Nexus One vs. iPhone 3G – the comparison

As a mobile pundit, something I’m asked a lot recently is whether the Nexus One is a good substitute for the iPhone. To answer the question properly, I decided to test both phones for a week to see what the major differences were and how the features compared.
Just an initial disclaimer:
I am a mobile addict, I am a Google fan, I am an Apple lover.
I am well versed in various mobile platforms – including Apple and Android offerings – so this was not the type of technical test you might have seen a dozen or so times before (camera pixel etc.), but a test hailing from my personal user experience.
I have been an iPhone user for almost two years, I have been an Android user for six months (including the Samsung Galaxy) and I have been a Palm Pre user for 3 months.
I paid a lot of money for the iPhone 3G including a contract, whilst I got the Nexus for free.
All these factors will limit and perhaps bias my observation – but that is why it is called “User Experience”.
Knowing myself and my smartphone habits, the factors most important to me in a handset are as follows:
Battery life
Speed (data & computing)
Applications / solutions
Data access (sync/push)
Fun factor (display/cover etc.)
Battery
One of the most critical factors for me when using smart phones is the battery drain. I have experimented extensively to find the best setting combinations to serve my needs of both speed and availability without requiring a power cable.
In my two years of experience with the iPhone, that means shutting down the 3G and push service if not absolutely necessary. Turning them on would mean the device wouldn’t survive more then 15 hours.
When I use the iPhone as a device only, in a mobile environment, I have it on 2G/Edge and check my mails sporadically. Because of the non-existing background capabilities of the iPhone OS, I can’t even risk leaving Wifi and BT on without experiencing a big drain on battery life.
Nevertheless – even without turning on the iPhone display, I can still barely manage to eke out more then 48 hours of “alive-time” without having to plug the iPhone in. I am pretty much used to this by now and therefore always carry around a backup battery, which while not ideal, is a decent solution.
With the above knowledge in mind, I was interested to see what the Nexus One could offer me on similar settings. I was honestly astonished by the results.
After my experience of the Samsung Galaxy I was expecting a similar type of battery drain to the iPhone – but it wasn’t comparable at all.
leaving the background services running, I was able to receive messages via Google Talk and still the battery drain was only 1% an hour. That translates into about 100 hours of life. Incredible.
Adding the sync/push service for Gmail, Calendar and Contacts, I experiences 1.5% battery drain per hour, which would still result in around 75 hours of “survive time”.
Adding Twitter and other services to it – basically running 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 was when adding 3G to it – which is a real shame actually.
Summary: The iPhone never had a chance when push or regular data services were activated – the battery would drain within hours, whilst Google’s Nexus powered through – a big success for the Google phone.
Speed
Before getting the Nexus One I saw one specific advantage of the iPhone over all other competitors – the lightning speed to get my data or application open.
I am sure the speed of the iPhone is not only down to the processor or Apple specific platform, but the perfectly adapted ecosystem Apple has in place made it easy to flip, touch and click through the device.
Mobile is typically characterized by users with a lack of time who want to access content and information quickly. With regard to speed, the Nexus also managed to surprise me. Whilst the sliding effect is almost the same as on the iPhone, opening, starting or returning from applications is tremendously faster with the Nexus. Only the data download with 2G remained unsatisfactory. Another Google Nexus win.
Applications / Solutions
Now we are getting to the sweet spot of the mature iPhone system. Users, me included, are already very used to the huge selection and variety of applications available from the iTunes store and have formed attachments to some ‘favorite’ applications used daily on our iPhones.
Of course the Android store has momentum as well, but if we just take the most used application up til now – the Facebook app – the Android version looks like a cheap joke against that of the iPhone.
The simple maturity and pure focus for application development has not yet completely come to Android. Here we have a strong winner on the Apple side, something which will make the iPad a big success as well.
Data Access
As already mentioned, because of battery drain and the ease with which I can access my personal data and informations on the Nexus, Google’s phone is way ahead of the iPhone system on this category. It was a joyful experience adding Facebook and Exchange contacts to the Nexus One – with only the missing native calendar support for exchange calendars proving disturbing. I am confident, however, that Android will get there soon enough. Clear winner here: Google.
Fun
As I initially stated, my Nexus One was both brand new and free, which makes it rather unfair to compete in terms of joy and fun. But I decided to compare this attribute, regardless, because the iPhone 3G really has been the most fun phone for me up until now, when compared to other devices (Palm Pre was fun but did not really succeed yet).
The Nexus One comes with a pretty nifty camera, in a slick cover with a brilliant display and a Teflon backside build. It simply “feels” more valuable then the 3G – although one 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 can hold its own against the Nexus One and the packaging is also not as much “fun” as the Google Phone.
Overall conclusion? If Android gets its applications issues resolved, 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.
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Torsten is a marketing strategist for mobile UX at SapientNitro, interested in soccer, tennis, running, mobile apps, mobile devices, mobile solutions and mobile trends. You can read more from him on his blog here.