Compare Google Nexus One v/s iPhone 3g

Just switched to my new Nexus One from an iPhone 3G (and Sony Ericsson P1i before that). So far the Nexus One is winning. (UPDATE: 18Jan: I have to change that, the N1 is not necessarily a clear winner. The iPhone just makes many things much easier). Will try and summarise the pros and cons of the nexus one (vis-a-vis the iPhone) in this post as I discover them, so keep coming back.

UPDATE 3 Feb: I have sold the N1 and switched back to the iPhone. It was a tough decision mainly on account of the better hardware and openness of the N1, but I just could not be bothered to wait for yet another new kid on the block to catch up with features that have been standard on phones for years!!

PROS:

1. Amazing screen – great resolution, clarity and touch sensitivity. Slightly larger at 3.7in v/s 3.5 of the iPhone. Sharper than iPhone, as good in terms of touch sensitivity. And scratch resistant!! Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpGAW6L5x8U.

2. Slightly Smaller: Lighter and slightly smaller so fits better in your palm, and against your ear.

3. Brilliant Customisability: A point sorely lacking in the iPhone. You can create shortcuts for any of the phone applications and widgets available, plus of course any that you download from Marketplace (like apps downloaded from app store). So if I want a shortcut to WiFi or Ringtones, or even to a particular song, I can set it up on my home screen. The widgets are great – there is one for calendar so your day’s appointments are displayed (I hated the iPhone for not providing visual appointment alerts), and very nice Power Control bar to quickly turn on and off power hungry features like Wi-Fi, BT, GPS etc., another one for search with Voice Search integrated. Others for weather, stocks etc. Really Nifty.

4. Set-up is a cinch – as good as the iphone in MOST departments – though painful in some.

5. Great accelerator – Much more responsive than the iPhone. And an option to turn it off.

6. Faster – 1Ghz processor really shows its mettle, although I imagine the 3GS would be pretty close.

7. Better Wi-Fi radio: I get a much stronger signal and data connectivity on the N1 WiFi than on the iPhone.

8. Sleep Mode Notification: Big problem with the iPhone – if there is a missed call or message, there is no LED or other notification on the phone if your screen is off. So you could go for hours without noticing there is a missed call/message. Further I often found that on the iPhone, after a while, or if some other event occurs, even the on-screen notification goes away, so it can be a while before you realise you’ve missed something. The N1 has a glowing Trackball, plus a notification on the status bar that stays till you read the message/call.

9. Mail works like Sync, instead of mailbox: I used to prefer this feature in my SE P1i, where if I download messages on my phone, and then subsequently in my Laptop, doing another download from the phone erases the messages already on my phone and downloads new ones only. On the iPhone, the old messages stay on the phone and you have to manually delete them. I don’t want to clog up my phone with old messages and just use it to access new ones.

10. Multitasking: The N1 supports multi-tasking with open apps running in the background and a shortcut to jump to any open app. However, there is no feature to “close” the app if you want to save processing power. Even the SE P1i had this much better.

11. I can access the SD card as an external storage from my laptop (USB mount) which is great so I can carry files etc.

12. I can delete individual entries from the call log (in the iPhone you can only clear the whole log).

13. It comes with an electric charger AND USB cable.

14. Camera with 5MP and Flash. Haven’t tested the quality yet though.

CONS:

1. No physical silent button: Though the N1 has a very nice way – similar to the “slide to unlock” of iPhone, you can slide the other way to turn off sound. So Slide l-r for unlock and r-l for sound off. Nice, but I prefer the convenience of a hardware button.

UPDATE: The Volume key also doubles up as a hardware switch for Silent mode, which is handy.

2. I like the single button simplicity of the iPhone. The N1 has a trackball (which I doubt I will use) and 4 soft keys for back, menu, search and home. I particularly like the search key shortcut on the N1 though.

3. No Speed Dial – there weren’t any in the iPhone either but I managed to find some apps.

(UPDATE: THIS CAN BE EASILY DONE ON THE N1 AS SHORTCUTS TO DIRECT DIAL. IN FACT ITS MUCH BETTER THAN iPHONE SINCE I CAN CREATE AS MANY SHORTCUTS (SPEED DIALS) AS I WANT AND HAVE A WHOLE SCREENFULL OF THEM).

4. CANNOT SYNC WITH COMPUTER: If the iPhone is guilty of not having great syncing with a PC (even for Mac, To Do sync is missing), N1 is worse because it syncs almost exclusively with Google apps for contacts and calendar. And believe me syncing with Google Calendar and Contacts has a long long way to go in reliability and simplicity. To sync the phone directly with the Mac you have to buy expensive 3rd part software (like Missing Sync). Even to sync your Mac with Google (and then your N1 with Google to make a neat 3-way sync), I had to buy Spanning Sync. Snow Leopard’s integrated Google Account sync is pathetic (it could be Google and not SL though). For a Mac User, the tight integration of the iPhone with the Mac is great. So is N1′s with Google, except I’m not yet ready for the cloud!! Because Google Contacts sucks, Calendar is slightly better. For instance for many of my contacts, I have used a Prefix (Mr. Ms. etc). On the N1, that gets filed under M!!!!!! And the mistake is not the N1, cos the N1 HAS a field for Prefix. Its Google Contacts which is terrible!!

5. Only 512MB built in memory with a 4GB MicroSD card. Far cry from the 16GB plus of the iPhone.

6. No Proxy Support for WiFi Connections: N1 does NOT support proxy settings for WiFi, a point of great concern when trying to access WiFi in workplace environments. The iPhone Wi Fi and proxy set-up is the easiest I have ever encountered.

7. No Internet Tethering: This was a huge problem with the iPhone which they later fixed. So far I believe the N1 has the same limitation. I do hope they fix it asap. UPDATE: I was able to fix this with an app from Android Market called PDANet though its quite complicated.

8. No NOTES or To-Dos: in the N1. Bad, very bad.

9. Many things are just much easier to do on the iPhone – like deleting messages/threads/conversations, composing a new message. It seems to be a trade off between providing more functionality and less clutter. The N1 provides more options, but due to that ends up being less simple. iPhone manages to provide quit a bit within a simple interface, though perhaps not as much as the N1.

10. Can’t take screenshots. The iPhone is just brilliant in this department.

11. Better keyboard: The iPhone keyboard is better spread with more space between letters and so accuracy is slightly better (maybe 5-10%).

12. Ability to Sync music with iTunes – definitely better than dragging and dropping MP3 files manually (like u did in 1995!!!)

13. I prefer the integrated mailbox of  the iPhone – where I can see Gmail, Yahoo AND my POP box mails. In the N1, Gmail is separate and POP mail is separate. And generally more difficult to navigate.

14. UPDATE: 24 Jan. You are not going to believe this. There seems to be no way of quoting the email when you are replying to one. I automatically adds the old email fine, but you cannot edit that text, copy-paste from it or reply in-line. How the hell could N1, which comes from the people who re-invented email, missed something as basic as this?

PS: Came across this article which I think is a pretty good comparison/analysis of the N1 and the iPhone.