It must have been sometime near mid-December when I first actually saw and used — albeit briefly — a Nexus One. A Googler, the owner, graciously let me use it for a bit after receiving it as part of the Google corporate gift that the device got — more a publicity stunt rather than an actual trial in my opinion. More encounters with the phone, again owned by friends or acquaintances working for Google, let me get a clearer look at what widely became an online sensation over the holiday season, generating too much buzz, well before sites like techcrunch, gizmodo, engadget et al. started publishing early, unofficial reviews.
And what I saw was good, even great in some respects, although far from what Google tries to make it seem. The Nexus One is far from just another smartphone; it is a message and a demonstration. A message from Google to the telcos, that the company is seeking a departure from the status quo. A demonstration, to everyone, but mostly perhaps to manufacturers, and Google’s competitors, that the platform, in this crucial moment where expectations are high and the mindshare is there and the spotlight is on them, of the standard that Google is seeking with regards to device design and also regarding the control it has on the software that runs on those devices.
Yet, the embodiment of the above, the physical dimension of Google’s plan, was what took the world by storm early last month. The device itself, an HTC manufactured smartphone running Android 2.1 — only a few weeks after 2.0 was released in Motorola Droid, which is also the only device that actually runs a 2.x version of the operating system — packs a number of innovative features and state of the art hardware.
From an industrial design viewpoint, the Nexus One is a nicely designed smartphone that takes on board many of the iPhone’s æsthetic features. It is, as others have written, ‘bland’ — the device, while physically convenient, petite and appealing, is not anything exceptional — it is, however, definitely much more digestible than Motorola’s ‘We still live in the 80s’ Droid. It is obvious that Google tried to cover the middle ground here; state of the art industrial design is a costly endeavour and Google is not known to care or strive for it (cf. Apple). It didn’t want to create a device that would be too expensive, and it clearly put the weight on hardware, not design.
HTC, its choice for a manufacturer, arguably mostly known for its Windows Mobile phones (which are decent devices, if not for the miserable, archaic OS that runs on them), is putting up a good fight in recent years, with increasingly well-designed devices and featured packed smartphones, albeit not what one would call gems of industrial design. The company has also designed and manufactured most of the, relatively few to date, Android devices and was the original Android G1 manufacturer back in 2008.
Google’s message however needs more than mindshare and state of the art hardware. Besides, Windows Mobile devices by HTC have had great hardware for years and have seen dwindling market share and poor reviews. So Google took some bold steps in the software field too. First, announcing Android 2.1 in a Google-branded device so soon after 2.0 was released, showed everyone that Google’s development pace is extremely fast, that the gap between the open source part of the software stack and the proprietary, closed software that runs on this latest Google phone is larger than anyone thought. Android 2.1 on Nexus One has a lot more to offer than 2.0 on Motorola’s Droid/Milestone, let alone earlier devices running 1.6. Google has become the focal point for a slew of applications that are offered only to those partnering with the company; from navigation and maps, to souped-up versions of GMail and so on. Android is maturing and with it, so is Google’s control over a platform that was once presented as an open source, freely available, complete software stack for anyone to modify and use. In one way it is, much more so than Apple’s Darwin/XNU. In another, Google knows that a universal, common experience is required if this is going to work. Android on its own means nothing if it fragments into a multitude of quasi-compatible platforms, in a manner similar to the desktop linux ecosystem. It needs guidance and it needs control. And by demonstrating the Nexus One, Google has made it clear that it wants to lead in the standardisation; I’m sure that it had notified its manufacturing partners of the move, well before the Nexus One ‘was leaked’ to the public.
Beyond marketing, however, the Nexus One is not even close to impressive as the iPhone in 2007. While the latter is an ageing device in many respects, it has retained its spot as the premium next-generation smartphone, the device that revolutionised the market and still provides an unparalleled experience; the definitive example of Apple’s brilliance that repeatedly combines vastly superior software with exceptional industrial design, while at the same time employs medium-grade electronics to produce something which is extremely profitable and desirable, while devices with much more sophisticated hardware on the market seem like Ferraris with broken Hyundai transmission boxes and 8″ wheels. The Nexus One is probably a worthy iPhone competitor and the best smartphone running Android on the market today. It also demonstrates pretty well how much things have changed in terms of hardware in the past few years — perhaps hinting at what the current iPhones might feature in a few months time. It is, however, much more than a phone, but perhaps a preemptive move by Google to put the Android ecosystem on high-gear as the War of the Smartphones unfolds before us.
