Happy Nexus Day

Today, Google formally unveils a new iPhone rival, the Nexus One (@googlenexusone), touted as a "superphone." Scoble is streaming it live on Ustream. Steven Levy reviews it in Wired. Here's Miguel Helft's analysis piece in the New York Times, rich with juicy, forward-thinking stats. Gizmodo's liveblog is here. Oh, look, so does gdgt. And Techcrunch, too. And Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land. John Battelle weighs in here.

• [Patient]

  The software and features are really amazing. Some great things hidden in there and are quite innovative if not desperately needed.

  However.. it is truly evident that Google is really lacking in the ergonomic/product design department. That phone is absolutely hideous and really just doesn’t look a pleasant thing to carry around.

  There is a fine balance that I think Apple has managed to master. Aesthetic design that evolves with software design. You can often trick people by sprucing up either or, but there has to be some form of innovation of both fronts.

  It is hard to present a new product as a “Superphone” when it looks like a 90s Palm pilot, the features suddenly become less exciting. As Google seems to be the new “Think Out of the box” innovators, I was expecting something a bit cooler to be honest. Especially for $529 unlocked or a contract that makes me have to carry it around for 2 years.

• [Anonymous]

  looks like a cell phone – nothing to see here.

• [mkultra]

  A couple minor observations…

  1. The icons are awfully small, and kind of ugly.

  2. What the heck is up with that background texture? It looks like whoever designed this interface used mid ’90s Geocities web sites as their inspiration.

  3. Even if I knew what that row of indifferent symbols along the top meant, I don’t think I could explain them to someone and have them understand and remember. I understand the desire to pack as much data into as small a space as possible, but this seems… excessive. Cramped, hieroglyphics.

  • [chip]

    1. They’re icons. You can change them if you like. I’ve never had a problem with them on my G1.

    2. It’s a wallpaper. You can change it if you like. You can even have animated wallpapers now, not that I can think of a reason why you’d want to.

    3. Besides the obvious time, battery and signal strength meter, the rest are notification icons. Not sure why they chose to photograph a phone with all the icons up. They only come up when you have something that needs your attention. Apparently, the owner of this phone has unlistened-to voicemail, unacknowledged appointments, unread email, and unviewed IM conversations. They’re actually very handy.

• [Psony3]

  I don’t know it looks kinda slick to me and we all know google don’t do things but half, if they are jumping into a new Market be prepared for them to make a big splash

• [hijukal]

  For those of us already using Android phones (Magic, G1, Hero, Droid, etc), this is not a big deal.

  But any way Google can get more publicity for Android is cool by me.

• [not_kevitivity]

  As far as I can tell, it’s like an iPhone without any of the sex appeal.