Nexus One Android phone - the weekend tour

I was given a Google Android phone the Nexus One from Digital Mobile corporate in Bryant Rd Hamilton to test over the weekend while I participated in the Auckland Google Barcamp. The guys over at Digital Mobile know I’m a bit of a Geek when it comes to tech toys so I happily agreed to write a review of my experience.

Having recently opened a new iPad and leaving the boxes on one of the desks in my office I was surprised at how well the Nexus One packaging melded with the Apple packaging. One thing Apple do well is stylishly clean packaging and it seems the Nexus hasn’t missed that. I was lucky enough to be given the phone fully charged and as soon as I hopped into my car the first test was to pair it with my Parrot hands free. I actually got a call before starting this so while in the call I quickly found the speaker phone and just as quickly navigated to the Bluetooth settings and paired while still in the call, transferring it to hands free and able to start driving.

This experience of navigating my way round the Android OS was going to be a fairly common theme over the weekend as I put the phone through a few paces. I had heard about being able to use the Nexus as a portable wifi hotspot allowing me to share my 3G data connection with any device using wifi and have to say I was impressed at both how easy it was to setup but also the performance was flawless. The battery however took a real hammering so I quickly learnt to turn on the hotspot only when needed rather than leave it permanently on.

Unfortunately, even though the Google Barcamp was held at Vodafone (big thanks to Vodafone for providing the venue free of charge) there was no wifi. A couple of clicks on the Nexus and portable Wi-Fi was enabled. Another couple of clicks and it was protected providing me with my own personal wifi hotspot that went with me over the day with excellent coverage for my wifi iPad, I was even able to share it with someone else so they could check their email.

The purchase of the Wi-Fi iPad over the 3G version should be mentioned at this point. Personally I don’t see any point in paying for two data connections when the iPad will connect via wifi; you just need the right devices to create portable hotspots while on the move. Being an iPhone fanatic I was prepared for the “No Tethering” response from Steve Jobs but there are always options and alternatives from portable hotspots to jail broken solutions.

Back to the Nexus I found the keys on the keyboard disconcertingly small but the response seemed to be accurate even if I didn’t press bang on the middle. Like many things there are always a few device differences to get used to.

Twitter and Facebook out of the box as installed apps was a nice touch but the key was the unified messaging and centralised options for contacts. I haven’t mentioned that I setup my Google Apps for our domain on the Nexus because the simplicity of it was such that it doesn’t really need talking about. It really was that easy. Tap the Google button, enter credentials and go.

When setting up my contacts, Facebook and Twitter both offered to update my contacts with a variety of methods. Choosing not to add a thousand twitter contacts I opted for update existing contacts with information from Twitter followers and Facebook friends who already exist in your address book. It was almost like address book overload as I suddenly had contact information that I had never bothered to complete before and a lot of additional and updated information. That obviously synced to my Google Apps contacts so was a takeaway for me once giving the phone back to Charles.

All in all the Nexus One was an easy to use phone, nicely setup with a lot of very useful out of the box features. One of the big things I look for is “How easy would it be to adopt” one response; easy.

Would I recommend a Nexus One? Definitely, apart from the fact that it has all the required features to make it a useful mobile business device the portable hotspot is a real plus for those on the road.

Big thanks to Charles Farrar from Digital Mobiles’ Hamilton Corporate store at Unit 1A, on the corner of Bryant/Te Rapa Roads in Hamilton.

Parting thought, this blog was written on an iPad with iPages using the docked keyboard and uploaded to my blog using the Nexus One as a Portable hotspot. Why… because I could.