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Nexus 1 vs Nexus S

G

giomasterg

Member
Having owned the N1 since day 1 and now having the NS I thought I would compare them for you guys.

Both phones fit nicely in the hand. The N1 feels slightly heavier. The NS definitely attracts more fingerprints. The curved screen on the NS does feel nicer on my face on in my pocket. The NS also fits into the N1 Android pouch which is sweet. The touchscreen on the NS blows the N1 away. No more resetting the screen every 5 mins, and the "buttons" are more responsive. Naturally the NS' samoled is more vibrant than the amoled on the N1. You get 1gb if app space on the NS also. I do horrible miss the led notification light from the N1 however.

Well if there us anything specific you guys want to compare let me know. I know for me sometimes reviews don't answer a small question I'm dying to know.
 
I'll bite because I was thinking about upgrading in a few months. This might be hard to answer because Google hasn't pushed 2.3 to the N1, in your opinion do you think the NS is worth the upgrade overall? I have been pleased with my N1, I got use the the quirks of my N1 and still love the phone.

Wait for the next dev phone (hopefully late next year) or purchase this one?
 
Personally I like having the newest gadgets. However the NS isn't that big of a jump if Google recalled my NS today I could go back to the N1 without missing it. If your content with the N1 it might not be worth it.

If your looking to upgrade today I would recommended the NS if you can wait a year then you probably should
 
The N1 screen problem is very very annoying. Sometimes, its the small things that matter. I would switch to the NS simply because of that.
 
I'm with you there I constantly had the low space icon on the n1 and had. To clear cashe and data in my apps to receive texts. The NS has 1gb of app space so I have a nice amount of space left after reinstaling my apps
 
Yes, I think the most annoying thing for me is maintaining the memory space for apps above 20mb and being unable to really install a lot o f apps I wanted. During the Angry bird craze, I try to install it and it just set off too many alarms. I think I didn't have space to install it XD I think new phones coming (recently came) out will have more internal memory to compensate some bigger (gaming) apps out.
 
I think NS's speaker is a bit louder and clearer. Good for the map navigations.

I think I prefer N1's GPS more than this assisted GPS. I havn't gotten a chance to see how well the AGPS works when it's out of cell tower range.

Personally, I think the anti-finger print coating works pretty well. With the N1, my finger leaves more noticeable smudges.

The NS feels a bit quicker, more fluid than the N1. It was a huge speed jump from G1 to N1. From N1 to NS is noticeable, but did not shockingly so.

I miss the LED light, now I have to push the power button to see if the NS is done charging.

Sometimes the trackball was useful, but I havn't run into a situation where I needed it yet.
 
waruwaru said:
I think NS's speaker is a bit louder and clearer. Good for the map navigations.

I think I prefer N1's GPS more than this assisted GPS. I havn't gotten a chance to see how well the AGPS works when it's out of cell tower range.

Personally, I think the anti-finger print coating works pretty well. With the N1, my finger leaves more noticeable smudges.

The NS feels a bit quicker, more fluid than the N1. It was a huge speed jump from G1 to N1. From N1 to NS is noticeable, but did not shockingly so.

I miss the LED light, now I have to push the power button to see if the NS is done charging.

Sometimes the trackball was useful, but I havn't run into a situation where I needed it yet.
Click to expand...





I'm using the NoLED app, but it's definitely not as good as having the LED trackball. I wish they just added an LED on the top of the screen somewhere just for notifications. Maybe we'll see it on the next one. Does anyone know of any other apps out there that works as a flashing notification?
 
waruwaru said:
I think NS's speaker is a bit louder and clearer. Good for the map navigations.

I think I prefer N1's GPS more than this assisted GPS. I havn't gotten a chance to see how well the AGPS works when it's out of cell tower range.
.
Click to expand...

The NS speaker is a lot louder than the NS as for the GPS I used it the other day to go to PA where T-Mobile service isn't that good and it worked perfectly. I think the new Google maps 5 may have something to do with that though.
 
Got mine today, and I'm not fully convinced yet. I do miss the trackball, being able to move around text boxes was easily done on the N1, not so easy on the NS.

Holding it, it's easy to push the home button when trying to take a pic or just hold the phone. Not enough space on the phone.

Getting a lot of problems with it not responding, like when wifi is connected, trying to get to the wifi settings just hangs. Eventually I managed to find it was connected to my router at 65Mbps.
 
