Is Google’s Nexus One a giant leap forwards for smartphones or the grandest of grand follies? Top10’s Dew Alam takes a look at the highest-profile launch since the Apollo moon missions…

When rumours and leaks of Google’s Nexus One surfaced on the web, the amount of media hype and speculation that followed was virtually inescapable. Fast forward to the phone’s launch earlier this month and the Nexus One was naturally plastered all over the headlines. This time it was all about the flood of customer complaints, which Google described as ‘a few kinks’. Things weren’t helped by the search giant’s novel idea of trying to answer all customer queries by e-mail. The resulting chaos that followed continues to send echoes down the depths of the tube that channel our world-wide web.
Initial reviews have already demonstrated the unresponsiveness of the phone’s otherwise very large and beautiful touchscreen among other minor problems. But ‘a few kinks’ are part and parcel of the launch of any brand new hardware so I’m sure HTC, I mean Google, will have those sorted out quickly. The Nexus One is most certainly a powerful phone and arguably the best Android phone according to some. And yet it is largely an unremarkable phone considering how much is expected of smartphones nowadays.

The phone has also been deemed to be too expensive. This is perhaps partly why it has suffered from poor launch sales, with a paltry 20,000 units sold in the first week compared to 250,000 units achieved by the Motorola Droid (known as the ‘Milestone’ in the Europe/Asia). If this was Google’s attempt to jumpstart the Android platform, so far it appears to be ineffective at best. Analysts estimated the Nexus One would go on to sell 5 to 6 million units this year. So 20,000 in the first week does not seem like a great start towards achieving such a landmark. Although in the interests of fairness, it’s probably worth noting that the Nexus One was hardly marketed unlike the Droid and it is being only sold through Google’s website.

However, it’s not a question of justifying the perceived failure of the Nexus One’s launch but the reasoning behind the contributing factors to this failure.

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