke, and don’t believe what some reviewers are saying about the Web-Kit based browser compared to others of similar nature, namely the iPhone 3GS. With my constant side to side comparison with friends that use the iPhone, 90 percent of the time my Nexus One is making them cry tears of pain, not admiration.

The trackball is well, a trackball. It does its job, what little it may have, and one of…

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Geoff Finger “daetrin” (Huntington Beach, CA) –

  

I’ve had the Google Nexus One for about three or four days now. I got the unlocked version direct from Google for $530, so I can’t imagine why anyone would pay the $630 or more other sellers are asking for. Switching my number over to T-Mobile was easy, although it took about a day for the transfer to be finalized, which I’m blaming on Sprint due to my experience with their customer service in the past. And since I have the unlocked phone I was able to get the Even More Plus plan with 500 minutes, unlimited texting and “unlimited” data for $59.99 a month, so I’ll be saving a _lot_ of money in the long run compared to the iPhone on AT&T or the Droid on Verizon. So far the phone seems very fast and I’ve already downloaded several apps. Some people have been making a big deal about the fact that the app space is limited to the internal 512 MB flash drive, unlike the iPhone which can save app data to the main drive. I’ve installed 9 apps so far, the largest is 3.59MB and the smallest is 664KB, with the total coming to 12MB. According to the memory manager I’ve still got 153 MB of storage left (apparently the OS takes up about 350MB) so I’m not worried about running out of space before Google comes out with the fix for saving apps to the SD card that they’ve said they’re working on. One important “feature” of the N1 which people may view as a pro or con, depending on your views on privacy, is the integration with all of Google’s online applications. When you start the phone up it asks you log into your Google account (I’m not sure what happens if you try to skip that step.) It will then synch the phone with your “My Contacts” list in GMail and will automatically log you into most Google services. This morning while doing a search on my phone during lunch I was a little surprised to see similar searches I’d done this morning on my desktop showing up in the suggestions box. I’ve also been getting notifications on my phone for all the events I have saved on my Google Calendar. Transferring data to the phone from your computer is simple. It comes with a USB to micro-USB connector, and the hardest part of getting it connected is realizing that after you’ve plugged it in you need to open the notifications window on the phone and tell it to mount the SD card (this is presumably some kind of security feature in case you lose the phone.) After that you can copy files across just like any other drive. I’ve already moved about half a gig of music over to the phone. The battery life seems adequate so far. I need to charge the phone every day, but that’s probably because I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time browsing the web with it. Once the novelty wears off (and the work week starts again =) I expect my usage will drop off a bit. I’m still thinking I may want to get a car charger for it though. Speaking of which, web browsing seems to work great, though I do miss tabbed browsing a little. YouTube videos work great, though other sites with the latest version of Flash don’t. Adobe is currently working on Flash 10.1 for the Nexus though. It’s already in beta and there are demos of it working on YouTube, so hopefully it will be out soon.

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