Well, there is officially only one story in the world today, it seems. Despite the CES being in full flow, everyone (and I do mean everyone) is pretty much talking about only one announcement, that was made yesterday, because it was the one where Google officially unveiled the Nexus One to the public (despite everyone and their dog having known about it for months).
And annoyingly, I was wrong. It’s not just a dev phone, it seems.
Y’see, there was one possibility, in all this Nexus One malarkey, that I forgot to take into consideration, when talking about every other partner in the Open Handset Alliance being annoyed by Google releasing their own phone to compete with every Android phone out there. And it’s a simple point that I should’ve really thought of: it’s Google. Of course they’d release an all-seeing, all-knowing phone, and all their other hardware partners would have not much choice but to fall in line. Oh, and of course, it’s no just about the phone, since the Nexus One marks the first time Google are actively setting themselves up as a retailer. So, that’s how they placate all the other Android manufacturers out there: list their phones, like the rather gorgeous Motorola Milestone (which I really do like the look of, by the way), on the same retail site as the Nexus One.
In essence, my mistake was forgetting that Google have the sheer power to say to everyone “we’re doing what we like, deal with it”. And I have to admit, the end results seem worth it, because the Nexus One is, by the look of it, one hell of a phone…
Of course, the problem I have now, in talking about it, is that everyone who’s not been under a rock for the last month knows all about it. You already know it has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 3.7 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, a 5MP camera, and Android 2.1. However, there were a couple of new things mentioned at the official unveiling, such as the fact it’s the first mobile phone to have noise-cancelling dual-microphones, which is pretty cool. Oh, and the fact they’ve put much more voice control in Android 2.1, so your phone can even do things like type out an email you dictate to it. Basically, to put things simply, there’s nothing massively revolutionary at all about the Nexus One, but it is a rather nice evolution of the Android phone.
Oh, and it’s got Google Earth on it, which rocks.
Basically, with those specs, I’m impressed. If it had Windows Mobile on it, I’d want to have its babies (like I do with HTC HD2… and that’s saying something, since I’m, y’know, a bloke…), but it doesn’t, so I don’t. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t want Google watching and noting every single thing I do.
Oh, and also, I can’t help but feel sorry for upcoming Android phones like the Motorola Milestone (well, not so much the Milestone, as I reckon it’s got the chops to succeed on its own, given the phenomenal performance of the Droid in the colonies) and the Sony Ericsson X10. The X10 sums my point up nicely, since on paper, it’s a better phone than the Nexus One. Bigger screen, more powerful camera, and so on, and it’s still going to get stuffed in the marketplace by the Nexus One, since that’s the phone everyone’s talking about…
But anyway, I’m not going to end this blog post on a downer, so here, fresh from Google’s Nexus One Youtube page are a whole ton of (well, alright, three) videos about the world’s newest superphone…
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