The Nexus One, one of the hottest phones at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, is now one of the highest-scoring smart phones in our Ratings of smart phones (available to subscribers).
The HTC-made smart phone, sold exclusively on Google's Web site and employing the T-Mobile network, enters the Ratings as a very close competitor to Apple's iPhone 3G S and the Motorola Droid. Like those phones, the Nexus One has an excellent display, one that's even larger (at 3.7 inches) than the ones on those competitors—or any other phone we've tested, for that matter. The Nexus One's intuitive interface provides easy access to all its main functions via a highly responsive trackball and touch screen, including its back, menu, home, and search keys.
The phone also boasts a 5-megapixel camera, and one of the fastest processors available in a phone: Qualcomm's Snapdragon. It runs the latest version of the Android operating system (2.1) which gives the phone some pretty nifty speech-to-text capabilities. For example, you can simply dictate e-mails, text messages, Tweets, and other normally typed forms of communication. (See a demo in our video, above.) And, thanks to the Nexus One's noise-cancellation technology, your dictations and conversions will be noticeably clearer in noisy settings.
Android 2.1 also adds support for animated wallpapers, and you can also summon a mini-icon view of all the application pages (up to 5) so that you can jump directly to the page you want.
The phone isn't flawless. Among the drawbacks detailed in the Ratings: As with other Android phones such as the Motorola Droid, making calls often involves an extra step since you have to switch the home screen to get to the phone icon.
—Mike Gikas
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