Google Nexus One Post-Mortem: Successes and Failures

Google launched the Nexus One back in January with some amount of fanfare. The excitement was palpable among the phone nerd clique. The Nexus One was the Google phone, and it was expected to advance the platform, as well as the smart phone sales model. Google sold the phone exclusively through its online store. They encouraged people to spend big on this unlocked phone, but the sales didn't roll in. So the store is shuttered, and the Nexus One is a prized relic among a certain group of early adopters. 

Now that the Nexus experiment has runs its course in most markets, let's evaluate its success and legacy. 
 

The hardware jumped forward

When the Nexus One was announced, the specs seemed unreal. Keep in mind that the Motorola Droid was still a fresh phone with fast hardware for the time. The Nexus One's 1GHz Snapdragon CPU was a big step up from the 550MHz OMAP chip in the Motorola Droid. It seems like Google intended to show us what a high-end Android phone should look like, and that's what they did. 

You need to look no further than your local mobile retailer to see the effects of the Nexus One. Manufacturers knew they couldn't put out top tier Android phones without matching Google's Nexus One specs. The superphones that followed that January announcement built off of the Nexus One's specs. Several of HTC's handsets are basically built on a Nexus One platform with only minor differences. The Droid Incredible and HTC Desire, are more or less, the Nexus One with Sense UI. The Evo 4G also has nearly identical internal specs. 

Motorola may have had a sour taste in their mouth after having their own Droid obsoleted only a few months after release, but they have come back swinging with hardware that easily matches, and probably beats, the Nexus One. 1GHz chips are expected in top-tier Android phones now, and for better or worse, we have the Nexus One to thank for starting that trend. 

It wasn't all great news on the hardware front, though. The Nexus One suffered from a number of hardware issues that held it back. The touch sensor used in the Nexus One just wasn't up to the task of accepting multiple inputs. After a few weeks of testing, users realized the phone had the tendency to swap the axis of the touch input under certain circumstances. Add to that the early antenna problems, and it wasn't looking too good. Overall, the problems were minor and it was a learning experience. Newer phones from HTC use different sensors and do not suffer from the same problems. 

A new pace of software innovation

The Nexus One was, and still is, the handset Google develops Android on. As such, it gets updates first. This gave consumers a glimpse of a very appealing update cycle. The Nexus One shipped with Android 2.1, but that was quickly bumped up to 2.1 Update1, which brought full system-wide multi-touch. Other Android users (mostly Droid owners), took one look and felt slighted. Not only did the Nexus One ship with a new version of Android that no one else had, but it had already gotten an update.  

Users were certainly upset, and this drove them to demand software updates from the manufacturers. If you search twitter posts, or Motorola forum posts from that time, you'll see a lot of people asking about the update. It became clear that manufacturers have to do a better job. Having the Nexus one out there, a step ahead, created a moving target for Motorola, HTC, and the rest to aim for. We may be seeing this happening now, in fact.  

The Nexus got its update to Froyo late in June. In the preceding and  following weeks, there were a large number of phone launches. Phones like the Droid Incredible, Droid X, and Evo 4G all hit the market with 2.1 Update1 as their underlying system. This so confused consumers that manufacturers had to come out and clarify there would be Froyo updates, but details were sketchy. When the Droid X launched after Froyo hit the Nexus, Motorola calmed everyone's nerves and said a Froyo update was coming later this summer. 

We may be about to see a number of big phones get the 2.2 update. Some have pegged an Evo 4G update as starting over the weekend. Then Verizon may be updating the Droid, Droid X and Incredible next week. The rumors are reaching such a fever pitch, we have to think there's some veracity to them. If we do see these updates, then the lag time to get these phones updated is only a month. It makes a difference having the Nexus One out there leading the pack. 

The sales model was a flop

Google never really seemed very interested in pushing the Nexus One. It's like they didn't want regular people to buy it. The web store was almost like a statement to them. They just wanted to get carriers and consumers used to a new model. The first batch of Nexus Ones were only available in T-Mobile 3G bands, it wasn't until later that an AT&T model was released. This may have been a calculated effort to help out T-mobile, who was the original Android launch partner. But when people were the most interested right after the announcement, too few people were on the right carrier. It's all well and good to have an unlocked phone, but if it only works on one carrier's 3G bands, it isn't much help. 

The plan options were perplexing to say the least. Unless you wanted to pay $530 for the contract free phone, you were restricted to one plan. A single line "Even More + text and web" plan for $79.99 per month. It's not a bad deal per say, but you had no choice of a family plan, or cheaper single line. Customers could later upgrade to a more expensive single line plan if they wanted. If you were on AT&T, there was no subsidy option at all. This reality killed the prospect of a Nexus One purchase for many.  

Google also said the phone would be coming to Verizon in the spring. There was even a phantom checkbox on the purchase page for a Verizon CDMA Nexus One. But by late April, Verizon had pulled the plug, and the Nexus One page was recommending the Droid Incredible. Sprint too said they would not be getting the phone, instead opting to push the HTC Evo 4G. These CDMA carriers have final say over what phones are registered on their networks. It's very telling that the AT&T Nexus One did eventually come out, but without carrier support or subsidy. We're willing to bet if AT&T could have stopped it, they would have. But a SIM-based GSM network doesn't give them that option. 

In the end, Google decided to end sales of the Nexus One because the web store model was not resulting in the industry-wide changes they had hoped for. People did not take to the notion of buying a phone online, possibly for full price. Who could blame them? There were no financial benefits to paying full price for the device, unless you were on T-Mobile (who offers cheaper plans). Carriers, for the most part, wanted nothing to do with this sales model, and they made it pretty obvious. So let's just say this failure was caused by mismanagement on Google's part, and resistance from the carriers. 
       The Nexus One was a noble experiment. It was to be the shining example of what an Android phone could be. For the most part, we still feel it's a great phone that moved the platform forward. In fact, more than one of us here at Tested use it as our main phone. Though its sales model was a failure, Android hardware and software are in a better place because of the Nexus One.  

No one knows for sure if Google will ever brand a phone as a "Nexus" again. But there always has to be a developer phone, and for now that's the Nexus One. When the hardware on the Nexus is feeling out of date, and big new things are happening in Android, Google will have to move on. We're excited to see what the next development platform looks like. Looking back, how would you grade the Nexus One?
 
Image credit: Flickr user  spieri_sf