Google Android Nexus One - Is it a threat to the iPhone?

A lot of tech pundits will be covering the Google Android Nexus One announcement, but rather than forcing you to wade through tons of irrelevant and boring information, I'll distill it all down to the highlights here.

• 

  Google chose to kick off the event by adopting the Apple format of throwing numbers at the audience to show how great and successful Android has been so far. Basically boils down as follows - 20 Android devices - 59 carriers - 48 countries so far - Android is "developer friendly" - Apps are "always on" (a poke at Apple's iPhone platform there)  - Yada, yada, yada ...
• Nexus One - "Web meets phone." Being described as a new breed of "superphone."
• HTC chosen to develop the phone, has developed seven Android handsets.
• Device is thin, at 11.5mm. Weighs in at 130g.
• 3.7 inch AMOLED 480 x 800 screen. Powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm SnapDragon CPU which allows better multitasking.
• Screen is touch-sensitive, but not multitouch like the iPhone. Hmmm, that's a bit of a FAIL right there.
• Voice support, and speech to text.
• GPS built-in.
• Powered by Android 2.1 "Eclair" OS.
• Built-in trackball acts as notification light.
• Built-in accelerometer.
• 5.0 megapixel camera and an LED flash. Capable on MPEG-4 capture. One-click upload to YouTube.
• Active noise-cancellation mic.
• Built-in Google Maps (I bet there's far more "built-in" Google than that) and Facebook support.
• Widget support - Google News, weather (knows where you are using GPS).
• Active (animated) wallpaper. Graphic equalizer, water ripple effect
• Jazzy 3D UI look ... eye candy, but nice eye candy.
• I wonder what the effect on battery life will be? I wonder if you can turn off all the jazz?
• Voice recognition actually seems to work. Wow!
• Interesting surprise: Google Earth for Android. Neat.
• Able to buy Nexus One from today, with or without contract.
• http://www.google.com/phone
• Price: $529 for unlocked phone, $179 with T-Mobile contract. Verizon and Vodafone to follow.
• Coming to Europe in the spring. No details for any other regions.
• 512MB app storage limit ... due to "security" (in other words, piracy) reasons. Will eventually be able to store apps on SD card. However, that app limit rules out the more sophisticated games and complex apps that you see on the iPhone.
• No data tethering.

So, is it a threat to the iPhone?

In a word, no. The two handsets seem to be aimed at different markets. The iPhone is aimed at the stylish, probably more flamboyant content consumer, while the Nexus One is, well, not. Being an Android-based handset it's tempting to say that it's aimed at a geekier audience, but given Google's involvement I'm hesitant to say that. Sure, there's a geeky element to it, but all that Google integration makes it a handset aimed at consumers of Google content.

The handset has aspects to it that make it a better handset that the iPhone (processor is one example), but overall the lack of multitouch and the minute amount of storage is lackluster.

Scorecard: "Could do better. A lot better."

So the Nexus One is not a threat to the iPhone. It's certainly no iPhone killer. What it might be however is a threat to other Android handsets. While Google doesn't seem to have gone the extra mile to make it the most super superphone they could (in which case it might very well have been a threat to the iPhone), it's certainly got the potential to hit sales of other Android handsets. Google didn't set out to beat the iPhone into submission, but it may have set out to beat other Android handsets into the ground.

Time will tell what will happen here.

Tech specs -->