Google Nexus One for Chinese Review

The Android platform has been interesting to me for some time but there were a number of showstoppers that stopped me making the leap. Primarily the lack of good Chinese input mechanisms and low overall specifications, particularly low-res screens. The combination of a HTC Touch HD, ‘cooked’ custom ROM from xda-dev enhancing overall features and speed of the handset, and of course the ultimate mobile Chinese language application, Pleco, meant that it didn’t matter how much I liked the idea of an Android phone, and the integration with my beloved Google services, it just wasn’t very practical.

Much of this has changed with the introduction of Google’s own handset, the Nexus One. First off it’s got a display that leaves the Touch HD in the dirt. The same 800 x 480 resolution but a magnificently sharp OLED display which is simply a joy to behold. Secondly the rest of the specs are pretty knock out including the 1GHz snapdragon chipset. Software wise the fact it’s a Google phone also solved another emerging issue I was tracking with Android handsets, that of old revisions of the OS due to OEMs being quite slow to update their legacy handsets. Clearly that’s not a problem with the Nexus One, it ships with the latest Android 2.1 and you can be damn sure it will be on the vanguard of Android releases.

So what is the Nexus One like if you’re interested in Chinese?

There’s really several ways you’d look at a Nexus One depending on what you’re familiar with. I think this is important enough that I’ll make a list:

1. Previous Windows Mobile handset owner: You will be blown away. The speed, functionality and of course having a simple fast and well-stocked market place will be a revelation. If you’re a Google services aficionado then you will find the Nexus One is a borderline religious experience.
2. iPhone owner: Having a nicely polished decently performing handset isn’t new to you. You’d notice the incredible screen on the Android and probably how customizable the nuts and bolts of the software is, such as how your home pages look with the addition of live backgrounds, custom ‘gadgets’ and so on. You’d also notice multi-tasking depending on what sort of person you are. If you’re someone who likes to run background clients doing things like IRC chat for example, you’ll find this a huge improvement. Many/most iPhone users would probably lament the relative lack of games on the Android platform however.
3. Previous Android handset owner: You’d be familiar with Android and so that really only leaves the speed and the screen resolution to impress you. The additions to recent Android OS revisions might not be a revelation, but if you’re stuck on a much older revision you might get jealous of Google’s latest fancy apps like ‘Googles’ and so on.

For me the Google services (and Facebook) integration is absolutely awesome. I found it easy enough to consolidate my Google contacts with my Facebook ones, fully populating my contacts list without referring to my old phone. Each contact has a Facebook profile piccy on it too, which is fantastic. Everything seems to connect well, Calendar, synced contacts with email and so on. The push email seems to be instant and I really enjoy the Android gmail client in exactly the way I didn’t enjoy having to use a web interface on WinMo.

Obviously the phone is a fully finger-powered unit unlike WinMo, that too is seriously magnificent for me. I was ecstatic to be able to simply download the Google pinyin IME off the market place and be greeted with a very high quality very easy to read Chinese IME system. The little track ball makes it fantastic just to scoot back and forth editing sentences too, which is something that’s a pain in inaccurate touch-screen devices normally, requiring you to often use touch cursors. Chinese apps on the Android Marketplace aren’t anywhere near as prevalent as the iPhone. So I would say that really the Nexus One is a great phone to use if you want to use it as a communication device that can do Chinese, but really if you want high quality Chinese apps you want an iPhone or an iPod.

That might deserve some clarification since the situation is quickly changing. The Apple App Store has a truly vast number of Chinese language reference/education applications. It is, however, hampered by diabolical search and much of them are pay-jobs and if you buy, that’s it. The Android Marketplace by contrast has less applications at present by some margin, however they are easier to find, ratings are more prevalent and even if it’s a paid app you can download and install and simply uninstall it if you don’t like it and get a refund. That’s really important. I spent a lot of money on a whole load of absolutely terrible iPhone apps. No more!

