Google Nexus One teardown photos reveal 'thoughtful' design
A teardown of Google's new custom-designed Nexus One handset found no major surprises in the straightforward smartphone, though its ease of disassembly was called impressive.
As usual, iFixit wasted no time to get inside the latest hardware, tearing apart the Nexus One just a day after it was announced. The handset is available for T-Mobile under contract for $179, contract-free for $529, and is coming to other carriers, including Verizon and Vodafone, this spring. Though sold by Google, the device was designed in conjunction with hardware maker HTC.
The new handset has a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor inside. To get to it, the replaceable battery on the back of the Nexus One must be taken off. Access to the battery is allowed even though the device is just 0.45 inches thick -- slightly thinner than the 0.48 inches on the iPhone 3GS.
"Once we took the fancy wrapper off the phone, the Nexus One revealed itself to be very similar to other smartphones, albeit with stronger hardware," the solutions provider said. "Its thoughtful internal design did impress us, as did its ease of disassembly."
The Nexus One also features 802.11n capabilities, besting the iPhone 3GS, which only offers 802.11g. The Broadcom BCM4329 Wi-Fi chip found inside is the same as was discovered in the third-generation iPod touch, though Apple's latest iPod does not support 802.11n out of the box.
Among iFixit's findings in disassembling the Nexus One:
The handset is held together by numerous screws. This is very different from the fifth-generation iPod nano, which is held together mostly by glue and adhesive, making it easy to put together but difficult to take apart.
"It's quite a colorful phone on the inside," the site said. "We've got oranges, greens, yellows, dark grays, and all sorts of fun stuff!"
the 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display is made by Samsung. It features a resolution of 480 by 800 pixels, less than the Motorola Droid's 480 by 854 resolution, but more than the 320 by 480 pixel screen found on the iPhone 3GS.
The touchscreen is powered by a Synaptics chip. Numerous other chips are included on the board, and most of them (at least three) are made by Qualcomm, including the QSD8250 Snapdragon ARM processor.
It also includes an Audience A1026 voice processor that includes noise cancellation, and an LED flash that is smaller than a dime.
While the Nexus One gained a great deal of attention for its announcement Tuesday, Wall Street analysts said they still believe Apple's iPhone has the advantage, thanks mostly to the resounding success of the App Store. Apple announced this week that more than 3 billion apps have been downloaded for the iPhone and iPod touch.
As usual, iFixit wasted no time to get inside the latest hardware, tearing apart the Nexus One just a day after it was announced. The handset is available for T-Mobile under contract for $179, contract-free for $529, and is coming to other carriers, including Verizon and Vodafone, this spring. Though sold by Google, the device was designed in conjunction with hardware maker HTC.
The new handset has a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor inside. To get to it, the replaceable battery on the back of the Nexus One must be taken off. Access to the battery is allowed even though the device is just 0.45 inches thick -- slightly thinner than the 0.48 inches on the iPhone 3GS.
"Once we took the fancy wrapper off the phone, the Nexus One revealed itself to be very similar to other smartphones, albeit with stronger hardware," the solutions provider said. "Its thoughtful internal design did impress us, as did its ease of disassembly."
The Nexus One also features 802.11n capabilities, besting the iPhone 3GS, which only offers 802.11g. The Broadcom BCM4329 Wi-Fi chip found inside is the same as was discovered in the third-generation iPod touch, though Apple's latest iPod does not support 802.11n out of the box.
Among iFixit's findings in disassembling the Nexus One:
The handset is held together by numerous screws. This is very different from the fifth-generation iPod nano, which is held together mostly by glue and adhesive, making it easy to put together but difficult to take apart.
"It's quite a colorful phone on the inside," the site said. "We've got oranges, greens, yellows, dark grays, and all sorts of fun stuff!"
the 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display is made by Samsung. It features a resolution of 480 by 800 pixels, less than the Motorola Droid's 480 by 854 resolution, but more than the 320 by 480 pixel screen found on the iPhone 3GS.
The touchscreen is powered by a Synaptics chip. Numerous other chips are included on the board, and most of them (at least three) are made by Qualcomm, including the QSD8250 Snapdragon ARM processor.
It also includes an Audience A1026 voice processor that includes noise cancellation, and an LED flash that is smaller than a dime.
While the Nexus One gained a great deal of attention for its announcement Tuesday, Wall Street analysts said they still believe Apple's iPhone has the advantage, thanks mostly to the resounding success of the App Store. Apple announced this week that more than 3 billion apps have been downloaded for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Comments
Apple must -- I have no doubt they will -- really push the envelope and change the game, yet again, with its 4th generation iPhone.
It would be good if there some preview of that at the forthcoming event.
All phones should have the ability to swap batteries so that when you're on a long trip without access to an outlet you can at least do stuff on your phone for longer than 1 battery charge.
I really hope Apple innovates the iPhone with user-replaceable batteries.
I really hope Apple innovates the iPhone with user-replaceable batteries.
Unless they can double the battery life (by sealing it in) to, say, 10-12 hours, I have to agree with you.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/n...nd-fm-transmi/
Incidentally, I also wonder: what's happened to the vaunted 'we've patented the heck out of it with 200 different patents' boast from SJ two and a half years ago? How come the competitors have stomped all over it (except for multitouch in the US, apparently available elsewhere on Android).
Probably because of prior art on the dozens of PDAs that have been released prior to the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Having applications, camera, music, etc on a PDA-like formfactor has been around for ages. Even multitouch has been around for years before Apple put it in the iPhone.
