I now have a Nexus One Android phone. This runs the Android 2.1 operating system and comes with a massively impressive screen and a touchscreen that responds beautifully. As all of my contacts are stored in my Google Apps account, as well as my email, transferring from my previous HTC Hero to the Nexus One took literally just minutes.
The touchscreen keyboard operates a lot smoother than the Hero, although the Nexus does not contain HTC’s Sense UI and consequently does not feature a few refinements that make typing numbers and punctuation which means that one has to press a few more buttons to get to them. But this doesn’t particularly bother me, and I’ve been typing away like a madman.
I’ve yet to try the voice dictation system whereby input fields can utilise the phone’s microphone to allow you to dictate words and sentences rather than having to use the keyboard. Apparently the hit rate is anywhere between 70-80%, but will hopefully improve as Google’s voice recognition technology improves.
From what little I’ve been playing with it, this is one very impressive phone. Android is blossoming as a mobile phone operating system and it just keeps getting better and better. Now the hardware is catching up, Apple have a serious contender on their hands. I am very glad I’ve given the iPhone the elbow.
Update: The voice input is absolutely bloody marvellous – so far it’s had 100% success rate, but that’s with a very limited test (I’d like to see what it can do with a tongue twister!). I shall continue to experiment and explore.