That includes the more expensive apps like the Chinese Collins Dictionary. Download it, try it and if you uninstall within a day you aren’t charged for it. Overall though there’s definately more and better dictionaries, flash card apps and character drawing/learning applications on the App Store than Android Marketplace and that’s before you consider the alpha and the omega of Chinese apps, Pleco. Pleco wont be Android because the author Mike Love is wedded to C and Android is Java. I can understand his point alright but still take the opportunity to give him a hard time on the Pleco forums

The Android is getting better as the marketplace is really picking up developers quickly particularly since you don’t need a Mac to make an app, and is is already easier to find good Chinese applications, but until Pleco arrives on Android all Chinese students pretty much require an iPod at the very least. At least in my view. On the other hand a fully loaded Pleco with dictionaries etc is kind of expensive and add an iPod as well… if you want to do stuff on the cheap… there might be an argument for Nexus One only. I’d have said iPhone but I think you’ll end up spending more money on bad apps before you find the good ones…

I can, I think, officially cross WinMo off any list of desirability because Pleco is now on iPhone/iPod and will shortly gain flashcard support making it functionally equivalent of the WinMo version. At present I’m carrying around a HTC Touch HD as an expensive PDA (radios turned off), just to run Pleco. I plan to migrate my use to the iPhone/iPod version when that’s up to speed. I don’t think it is by any means a showstopper to have a separate device to run something like Pleco if you’re learning Chinese. On the contrary I find it quite useful to be writing, for example, an email in Chinese and have Pleco open so I can check dictionary results etc.

Curiously one great app on WinMo, CooTek’s TouchPal the seriously awesome software keyboard with Chinese support, has been a non-starter on Android despite a lot of noise promising an Android version. The app appeared on the store for awhile, now it’s gone and CooTek’s uncommunicative support made noises about needing to wait until some OEM version appears (a handset operator presumably licensed it off them). That’s a bit of a shame but the Google Pinyin IME is excellent and Sogou (another huge IME on desktop PC in China) is also available and seemingly more appearing by the day. That’s pretty awesome given how easy it is to one-click install, try and uninstall if they’re crap. In fact… I think I need to install all of the Android Chinese IMEs and do a mini round up!

Any things I didn’t like about the Nexus One? A few small niggles. The buttons under the screen seem a bit hard to push, particularly noticeable with the menu/properties button. I’ve also experienced some battery draining events due to apps running in the background. Android doesn’t habitually let you actually close apps, you just switch between them. So there’s a market in apps which do actually close applications so you can free memory and CPU. Theoretically this shouldn’t be necessary but evidently it sometimes is as my battery draining event proves. I think this ought to be addressed at the OS level. If Google were smart they’d collect CPU cycle statistics anonymously somehow and feed those back to the market place and display a figure for each app so you can judge what a hog it is. This is important these days because the Nexus One has a huge amount of CPU grunt. This is handy (fastest phone I have ever used by some margin!) but it means that a bad app can quickly consume a lot of battery also.

Finally, Google being somewhat less evil than most, the boot loader can be simply unlocked to enable loading your own stuff. They give you a warning about warranty but there’s no exploits necessary. I performed this task very easily and then applied a simple patch to give me root access and to enable tethering support (something my WinMo phone did out of the box to be fair). I’m not anticipating needing to hack the bejesus out of my phone like I did on WinMo just to obtain a satisfactory appearance, but so long as there are advantages to being able to patch the OS (apps that need root, tethering etc) then it’s great that this isn’t difficult to do. I would say in general there’s less need to hack the Nexus One than this is either an iPhone or a WinMo – because generally Android is more open is isn’t about stopping you from wanting to do what you want to do because you just arbitrarily decided people should do those things (Apple) or you’re fundamentally an incompetent mobile OS provider (Microsoft). Android is absolutely awesome in almost every way right out of the box.

Overall for me, the Nexus One is the pick of the bunch as far as smart phones go. It’s been awhile since I had a phone that I actually enjoyed using. However that should be tempered with the knowledge that I walk around with a WinMo and an iPod as well, I like to own the best tool for everything rather than the best tool which is a compromise of being able to do everything in one unit.

If you’re a student of Chinese I think a Nexus One and an iPod is the best combination in 2010.