The Nexus One Arrives

The Nexus One, Google’s branded Android phone, finally arrives in Singapore. It comes in a nice packaging that on opening, kind of resembles how iPods are packed. Singapore customers are automatically offered a 3-pin charger during the order checkout. This will be an additional charger over the US 2-pin charger that is still included in the box. If you want to save a few bucks, the 3-pin charger isn’t all that necessary. The Nexus One charges via a micro-USB port (the new standard mandated in the EU), so if you already have one such charger, you don’t have to get another one.

There are no surprises with the Nexus One when you see and feel the real thing. There’s already so much to read about it over the Internet that there is hardly anything new to discover with the actual set. The phone looks nice, overall, although personally I’m not terribly impressed with the design. The OLED display is bright and vivid.

You can engrave a personal message on the back of the phone to personalise it. It’s a nice touch like what Apple offers on their iPods and iPhones. However, I thought the handiwork wasn’t quite elegantly done. It looked a little rough to me.

I’m quite curious to know about the quality of the camera. It’s a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash. Many reviews of the Nexus One camera circulating around now compare it with the iPhone, which is kind of silly because the iPhone is clearly inferior (3 megapixel without flash). I suppose the Nexus One is being seen as an iPhone-killer, so that’s how it’s going to be compared.

This isn’t my phone. I didn’t order one. I think the specifications of the Nexus One are great. But I have a working Nokia N97 and syncs with my Mac very nicely. The Nexus One is superb when you want to sync with Google, but I don’t want that, and I don’t want to have to figure out how to get it to sync with my Mac. I know there are paid iSync plugins to sync Android phones with the Mac, but will there be free ones?

Sadly, the Nexus One doesn’t do tethering out of the box. Yes, you can root it and get it to work, no doubt. I imagine time will come when it will work better. It has to, in order to catch up with the competition. Time will tell.