I definitely think the 16GB of internal storage was a much needed upgrade but even that isn't enough space for me. 32GB without an expansion slot is the minimum amount of space I can deal with. The trackball is also something I would miss if I upgraded from my N1. A lot of reviews have commented that the trackball was a useless addition to a touchscreen phone but I find myself using it a lot when multiple links are too close together and it's difficult to accurately press the correct link. I also enjoy having visual notifications. I don't always hear my phone when I'm in another room, so when I return, it's nice having a little flashing light that tells me when I missed a call or text. As for the quirky screen on the N1, it does get on my nerves sometimes but I've learned to deal with it.

In my opinion, the specs of the Nexus S aren't a big enough leap from the Nexus One to make it worth upgrading. I figure I'll be ready for an upgrade when the Nexus 3 comes out. Until then, I'm content with my original Nexus.
 
The trackball is what I'm missing most. If I mistype a word in a text message, it's harder to accurately get the cursor to the right part of the word to change it. I do miss the flashing notifications, but not a deal breaker. I did try noLED but it drained my battery so much overnight, it took all day to recharge my phone via USB.

Not sure I'll be keeping the phone to be honest. Yes, it has a nice screen, the 3D maps work a lot better due to the multitouch working, but not sure it's all worth
 
I was actually in the same boat as you. Had Nexus One on day one and wasn't sure if this was a big enough upgrade. I played with it in the store for 20 minutes until I decided to take the plunge. I have had it for about a week. It was worth every penny. mainly because it fixed issues I had with my Nexus one. It's faster, doesnt' have that problem where the touch calibration goes wonky and you have to sleep the screen, haven't had any non responsive touches, speaker and screen are much better. It's so fluid opening menus and apps. The light up trackball on the N1 was nice (and lights was all I ever used it for), but I don't miss it having gotten used to this new phone. I'd say go for it if you're on the fence, once you get used to the speed of this phone you won't regret it.
 
waruwaru said:
I think NS's speaker is a bit louder and clearer. Good for the map navigations.

I think I prefer N1's GPS more than this assisted GPS. I havn't gotten a chance to see how well the AGPS works when it's out of cell tower range.

Personally, I think the anti-finger print coating works pretty well. With the N1, my finger leaves more noticeable smudges.

The NS feels a bit quicker, more fluid than the N1. It was a huge speed jump from G1 to N1. From N1 to NS is noticeable, but did not shockingly so.

I miss the LED light, now I have to push the power button to see if the NS is done charging.

Sometimes the trackball was useful, but I havn't run into a situation where I needed it yet.
Click to expand...

You should read what agps actually is. All cell phones use it, and that's a good thing.

Assisted GPS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
My Nexus One got broken and I'm looking to get a new phone, and at this stage not sure what to get. To be honest, there were a lot of things about the N1 that annoyed me.

The main one being the phone reception - we live in an area where reception is borderline. My 5 old Nokia worked clearly enough for a conversation, but the N1 call quality was a lot worse - to the point where I would have to call people back on the landline to be able to have a conversation.

Is the NS reception any better than the N1? In my opinion, if a brand new NZD$1000 flagship-model phone can't beat something that's a lot cheaper and 5 years old then it's not a very good phone in my opinion. If the NS has better reception than the N1 then that's a good reason to upgrade, but otherwise there's no point and I'll just keep my Nokia.

The other thing I hated on the N1 was those god-awful soft-touch Android buttons along the button.
Seriously, when you want to press them it sometimes takes two attempts, and you are forever setting them off accidentally when you pick the phone up. Has Samsung done a better job with the buttons than HTC?

Trackball and notification light I don't really mind losing, but those buttons are used for everything.

I don't think I would buy another N1, but I'd definitely consider the NS if the above issues are fixed.

Thanks.
 
Sadu said:
My Nexus One got broken and I'm looking to get a new phone, and at this stage not sure what to get. To be honest, there were a lot of things about the N1 that annoyed me.

The main one being the phone reception - we live in an area where reception is borderline. My 5 old Nokia worked clearly enough for a conversation, but the N1 call quality was a lot worse - to the point where I would have to call people back on the landline to be able to have a conversation.

Is the NS reception any better than the N1? In my opinion, if a brand new NZD$1000 flagship-model phone can't beat something that's a lot cheaper and 5 years old then it's not a very good phone in my opinion. If the NS has better reception than the N1 then that's a good reason to upgrade, but otherwise there's no point and I'll just keep my Nokia.

The other thing I hated on the N1 was those god-awful soft-touch Android buttons along the button.
Seriously, when you want to press them it sometimes takes two attempts, and you are forever setting them off accidentally when you pick the phone up. Has Samsung done a better job with the buttons than HTC?

