Review – The Google Nexus One Smartphone (plus HK telecoms)

Hong Kong – A self-confessed “Google Fanboy” raves about his new smartphone.

His Verdict: (4.5/5)

A few months before the Nexus One was announced by the Mountain View internet giant, a Google-branded phone called the Google Ion was silently released to a handful of developers present at Google I/O 2009, the company’s annual developer-focused conference held in San Francisco.

The Ion turned out to be the HTC Magic, released in Spring 2009, by the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer, HTC Corporation.

Fast-forward less than a year later, and you have a phone that blows away the Ion/Magic. Not only does it sport a faster chip, the 1 GHz Snapdragon made by Qualcomm, but it’s also got a much larger, brighter screen, with a resolution of 800×480 pixels (remember the time when our computers had 800 x 600 pixels screens?)

It is unfair to compare the N1 with the Magic, but just comparing its hardware with the iPhone 3G S (released seven months ago) still clearly puts the Nexus One in a class of its own.

To make the Nexus One, Google teamed up with HTC. The Taiwanese company was previously known in the industry for being an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) making phones and portable computers for other companies.

The phone that I carry with me in my pocket every day is not just a smartphone, but a “nexus” to the cloud.

In fact, I rarely use my phone as a phone, the voice device.

I use it more often to browse the internet, read and reply to e-mails, find my position on a map, and listen to online music. This is nothing new for those who already own smartphones, either the iconic iPhone or any other brand.

The Nexus One’s biggest strength, aside from (currently) superior hardware specifications, are its software specificities, namely the Android operating system, and the software made available for it.

One example is Google Goggles, an experimental application that lets users take photographs of real-world objects or patterns (logos) for Google’s servers to crunch and return search results.

Frankly, I have not yet found practical uses for Goggles.

As stated in the disclaimer, the app (application) works rather well on logos, landmarks and, of course, plain text. But at this stage, I don’t have the reflex to yet take photos of, say, a store sign when I find something interesting.

But I clearly see the potential and the vision behind this kind of technology: merging the real, tangible world with the information-rich, virtual world created from data circulated on computers connected to the Internet.

That vision was exemplified in a scene of Avatar, where the scientist portrayed by Sigourney Weaver says that the planet is like a giant computer, network that the Na’vi tap into by performing arcane rituals, or touching some plant with their fingers.

In a (relatively) similar fashion, I could be walking on the streets in 10 (or even five) years from now, and use my wrist band computer (or those prophesied virtual reality glasses) to find the market price for durians when I stroll around the wet market (which would know that I shopping for durians, because my device can smell its sulfurous smell nearby).

What strongly contributed to expand my user experience of the Google Nexus One is Hong Kong’s affordable mobile broadband networks. Canada, where I lived all my life until recently, was said to have slow and expensive Internet access, according to a recent study commissioned by the Berkman Center at Harvard.

In Hong Kong, I can get an unlimited data plan (and about 1,000 voice minutes) at download speeds up to 7Mbps — in theory. In practice, it does not go higher than 3Mbps — for only HK$250 per month with a mid-to-upper range Hong Kong mobile telecommunications company.

Plans with a subsidized handset set you back about HK$400 for unlimited data access. A typical smartphone data plan in Canada, for 1Gb of bandwidth costs CA$60 (HK$450) per month (plus sales tax).

Google Nexus One vs. 2ifc in Hong Kong

Hong Kong Telecoms

I wrote on my blog recently that Hong Kong is a perfect trial ground for Google’s online strategy, a company with ambitions to transform the way we perceive mobile telephony.

In Hong Kong, the Nexus One, shipped with an AC adapter for an extra US$20 (a HK$5 plug adapter is probably available in Sham Shui Po), will cost about HK$4600 in total.

The Nexus One is also available in the US, the UK and Singapore, but you have to pay an extra 17.5 pct VAT in the UK and 7 pct GST in Singapore.

The Nexus One is also a phone that has considerable appeal to the technically-adventurous.

Rooting

While it will void your warranty, “rooting” your phone is not something discouraged by Google, and relatively easy to accomplish with the use of an application included in the Android’s official standard development kit.

The term rooting comes from root, which stands for admin in UNIX nomenclature. Rooting allows applications to make use of hardware that is otherwise locked for safety and security reasons. One such application lets you use the camera flash as a LED light torch and stroboscope (which may overheat and damage your phone in prolonged continuous use). These applications for rooted handsets are available directly on the Android Market.

The Nexus One will probably not be a commercial success or cultural pop icon, like the iPhone has been.

In fact, a Dow Jones report cites sales of 80,000 units in the first month since release, compared with iPhone’s first month of 600,000, or even the Motorola Droid’s 525,000 (another Android phone).

Nonetheless, this is without television ads, and merely from media buzz, presumably, and no physical in-store presence. Is this part of Google stategy to do for cellular phones, what Dell did for personal computers, namely eliminating the unconditional need for physical stores? Is it because the Nexus One is not to be the next big thing for Google?

Like I said, I am a Google fanboy, and they could have branded a pig with the Google name and I would have bought it. The Nexus One is my first smartphone, or “superphone” as they put it (and I never owned a PDA or iPod-like device), and I’ve never been as plugged in as before. I can only hope that one day the Nexus will come as eyewear or something.

Notes
Since February 22nd, Google Earth for Android is available on handsets running version 2.1, which include the Motorola Droid and the Nexus One (see photo)… One of the apps available to root users is the wifi tether app. It effectively lets you use your phone as a modem for, say, a laptop computer. This app is not available on the Android market, and you have to root your phone, but also patch the wifi card driver…