Google Nexus One Review

Google's first phone was an HTC design sold from a Google web page, unlocked, for $529 with no carrier in the room, and that was the radical part. The hardware was the best Android had in January 2010: a 1GHz Snapdragon QSD8250 when most Android phones still ran 528MHz ARM11 chips, 512MB of RAM, a 3.7-inch 480 x 800 AMOLED that made the iPhone 3GS look coarse, and a trackball that glowed in different colours for different notifications. Android 2.1 put voice dictation into every text field, and Froyo in May 2010 added the JIT compiler that roughly doubled app speed, plus tethering and Flash.

The problems were specific. The Synaptics touch sensor lost track of two fingers whenever they crossed, so pinch zoom jittered even after multitouch was switched on in February. Apps had about 190MB of storage until Froyo let them move to the SD card. The PenTile AMOLED blurred small text and washed out in sunlight, and Google quietly swapped in a Super LCD panel that July when Samsung could not supply enough screens.

The web store closed the same month, having sold slowly. Then the update that mattered never came: in late 2011 Google said the phone was too old for Ice Cream Sandwich, so a device not yet two years old stopped at Android 2.3.6. Every Nexus and Pixel since descends from this one, which counts for more than the grades can show.