I’ll be perfectly honest, I feel a bit sorry for anyone who’s releasing an Android phone in the next couple of months (Sony Ericsson X10, I’m looking at you). Not only are they going to be going up against the Motorola Milestone (which I reckon could easily take the crown of Android phone of the year), but they’re also going to be going up, in the hearts and minds of Android fans, against the Nexus One.
And that’s even when you take into account the fact that the Nexus One might not even get a general release to the public…
Y’see, there’s something about it that’s caught the public’s imagination, and it’s probably got a fair bit to do with the whole hoopla over it being the official ‘Googlephone’, something I’m not actually convinced it is, at all.
I still stand by my opinion that it’s a dev-phone, for use by developers, and Google’s internal coders. If it gets a general retail release, I will eat my own knees. However, that doesn’t change the fact that in the minds of the public, the Nexus One has become something special, something that upcoming Android phones are going to get compared to, at least spiritually, whether they like it or not.
Well, today, we’ve got a new (but very jerky and low-res) video that shows off one aspect of why the Nexus One is being talked about: the brand new version of Android, version 2.1, that it’s running:
Yes, basically, it’s not massively dissimilar to current version of Android that are appearing on phones like the Motorola Milestone, but it does have a couple of changes, most notably with the tab that brings up the app menu, because it’s, er, different. Oh, and the whole thing seems to run a lot more smoothly (but then, the Nexus One is said to have a Snapdragon processor, so it’s hardly surprising).
So, we shall await with interests to see what the Nexus One actually ends up being. My money’s still on a dev-phone, but… I do expect to see the tech used to build it in other HTC phones.
And I am never wrong about these things, except, of course, when I am…
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