The Google Nexus One for Business – fast but infuriating

Google Nexus One for business

I think that if I had reviewed this phone before the HTC Desire then I would have come out with a different conclusion. When the Google Nexus One was released it came with a massive amount of hype and a lot of this revolved around it being a potential i-phone killer. That was a large gamble but has it payed off?

The Google Nexus One was built by HTC but is fully branded as Google’s smartphone. So how does it perform as a business mobile phone?

The Nexus one uses the Android platform, which is now widely accepted as a great platform for business mobiles with previous HTC models but it still doesn’t quite match the i-phone or for that matter most of the Blackberry Smartphones.

The Google Nexus One is a lightweight phone weighing 130 grams and has a nicely sized 3.7 inch screen at 3.7-inches.

Like the iPhone, Google have gone light on the outside of the phone. There are just two volume control buttons, a power button and a scrollwheel. There are no buttons on the right side of the phone or underneath. and on the top, there is a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

The scrollwheel is average, it works Ok but is not as effective as some of the Blackberry models scrollwheels.I prefered just using the screen to navigate and scroll.

The phone is nice and slim and feels very slick, on the back there’s a 5MP camera and a flash.

On the front of the phone there are four buttons which give a nice little buzz to register each press, don’t misunderstand me, it’s not a big electric shock of a buzz, but a slight buzz that just signals to the user what you are doing.

There’s a back button, menu, home and search. These buttons are well calibrated and respond well to the touch; I didn’t have any issues with them.

The Nexus One is only available via their dedicated phone portal, which suggests that they were planning world domination with this phone and wanted to keep all of the spoils to themselves; oh dear, it hasn’t happened….

How about a video break?A major strength of the Nexus One for business users is the Qualcomm QSD 8250 1GHz processor, which is damn fast for games, apps, media and just about any task.

There were a few times when the phone hung, but that is expected with the new Android OS.

The Nexus One comes in a white box that looks remarkably like the i-phone’s box. It comes with a USB cable, earbuds, charger, a slim manual and the phone itself. The shape and size is definitely similar to the iPhone.

The Nexus One was designed as a touchscreen phone and it does work fairly well, the only gripe is that it sometimes pauses mid app, or apps suddenly do not work.

You can easily navigate through photos in the gallery app, and it has the familiar long press and click to start apps.The screen is 800×480 pixels and is clear and bright.

Google Nexus One

The phone does operate very quickly so great for internet use but a shame that there is not an i-phone style zoom function for easy browsing.

One thing that many users may like about the Google Nexus One is that there is no dedicated call button, this is obviously because calling is just one function of a multi-media smartphone but I do think that a call button is a useful function for business mobile phone users as it is by far the most commonly used function when you are working.

Making a call is a four click process: press the power button, slide to unlock, start the Phone app, and dial the number or select a contact.

Managing calls was really easy. There are obvious buttons for putting a call on speakerphone, muting and even adding another caller. The phone earphone and mic both give a clear sound and also pick up your users voice well.

The Google Nexus One has no restrictions about which apps come pre-installed as it is a Google phone, it comes with the Google Voice app.It shows you which voicemails you have available, and you can use Google Voice to make your phone calls. It is not free to make calls as with Skype but it gives you an extra phone number.

The Nexus one is simple for email use; you are prompted to add an email address when you first turn the phone on and/or you can connect it to a Gmail account.

The Gmail mobile client is nice and easy to use and fortunately refreshes when new messages arrive rather than needing a manual command to refresh. You can also configure the email app for POP mail messages.

You can add Facebook contacts to the Nexus One, and was good for use with Twitter.

Another incredibly strong pillar of this business mobile phone is the browser, it runs incredibly fast. Only drawback is that Flash is not supported; we tested several feature-rich sites, such as Facebook.com and the sites loaded very quickly (as long as Flash was not used, which is not supported on the Nexus One).

There have been some major improvements to the Android platform’s camera functionality and the Nexus One has obviously been made with these improvements taken into consideration with its 5MP camera. For starters, the photos looked very clear and not at all pixelated as with the i-phone but i guess that this is expected as the i-phone camera is just 2MP.

You can set white balance either as automated or by lighting conditions – such as sunlight or indoors which was useful for a day trip when we made good use of the camera.

There is a zoom, and a flash that can be set to automatic. There are a few tacky gimmicks to help you glam up your images but this will be more appealing to teenagers rather than the typical business mobile phone user. You can upload images to services like Facebook or Picasa, or send by email. You can also upload your videos to YouTube very easily.

The Google Android OS is not up to the standard of the i-phone of the HTC Desire when it comes to media use.

It wasn’t obviously clear how to manage your manage music and movies and then sync over to the device, maybe not too much of a problem for most business users.

You can buy songs and other MP3′s from the Amazon MP3 service to buy tracks – the Nexus One handles most of the popular formats including AAC, MP3, WAV, H.264 and MPEG-4.

Like the majority of Android phones, the Nexus One supports YouTube videos and you can film your own video clips in 720×480 resolution, at a minimum of 20fps which is OK for personal use but not professional video standard.

The Google Nexus One has 4GB of storage and you can add a microSD up to 32GB of space if you need it.

Google Nexus One business

As a business mobile phone the Google Nexus One is fine, but doesn’t come close to the Blackberry Smartphones or indeed the i-phone.But I guess that it was not built as a dedicated business mobile phone like the Blackberry models.

The phone has a great design and is generally easy to use, it has great speed when browsing which is a major plus but the unreliability of some apps was annoying.

Overall good, but has now been outclassed on Android by the HTC Desire, and never lived up to the i-phone.