Why the Nexus One IS NOT an iPhone Killer
By Joel Feder | January 7, 2010
As many of you know, Google held an event last Tuesday announcing the Nexus One. By then, almost everyone knew the phone’s specifications from the numerous leaks. The only surprise I learnt is the fact that it will be sold on Verizon Wireless in the near future. Here is a quick rundown on the specifications;
- 3.7″ AMOLED display with a trackball.
- It comes with features such as a light sensor, GPS, and accelerometer.
- 130 grams in weight and 11.5 mm in width, about the width of a standard #2 pencil.
- Camera is 5MP with LED flash.
- Two microphones, one of which is used for noise cancellation.
- Customization is a key to the Nexus One. There are five home screens to customize your interface.
- Dynamic touchscreen features of the software. For example, one of the wallpapers is a lake with leaves. When you touch it, it will ripple. It’s quite nifty, actually.
- Every text field is voice-enabled. Every time you speak, it will process your speech into text. It gets better and better the more you use it.
- You’ll be able to buy the phone at the Google web store. You can find it at Google.com/Phone. It costs $179 on T Mobile with a two-year contract.
- It will be on Verizon in Spring 2010. Europe’s Vodafone will also support the Nexus One later this year.
The phone overall has some awesome features. The complete voice control anywhere in the phone is truly awesome (if it works well). The phone is thin, has great battery life, and really competes as far as specifications are concerned.
The fact remains this is not an iPhone killer. In fact I personally am sick of hearing about every phone that comes out being hailed as the iPhone killer. It happened when the Motorola Droid came out and now with the Nexus One. Android simply does not have certain things that make the iPhone what it is. The iPhone comes with the Apple experience. It fits in the Apple eco system with MobileMe and iTunes. Yes, the Android platform has similar sync capabilities with Google Calendar and Contact syncing. The problem lies with the computer interface. There isn’t one! The great thing about the iPhone is the desktop experience with iTunes. I am not claiming iTunes is awesome but I am going to claim it is a large part of the iPhone experience. I can control my apps, music, photos, and pretty much whatever I want to sync and manage through iTunes without even touching my iPhone. It is all backed up and I have physical control over the data. With Google, it is all in the “cloud.” The application market on Android is also no where near the size of the App Store on the iPhone. If you need to get something done on the iPhone, it’s almost guaranteed you will find an app for it.
In my opinion (and it seems to be many others as well) the real shifting point of the Nexus One and Tuesdays announcement was not the Nexus One phone itself. It is what Google is using it to launch. The web store to sell the phone both unlocked and on T-Mobile. Google is moving towards taking more control of the Android platform. It will be very interesting to me to see how this all plays out with both the online store and Google selling/pushing its own phone.
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One Response to “Why the Nexus One IS NOT an iPhone Killer”
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10:03 pm on January 7th, 2010
Good Post.
I currently have the iphone but pay a premium to have it on the AT&T network.
I’m tempted to switch to T-Mobile with their unlimited text, talk, and data for only $80.
The apps I use most on my iphone are the gmail app (which checks my gmail) and the maps app (which uses Google maps). So the transition to the droid wouldn’t be too hard for me.