US and Europe

For about a month I got to spend pretty much all day, every day with a Nexus One from Google. In fact, the phone is literally courtesy of Google (because working for a company that develops mobile apps has its perks). After using the phone for a month, I wanted to give a birds eye report on what I experienced and specifically focus on two general areas: hardware and apps.

Look and Feel: Let’s face it. I am an Apple fanboy. I love Apple’s attention to design and even though the Nexus One is not as sleek and pretty as an iPhone, it definitely comes close. It has a different kind of ergonomic feel to it than the iPhone does. When you take it in hand, the Nexus One just feels solid and is high quality.

Performance: The Nexus One is also fast. REALLY fast. I purposely skipped the release of the 3GS because I did not want to re-up with AT&T, so having a fast phone for a month was great.

Touchscreen: This is where the Nexus One falls short. Whenever one of my friends would ask what I think about the Nexus One, I would always tell them that the touchscreen cannot compare to the iPhone. I think what it comes down to is precision. I felt like it took a lot more care and attention to get the Nexus One to do what you want on the touchscreen where the iPhone does a better job of sensing exactly what you want to do.

Android OS: After a month with the Nexus One, I definitely became converted to the fact that Android is the next platform to develop for after iPhone OS. For me, the jury is still out on Windows Mobile. Android is solid and just works. I also love how updates are downloaded dynamically unlike the painful OS and app update process we have to go through with the iPhone.

Apps: Ok, so the Android Marketplace doesn’t have 150,000 apps in their store but there are still some gems. My personal favorite was Seesmic for Twitter. Just as good, if not better than Tweetie 2 on the iPhone. The worst part about the Android Marketplace is that it becomes readily apparent that developers don’t put as much time and effort into porting full featured apps to Android from the iPhone.

Anyway, those are my cursory thoughts on the subject of the Nexus One. Would I buy it for myself? No. Would I recommended it to friends who are dead set against and iPhone? Absolutely.

In my opinion, the Nexus One is the second best phone out there right now.