10 things to know about the Nexus One Google phone

6. Improved snapper

If you've been following the HTC story over the last year or two, you'll have noticed some things: great line up, attacked Android hard, made WinMo into a solid performer where others have failed. Oh, and putting poorly performing cameras on most of its phones.

Well, that's been updated in the Nexus One - early reviews say that this has been improved to a more than acceptable level.

Camera

For instance, Engadget states: "Not only has Google bumped up the speed of the camera app, but the 5-megapixel lens and flash took sharp, detailed images with none of the HTC-related issues we've seen on other models."

It's important that Google doesn't carry the can for any of HTC's previous camera foibles, so thankfully there are no random pink circles from the Nexus One.

7. Media meh

But for all the good work seemingly done by the Nexus One, there are still some areas that need tweaking - for instance the media player, which is functional at best in other Android versions, has been left untouched in the new Flan update.

While this isn't a real problem, it's a missed opportunity for Google to add a new awesome feature to the Nexus One - unless it's 'pulling an Apple' and deliberately leaving some elements ready for an upgrade for later models.

We're looking forward to the day when an Android phone dovetails with Spotify or the like, or offers cloud storage for your videos - but until then we'll have to make do with the standard media player it seems.

8. Slim frame

You might be thinking that all this technology will need a tank to be carried around - well, you'd be wrong, as HTC and Google have managed to pack it into a very slim frame indeed - in fact, under 1.2cm, which is a cracking effort.

But to be fair, the iPhone is only 0.5 mm thicker, and that's been around for donkey's years in the current guise, so it's more a case of Google playing catch up rather than releasing a truly ground-breaking slimline product to the market.

But the good thing is that the Nexus One is pocket friendly, meaning you can slip it in and out of even the skinniest jeans with the minimum of fuss.

9. No multi-touch

But here's another big down side - there's no multi-touch on board, according to early reports. This means no pinch and zoom web browsing, no super fast keyboarding and sadly no cool applications making use of the ability to paw at the screen in a number of ways.

Multi-touch

What's more irritating is that the software does support it, so why Google hasn't chosen to enable it is beyond us.

But there is a sliver of hope - the Motorola Milestone debuted in the US as the Droid where it didn't have multi-touch, yet when it moseyed on over to the UK it was re-enabled.

Whether it's some US patent issue Google/Motorola didn't want to fight, we don't know - but we might get a little British bonus with the Nexus One.

10. Direct availability

The early rumours were of Google offering a phone directly, without going down the route of carriers - it would be a utopia of choice, where consumers would be able to buy the phone at a price, choose their own contract or use PAYG, or even just not even bother with calls at all.

But in reality, things have become a lot more normal. Google will likely offer the Nexus One SIM free and direct, much like Nokia does, but we'd bet our back teeth that the phone will also pop up on O2 or Vodafone or Orange in the next month or two as well, probably landing around £35 a month on a two year deal.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.