The Google fee was dropped to $150 from $350, but customers who break a contract on the phone will still have to pay an early termination fee of $200 to T-Mobile.

The lower “equipment recovery fee” on the Nexus One, which took effect on Jan. 4, will apply to customers who break their contract after the 14-day trial period but before 120 days. Customers who break the contract after 120 days will not have to pay any fee.

Google also lowered the equipment recovery fee for existing T-Mobile customers who upgrade to the Nexus One from another handset and then break their contract to $50 from $250.

The Nexus One phone costs $179 for customers who sign up for a two-year plan with T-Mobile, or $529 for those who purchase an unlocked phone that can be used with any GSM wireless network, including T-Mobile’s.

Read the full story on ABC news.

• Specs
• Browser
• Speed
• Navigation
• App Stores
• Notifications
• Multitasking

By comparison, Flurry says Apple’s iPhone sold 600,000 units in its first month, and Motorola’s Droid sold 575,000 units (an interesting comparison in itself).

Read the full story on PC World

The new up-grade will include multi-touch capabilities, enabling the phone to work in a similar way to Apple’s iPhone, in that users can pinch their fingers to zoom in and out. A feature that other smartphones such as the Palm Pre already came installed with.

The new up-grade will also include additional software improvements and fixes to technical bugs. It will tackle some of the commonly complained about 3G problems.

One of the software improvements is to the Maps application, making it a lot easier for users to save places of interest and revisit them at a later date. The maps application will also be enriched with a night mode, which will automatically adjust the users screen if they are viewing maps in the dark.

The up-dates can be downloaded directly onto the Nexus One via the phone’s internet, without having to go into a store or onto a computer.

Source: Fresh Business Thinking

The Google Nexus One is currently only available with T-Mobile 3G support, but a new version supporting AT&T’s 3G network has now been spotted in FCC’s database. According to Engadget, the AT&T version will also work with Canadian carriers Rogers, Bell and Telus, as well as European carriers.

Furthermore, Motorola recently said that they’re planning to offer an Android smartphone made specifically for Google’s new Web store too. It’s not yet known which carrier networks this phone will work on, but Google said at the Web store introduction to stay tuned for Verizon Wireless support as well.

Source: Info Sync World

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• Nexus One vs Droid vs iPhone [Comparison Chart] (mashable.com)

PC Pro has a first review of the Nexus One; Here are some of the highlights:

Google UK held an open evening for journalists last night, with the introduction of Chrome OS being its major theme. However, it also had four samples of the Google Nexus One for us attendees to play with – thus this first look review.It soon became obvious why the Nexus One has received a muted reaction in the States, where it’s already on sale. There’s no feeling of luxury as you pick up the plasticky device in your hand, and if sat in the ranks of phones at The Carphone Warehouse it would look distinctly anonymous.

The screen has many positives though. It’s very bright and, to give it its due, it is at least responsive to the touch. Probably the biggest plus of all is the resolution: a magnificent 800 x 480. That’s a match for HTC’s Touch HD2, even if you can’t see text quite so well on the Nexus One’s 3.7in screen as you can on the Touch HD2’s 4.3in screen.

But there are two big omissions from the Nexus One. First, where is the clever integration of social-networking services, which Palm was wittering on about a whole year ago when it announced the (ultimately disappointing) Palm Pre?

Perhaps; I don’t know the US market well enough to make a judgement on that one. But I think it’s also telling that Google gave away 3,000 Nexus One phones to developers at a recent conference; perhaps this is the real point of the device, rather than as a phone intended for sale. It’s a platform with a fast processor and huge screen: both ingredients Google believes to be vitally important.

For everyone else, though, you’re better off with an accomplished Android phone like the HTC Hero – which will be upgradeable to Android 2. And by the time the Nexus One officially comes out in the UK (you can buy it today from the Google US site if you so wish) the Motorola Backflip, and no doubt a number of other Android 2.1-powered devices, will be on sale too. I know which I’d buy.

Yet, the hardware in the Nexus One is also one of the best designs of an Android model to date. While the Droid is bulkier and larger-than-life, the Nexus One is subtle yet powerful. The lack of video playback greatly limits the extraordinary screen quality, though Google has made sure that there are enough gimmicky graphical additions to soothe concerned customers.

Because of the current faulty network, we can’t recommend the Nexus One currently for professionals, who cannot afford drop calls. This may change, as Google has officially stated they are now looking into fixing the problem. The Nexus One is also set to release in the US on Verizon’s network, which according to Consumer Reports is the top carrier nationwide.

As far as Android devices go, the Nexus One is definitely the best. Its speed and general use, as well as the fast growing number of available applications, makes the device an adept competitor to today’s smartphones. It doesn’t beat today’s standard, the iPhone, or some of its better competitors like the Palm Pre, but it can certainly take third place.

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For Google, the Nexus One represents the first consumer oriented physical product it has produced and as debuts go, the search giant takes the biscuit with fantastic hardware and software both. By using HTC’s Bravo the hardware in most cases far surpasses that of anything that’s out there now, with the exception of HTC’s own HD2.

In Short

The Nexus One is great package. You get cutting edge hardware coupled to an operating system that is far better than Windows Mobile and far more customisable than on the Iphone. There’s very little to dislike including the fact that the Nexus is trying to stick it to Jobs’ Mob through offering greater openness. Google says the Nexus will arrive in Blighty sometime in the Spring and we say that’s enough notice for you to start saving up now.

The Good
Superb hardware specification, runs Android.

The Bad
Application incompatibilities between Android devices.

The Ugly
Not directly available in the UK yet.

Bartender’s Score
9/10

Read the FULL review at The Inquirer

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.

Read the full story on top10

“I was impressed right away,” Wozniak said.

The Apple co-founder praising Google’s bold gambit to compete with Apple got the blogs buzzing. Wozniak first confessed his feelings to a local NBC affiliate a few weeks ago. Asked what his current favorite gadget is, Wozniak told host Jessica Aguirre: “The latest one. It’s a non-Apple product. It’s one that just came out yesterday.”

So Wozniak had to quickly clarify that he had not bolted from the iPhone. He, in fact, carries two at all times. The self-proclaimed gadget freak says he fields so many questions about mobile phones that he tests them all, even the BlackBerry, which he made his primary phone for four months just to learn what a BlackBerry user “knows and does and uses.” He estimates that he has owned about 100 mobile phones over the last two decades.

“I’ve got six phones on me right now,” he said. “Of the six, three are very good phones: the iPhone, the [Motorola] Droid and the Nexus One.”

Read the full story on LA Times.