The Nexus One look is nothing too unique and unseen by the cell phone industry as it is inevitable in the touch-screen era of smartphones that they’ll all become increasingly similar until the most efficient designs prevail (that’s when we’ll see some real competition, when the features become the main priority and not the aesthetics). It seems to be following in the trend of an over sized touch display, with a slim fit body. Not too many buttons will be found on the device other than the volume rocker and a trackball. On the actual screen you will see control buttons such as back, menu, home, and search. Following a growing trend in the cell phone industry, Google equipped the Nexus One with a microUSB charging port. On the back of the handset you will see Google’s label in the middle and HTC label on the bottom. on the back of the phone is also where the 5 megapixel camera is housed (fantastic picture quality on this beast combined with the 800 x 480 pixel OLED 16.7 million color display). On the top of the phone you will find the lock and unlock button, and the 3.5mm headphone jack.

The Nexus One is powered by 1 GHz Qualcomm processor that gives it the speed to match all the competition in the industry. This speed allows the user to watch videos and run applications as quickly and seamlessly as their heart desires. The display has vibrant colors and some of the coolest wallpapers, they are live and respond via animations to your touch and music, I have ever seen on a mobile device. I might have to say they really are something else, and of the things that caught my eye about the Nexus One.

Besides the large touchscreen display, all the “wow” factors are pretty much built inside the Nexus One, and the capabilities it has. Google was going after performance with this master piece not to win a beauty contest(Thank you!). Its not that the Nexus One has an ugly design, it just seems like Google took the route most manufactures took, and built something that resembled an iPhone like device which as previously stated will inevitably become the only design until a superior concept or new technology altogether is released.

Turning the Nexus One on and getting into the applications and browsing the web is where your first invigorating experience takes place. Sporting Android 2.1, which I like to think of as a fresh new page for Android users considering a lot of much needed changes and fixes were implemented with this version. The Nexus One is a more user friendly device with the new menu grid, where icons can be scrolled through fast and easy. Other notable newly found applications on version 2.1 are Google’s News and Weather widgets. These provide access to local weather patterns, and US news, sports news, as well as entertainment news.

Running applications and surfing the web is a breeze on the Nexus One will all the hardware power it supplies. With the lightning fast 1Ghz multitasking is performed extremely well, and will begin feeling natural with how simplistic it is. There is no doubt about it, the Nexus One in terms of speed is fast and furious. In regards to the touchscreen and the sensitivity of the display, sometimes the device had a hard time picking up finger motions and different selections I was trying to make. This problem recurred a few times as we were testing applications, and running different widgets. Being an iPhone user I would have to say the Nexus One is not up to par with the touch response that is shown by the Apple device.

Since I have already started to talk about something I found better on the iPhone, I will bring up another lingering issue. The onscreen keyboard of the Nexus One seems a bit off and unresponsive at some moments. I don’t know what Apple did with there but I never miss a beat when typing emails and messages on the iPhone, but it seems when typing up a text on the Nexus, I found my self stopping and waiting, and fixing words because so many touches did not register on the screen. Although its not perfect, I could say its far superior to most of it’s competition in today’s smartphone market while bringing some fresh ideas that hopefully others will notice in their future projects.

The main highlight of the Nexus One has to be its intense speed that translates into a fantastic environment as nothing kills the experience like laggy or choppy transitions, video, or browsing. The live wallpaper that is completely interactive with it’s user is a welcomed feature that makes even the background of your phone an entertaining activity(the live animations and response to touch and music is very intriguing). Having the upgraded version of Android with all the updates and fixes it has implemented bring about some awesome features, even expanding upon the basic call features such as call deferring and a display of voicemails that detail who left the message at what time and how long it is. Starting off at T-Mobile will be interesting to see if people will start off buying the device with the subsidized plan or not. Either way when it makes its way to the Verizon Network sales will almost in defiantly pick up, and Nexus user will grow in numbers. Update as of March 16th: the Nexus will now be offered on AT&T and Rogers 3G networks so Google’s push to break down contract barriers seems to be working and it likely won’t be long before everyone is allowing the unlocked Nexus access to their 3G bands(they already have most of that covered with T-Mobile/Verizon/AT&T so who cares!). If you’ve been putting off buying this monster, now is the time to grab it. With so few devices currently capable of running Android 2.1 and it’s massive metamorphosis from the Android platform with tons of potential into the butterfly that it is now. The only thing that seems to be truly lacking from the gigantic arsenal is the lack of multi-touch which we can only hope to be supported on newer versions.