Nexus One writeup in Technology Review

Technology Review's writeup of Google Nexus One phone hits all the high-notes. I've had one of these for a month now (we bought one for my wife and got another through Google's developer program) — it replaced an aging and somewhat slow G1 I bought in 2008 — and I am absolutely delighted with it. For one thing, it is fast as hell, which is very good for people like me with atrophied attention spans — seriously, adding a lot of wellie to the CPU really shows off what the Android OS can do when it's matched with a decent processor. I kind of wish the battery would last a little longer (though I recognize that this is the opposite of wishing that the processor ran faster), but still, considering that this is a 1GHz CPU and that the battery lasts three times longer than my G1's did, I can hardly complain.

My next step is to root the phone so that I can do tethering with it — that is, use it as a 3G modem for my laptop. I'll let you know where I get with that (and do drop by the comments if you have any tips on the subject).

The Nexus One, by contrast, has a one-gigahertz processor–more than 60 percent faster than the processors in the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, and BlackBerry Bold 9700, according to several benchmarks. In my testing, it took 2.5 seconds, on average, to click from one Wikipedia page to the next using T-Mobile's 3G network–and half that long when using a Wi-Fi connection. You can open applications, zoom in on photos, and search your phone's databases instantly. The faster processor dramatically improves the phone's enjoyability.

The Nexus One also has a beautiful high-resolution screen–800 by 480 pixels crammed into 3.7 diagonal inches for a display that's roughly 250 dots per inch, making even tiny text quite legible. (Apple's new iPad, in comparison, is 1,024 by 768 pixels on a screen that's 9.7 inches, for just 132 dots per inch.) The Nexus's five-megapixel camera can autofocus and takes detailed photos at six centimeters, and it has a surprisingly bright LED flash. The phone also has a standard 3.5-millimeter headphone jack, which means you don't need those bulky adapters to use high-end earbuds.

Review: Nexus One and Android 2.1
(via Memex 1.1)