This is something I have been asked recently most: can the Nexus One really substitute your iPhone? To answer that I took a week of testing in order to see for myself what the differences are and what kind of feature are worth to compare. So please consider that as very personal test with the given assumptions:
- I am a mobile addict, I am a Google fan, I am an Apple lover
- I am pretty aware of all possible platforms out there, incl. Apple and Android before the test – so this is not a technical test like you might have seen them 10 times before (camera pixel etc.), but a test from my personal user experience
- I am an iPhone user for almost 2 years, I am an Android user for 6 month (incl. Samsung Galaxy) and I am a Palm Pre user for 3 month
- I paid a lot of money for the iPhone 3G incl. contract & I got the Nexus for free
All these factors will limit my observation – but that is why it is called “User Experience”.
Observing myself intensively the factors most important for me to be satisfied with my smartphone are:
- battery life
- speed (data & computing)
- applications / solutions
- data access (sync/push)
- fun factor (display/cover etc.)
Battery
One of the most critical factor for me using smart phones for some time now is the battery drain. I experimented a lot to find the best settings combination to serve my need of speed and availability of the device without a power cable. In my 2 years experience with the iPhone that means to shutdown 3G and push service if not absolutely necessary. If I would turn them on I would not survive more then 15 hours. When I use the iPhone only as device as it is meant to be, in a mobile environment, then I have it on 2G/Edge and check my mails randomly. Because of the non-existing background capabilities of iPhone OS I can even risk to leave Wifi and BT on without experiencing a big difference of battery drain. Nevertheless - even without turning the iPhone display on I still can barely stay something more then 48 hours “alive” without getting the iPhone plugged in. Don’t get me wrong I am pretty much used to this and therefore I am carrying always a back battery with me to attach to the iPhone if necessary. So given that I was checking what the Nexus One could offer me with similar settings. And I was honestly very astonished. With my experience of the Samsung Galaxy (to be tested against Nexus One later here) I was expecting more or similar battery drain then the iPhone – but it wasn’t. I actually left the background services running and was able to receive messages via Google Talk and still the battery drain was only 1% per hour! That means I was almost able to stay 100 hours a life – what a beautiful world 
When adding the feature of having the sync/push service of Google regarding Gmail, Calendar and Contacts on I experiences 1,5% battery drain per hour, which would still result in around 75 hours of “survive”. Adding Twitter and other services to it, so basically running it with everything I need, I still get between 40-45 hours battery life. Only heavy installing, camera usage or running the display for an hour drained the battery down increasingly. The most drain I experienced here again was when adding 3G to it – really a shame actually.
So my summary is: my iPhone had NEVER a chance when activating push or regular data services – it would be empty within some hours – a big success for the Google Phone
Speed
Before getting the Nexus One there was one specific advantage of the iPhone that no other phone could get to – the speed to get my data or application open. I am sure this is not only because of the processor or apple specific platform, it was just the perfect adopted ecosystem of apple that made it easy to flip, touch and click through the device. I was always getting back to my iPhone because almost always when you are in a mobile situation you are in a lack of time and want the information/access quickly. Well, that has changed regarding the Nexus as well. The sliding effect is almost the same – but opening, starting or returning from applications is tremendous faster then with the iPhone – again a huge success for the Nexus which I did not anticipated before. Only the data download with 2G is not satisfying yet – I will check that and update it here if necessary.
Applications / Solutions
Now we are getting to the sweet spot of the mature iPhone system. The user, me included, is already very used to the huge selection and variety of applications available in the iTunes store and got attached to some favorite applications to be used every day on the iPhone. Of course the Android store has its momentum as well, but if we just take the most used most application up to now: the Facebook app, the Android looks like a cheap joke against the iPhone app. The simple maturity and pure focus for application development has not yet arrived completely to Android. Here we have a strong winner at the Apple side, which will make the iPad a big success as well!
Data Access
I actually stated it already, but because of battery drain and the easiness to access my personal data and informations the Google Nexus One is way ahead of the iPhone system. It was joyful adding Facebook and exchange contacts to the Nexus One – only the missing natively support of exchange calendars is disturbing – but I am confident that Android will get there soon. Clear winner here: Google.
Fun
As stated earlier the Nexus One came for free and it is brand new – for sure it is unfair to compete in terms of joy and fun. But I took this attribute because the iPhone 3G was the most fun for me until now compared to other devices (Palm Pre was fun but did not really succeed yet). The Nexus One comes with a pretty nifty cam in a slick cover with a brilliant display and a backside build out of teflon. It simply “feels” more valuable then the 3G – you might be able to compare it to the old iPhone 2G which is still the most “fashionable”. Actually the iPhone 3G has no hardware that could compete against the Nexus One and it also the package is not as much “fun” as the Google Phone.
So … if Android gets the applications issue solved I would not need to touch my iPhone 3G (and that includes an iPhone 3GS as well) anymore. It is up to Apple now to surprise me with a competetive and more innovative device this year.
Or is the iPhone era over?!
