I have had about a week to play with my Nexus One and I feel like I am getting to a point where I can seriously tell you how the device performs.
No, Nexus One is no iPhone killer and nobody is marketing it as such. It is simply an alternative for people who support open-source development, Google, can't afford an iPhone or simply hate Apple. There can be many reasons but none of them claim direct, overall superiority. For me it is all of the above. I never liked Apple's draconian policies, I never liked AT&T and I always loved Google.
The phone is far from perfect judging from numerous reports of other people.
Personally, I have had very little issues with it. Almost none really.
The phone came in beautiful, minimalistic packaging. If you already use Gmail (and you should) then you are off to an incredibly easy start. All you have to do is sign in with your account and all of your contacts from google get imported in.
A very handy feature to do right off the bat is to setup and enable facebook integration. After doing that, every person who's name you add to contacts will be immadiately looked up in facebook and you will soon see their photo pop up. It will also enable you to see their latest facebook status updates right in your contacts panel.
One thing I absolutely love about nexus One is that it came with every feature I personally needed / wanted. There was no need to go and dig for apps. Most prominent feature has to be the Google navigation - Google maps with GPS and compas. This is also where a very important point comes up. The little track ball in the front of the phone ahs been ridiculed by many people yet it's functionality is simply brilliant. You can use it to navigate the phone but I personally love going into "Street View" in Google maps and using the ball to rotate the camera around. This way you don't block even the least bit of screen with your finger and you really get to enjoy it's OLED beauty. The track ball also flashes in nice soft pulses whenever it needs to notify you of alerts.
Nexus also came with a built-in widget on one of the screens to quickly turn on/off wifi, bluetooth, adjust brightness and sync.
Live wallpapers are beautiful but they do bog your system down a bit. If you don't mind the occasional studder, the animated galaxy wallpaper is totally worth it. However, even simple wallpaper behave and look wonderfully as they animate each time you swipe between screens.
Camera is very nice and I have been able to take some decent shots with it. It is 5MP, with an LED flash. You can enable geotagging and Nexus will automatically organize your photos depending on the location at which they were taken. Which is neat if you go on a vacation or simply travel a lot, even if, only to nearby towns.
Web browser is very fast and even though it does not support pinch and zoom, double tapping the screen works just fine. you can open up several separate windows, keep visual bookmarks etc.
Along with the phone you can also activate a Google Voice account. One of the nicest features of Google Voice is dirt cheap international calls. Google voice also offers transcribed email service. It rarely works well because most people speak really fast but right below a transcript is a simple audio player that allows you to hit play and hear the voicemail right there.
By default, the phone also keeps track of your location and updates local weather. Built-in Google News widget is also a great addition and can be fully customized.
Nexus One also comes with voice-to-text features enabled for every text field in the phone and it works flawlessly as long as you speak more-or-less clearly.
All in all, Nexus One is a superior device in my opinion, especially if you already love other Google services. It deserves our support. iPhones have been around for quite a while and Apple has had a long time to iron out it's bugs. Google is new to the game, but they are definitely on the right path.
Watching:
TED
Listening To:
Rammstein
Playing:
With my Nexus One