Trackball and notification light I don't really mind losing, but those buttons are used for everything.

I don't think I would buy another N1, but I'd definitely consider the NS if the above issues are fixed.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

The buttons on the Nexus S are a lot better. The ones on the N1 were crap. The contact area was actually slightly above them and long presses only worked about half the time. They work just like they should on the S, though.
 
I am moving from the iPhone world and got the Nexus One, then I found that some apps only run in internal memory which is 512 for N1 and start getting low mem errors. I explored to change it for NS that has 16GB internal but then I read that the RAM is still 512 so I am all confused. From the memory for apps point of view, is there any difference between N1 and NS being the 16GB just trated as a 16GB SD card? In other words, will I still have the low memory errors with the same set of apps?:confused:
 
fcorrea said:
I am moving from the iPhone world and got the Nexus One, then I found that some apps only run in internal memory which is 512 for N1 and start getting low mem errors. I explored to change it for NS that has 16GB internal but then I read that the RAM is still 512 so I am all confused. From the memory for apps point of view, is there any difference between N1 and NS being the 16GB just trated as a 16GB SD card? In other words, will I still have the low memory errors with the same set of apps?:confused:
Click to expand...


I think you may have it confused. The N1 had a very low amount of space set aside for storage of apps. And that was causing the low memory errors. The NS has 1gb that is set aside for apps, so you shouldn't run into any of the same problems. I have well over 100 apps and I have only used 419mb.
 
fcorrea said:
I am moving from the iPhone world and got the Nexus One, then I found that some apps only run in internal memory which is 512 for N1 and start getting low mem errors. I explored to change it for NS that has 16GB internal but then I read that the RAM is still 512 so I am all confused. From the memory for apps point of view, is there any difference between N1 and NS being the 16GB just trated as a 16GB SD card? In other words, will I still have the low memory errors with the same set of apps?:confused:
Click to expand...

RAM and memory are unfortunately used in the smartphone world incorrectly all the time. In the computer world, RAM and memory are interchangeable terms, but with smartphones, "memory" usually refers to the internal storage.

The Nexus S has 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (with 1GB reserved as "ROM" space for apps). That 1GB of space is plenty for your apps, since most are only a couple megabytes at most, and the large ones almost all support the "SD storage" option, which lets you move it to the remaining 15GB of internal storage space.
 
quantumrand said:
RAM and memory are unfortunately used in the smartphone world incorrectly all the time. In the computer world, RAM and memory are interchangeable terms, but with smartphones, "memory" usually refers to the internal storage.

The Nexus S has 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (with 1GB reserved as "ROM" space for apps). That 1GB of space is plenty for your apps, since most are only a couple megabytes at most, and the large ones almost all support the "SD storage" option, which lets you move it to the remaining 15GB of internal storage space.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with you, I just find it funny because when the N1 came out the internal space was "plenty" and now it's really annoying because I always get the low space notification (I am sure plenty of Android users have never seen it), I wonder how long it will take for 1GB to get annoying :D
 
quantumrand said:
RAM and memory are unfortunately used in the smartphone world incorrectly all the time. In the computer world, RAM and memory are interchangeable terms, but with smartphones, "memory" usually refers to the internal storage.

The Nexus S has 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (with 1GB reserved as "ROM" space for apps). That 1GB of space is plenty for your apps, since most are only a couple megabytes at most, and the large ones almost all support the "SD storage" option, which lets you move it to the remaining 15GB of internal storage space.
Click to expand...

B2L said:
I think you may have it confused. The N1 had a very low amount of space set aside for storage of apps. And that was causing the low memory errors. The NS has 1gb that is set aside for apps, so you shouldn't run into any of the same problems. I have well over 100 apps and I have only used 419mb.
Click to expand...

I want to thank B2L and quantumrand for your accurate responses. I exchanged the N1 and I am now a happy owner of a Nexus S

Some tools that I found useful during this week of researching are:
Android System Info
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.electricsheep.asi&feature=search_result
which provides lots of detail about your phone. Regarding my interest here, the memory, for the NS it reports (after loading the apps that I had on the N1):
Data Max: 0.98GB/ Free 848MB
External Storage Max: 13.31GB/ Free: 12.13GB
Compared to the N1 that reported something like 196 MB Max and 26 MB Free

For the apps that you can move to SD, now it says something like move to USB storage, so those apps can still be moved out of the internal (1GB) memory, if I ever need it. So Thumbs up for the NS regarding memory!

Another tool that I want to share in this post is Disk Usage
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage&feature=search_result
which lists very nicely all apps and free space (that is visible with a non rooted device)
 
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