N97 vs Nexus One

I’ve used the Nexus One for a little over a week now. I think the biggest thing I will miss with my previous Nokia N97 is its camera. It’s quite capable of taking some really nice photos, like this shot in the previous post. This is one area that the Nexus One is trumped by the N97. Both phones sport 5 megapixel camera sensors, auto-focus, and LED flash (dual LED on the N97). But the bunch of photos I’ve taken with the Nexus One have been unimpressive, at least in terms of quality. The Nexus One is fast, though.

I guess I’ve had enough of the N97’s slowness. The handful of firmware updates across the months have certainly improved things. But the Nexus One is a whole lot faster, not just in its camera application, but in just about everything. It is like upgrading to a new generation of PC. Nokia made some strategic choices with its hardware specifications which did not pan out well for me. I suppose if anyone wants to label a phone as being a multimedia computer, they ought to make sure it will perform like one.

The other joy about the Nexus One is the size. Finally, after years with a couple of N-series phones from Nokia, I’m now holding something that actually qualifies as sleek and compact. It’s reasonably light too. The Nexus One doesn’t even feel bulky when contained in its neoprene pouch. It feels really solid too, particularly since it has no moving parts at all.

Then, while I had not expected to see improvements in terms of voice call quality, but I think the Nexus One does perform better than the N97. I’d have thought that Nokia would get basic voice call functionality working superbly. However, the Nexus One has the advantage of active noise cancellation from an extra microphone. The benefit of the activate noise cancellation is really at the other end of the call, so I don’t really know myself, but I’ve heard and read a lot about how it works beautifully.

But I think the most fascinating thing is, perhaps, that the Nexus One is more like a PC than any other phone that I ever had. More so than Nokia’s multimedia computers. I rooted the Nexus One within a few hours of receiving it, and I’m still discovering how much like a PC the smart phones have become. (Well, it’s not like I didn’t already know, but when you actually play with it yourself, you experience the things that you could only have read about previously.)

I have other “issues” with the Nexus One, but I’ll save those for another posting some other time.