Palm even made phones with resistive touch screens with the same formfactor and most of the same features long before the iPhone.
So it looks like it's possible to have a replaceable battery without sacrificing compact design or brute processing power.
All phones should have the ability to swap batteries so that when you're on a long trip without access to an outlet you can at least do stuff on your phone for longer than 1 battery charge.
I really hope Apple innovates the iPhone with user-replaceable batteries.
God I hope not, non replaceable battery is one of my favourite features. I hate weak plastic doors. My bets stuff starts pinging off the nexus in no time.
If Apple is able to bring the iPhone to VZW this year before the N1, I think the N1 is dead before it even turns 6 months old.
So it looks like it's possible to have a replaceable battery without sacrificing compact design or brute processing power.
All phones should have the ability to swap batteries so that when you're on a long trip without access to an outlet you can at least do stuff on your phone for longer than 1 battery charge.
I really hope Apple innovates the iPhone with user-replaceable batteries.
It's an innovation to have a crappy replaceable battery??? Since when?
... the downside: all this hardware bling is an energy hog. The screen will self adjust brightness and Google is smart about turning down the processor when it?s not being used. But I?ve found battery life to be woefully brief, even by iPhone standards. Officially the phone has up to 7 hours talk time, 250 hours standby, 5 hours of 3G Internet use, 7 hours of video playback and 20 hours of audio playback. Unofficially, I was able to kill the fully charged battery with 1.5 hours of continuous gameplay (Robo Defense) on the full-brightness screen. Be prepared to keep this phone near a charger at all times. ...
Doing things the way they were always done is not "innovation." Especially when the results are obviously better doing it the new way.
Man, the iPhone 4 is going to have to be pretty impressive if they are going to best the Nexus One.
They already have... the Nexus One having a few new innovative (and, in some cases, quite cool) features, does not make up for all the marvelous iPhone features it lacks. Anybody buying phones based on a hardware feature list is going to be missing out on the stuff that actually makes an electronic device enjoyable to use, though I'm sure plenty of people here understand this.
The Nexus One is offering what I want to see, though: a promise that Apple has competition and needs to press the buck in ongoing iPhone innovation.
So it looks like it's possible to have a replaceable battery without sacrificing compact design or brute processing power.
All phones should have the ability to swap batteries so that when you're on a long trip without access to an outlet you can at least do stuff on your phone for longer than 1 battery charge.
I really hope Apple innovates the iPhone with user-replaceable batteries.
A good battery extender like Mophi or other works great, no need for replaceable battery (to me).
It's an innovation to have a crappy replaceable battery??? Since when?
Doing things the way they were always done is not "innovation." Especially when the results are obviously better doing it the new way.
It is innovation when you are able to make extremely compact phones without resorting to screwing the end user with a non user-replaceable batteries. Plain and simple.
Frankly, making a single unit design is a cheap manufacturing slight of hand that is worse off for the consumer and better for the company that gets paid to replace batteries.
Honestly, who ever requests being limited to one battery as a must-have-feature??? Apparently you do, but practically nobody else wants to be limited.
This smacks of the Onion video of the Apple wheel, a laptop with no keyboard, where the mac fan says that taking the keyboard away WAS A FEATURE.
though I'm sure plenty of people here understand this.
Nope... scroll up for proof.
A good battery extender like Mophi or other works great, no need for replaceable battery (to me).
It works for some people, but it doesn't work for others who don't want to carry a heavier phone due to the deadweight of the dead battery inside, and also those who want to keep using cases and protection accessories which were designed for use with the phone alone, not with the bulk of an extender.
Some of the Pro's I like:
Screen Lock (including gestures to unlock in addition to alphanumeric codes)
VPN support
Standard Wireless Support (Wireless-N which is nice)
Application Sandboxing
Application Signing - Doesn't require trusted signers which defeats the purpose however
SD Storage
Removable battery
Higher resolution screen
Some Cons:
Manual syncing (drag and drop) for media - lacks polish of iTunes
190 MB app storage limit (from the shared 512MB also used for the phone OS..leaves 190 for apps)
No Remote Wipe
No hardware encryption
Lacks Corporate Policy Enforcement
It's a decent offering to be sure, but it has some hurdles to clear first.
A good battery extender like Mophi or other works great, no need for replaceable battery (to me).
I made the mistake of buying a mophie for the iPhone 3G. I had to return 3 of them before I got one that will make it through 1 round of golf with GPS on and the mophe juice pack 3g. My mophie and iPhone were completely drained. I had to put my phone on the charger when I got to my car to call home to see if my wife needed anything picked up from the grocery store for dinner.
Sometimes they charge, some times the don't. Do a search on Mophie with
"mophie juice pack doesn't work".
They already have... the Nexus One having a few new innovative (and, in some cases, quite cool) features, does not make up for all the marvelous iPhone features it lacks. Anybody buying phones based on a hardware feature list is going to be missing out on the stuff that actually makes an electronic device enjoyable to use, though I'm sure plenty of people here understand this.
The Nexus One is offering what I want to see, though: a promise that Apple has competition and needs to press the buck in ongoing iPhone innovation.
I was referring to the hardware in the iPhone 4, while the 2.1 android is more flashy than the Droids 2.0, you are right as Apple certainly has the better OS. Hardware wise, the Nexus overpowers the iPhone, and I do hope Apple's iPhone 4 patches up the "flaws" that other companies have been exploiting (camera and flash, outdated screen, and battery life flaws).