State of the Art
Google Shakes but Doesn’t Upend the Cellphone Market

By David Pogue
New York Times, Published: January 5, 2010

Google sure does love shaking up the system.
Pool photo by Robert Galbraith

Google presented the Nexus One on Tuesday in Mountain View, Calif. The phone, which uses Google's Android operating system, advances the state of the art and adds to the catalog of great app phones.

Remember the original Google search page? It made news because your search results popped up fast and weren’t cluttered with ads. Remember when Google went public? It made news because the founders auctioned off shares to the public. Remember when Gmail came out? It made news because it offered 1,000 times the free storage space of competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo.

And now Google wants to shake up the way we buy cellphones — by letting you shop for the phone and the service independently, on a new Google Web site (Google.com/phone).

To introduce this phone store, on Tuesday, Google took the wraps off what may be the worst-kept secret on the Internet: a brand-new cellphone, designed by Google and made by HTC, called the Nexus One. It’s pretty sweet, it advances the state of the art, and it’s a welcome addition to the catalog of great app phones like the iPhone, Palm Pre and Motorola Droid.

You’ll pay $529 without a two-year contract for service with T-Mobile, or $179 with one.

But the truth is, the Google news this week isn’t quite as earthshaking as Google seems to think it is.

First, the new phone. It’s almost exactly the size and shape of the iPhone. Like most HTC phones, it’s bland-looking. But it’s so thin and rounded, it feels terrific in your hand.

It’s loaded with gleaming, attractive features. It’s hard to choose which is more gratifying: the speed — instant, smooth response when you’re opening programs and scrolling — or the huge, 3.7-inch touch screen, which has much finer resolution than the iPhone (480 by 800 pixels, versus 320 by 480).

There’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, like an iPhone, but also a removable one-day battery and a camera with an LED flash, autofocus and picture settings, although the photos themselves are roughly on par with the iPhone’s.
The rest of David Pogue's story can be read at NYT.
Footnote:
The Bookman is going to check out this new phone!