I didn't say there were design flaws with the hardware in the phone. What I did say is integration between the operating system, software, and hardware is "buggie" would be a better term. These are not isolated standalone incidents. Youtube, google it, and countless blogs and forums have indicated numerous similar problems. Now if your telling me all handsets do not perform in this fashion with the OS, firmware and build; that indicates a mid production run hardware/part changes in select batches of phones. One will never know.
Other than the obvious, it's a nice phone but then again so is the Samsung Moment and Motorola Driod and BTW a hell of lot cheaper for basically the same thing! Firmware revisions and software glitches are not uncommon, but what is troubleing is goggle is on to a sucessor handset. It makes you wonder if the Nexus will even be supported or is it just a bad test gone bad.
One thing I will comment on is the battery life to me is very good. What I have found is it's not the wireless or bluetooth that chews it up, but searching for cell carrier in non service locations. My office bldg. is bad for this, in and out of pathetic T-mobile coverage
I think other posters addresses some of your original concerns already so sorry if I'm repeating:
1) Right up until I just tried loading it, the Polar Clock live wallpaper always crashed. I was just able to load it and it's running now. So, perhaps I had something installed that was conflicting with that live wallpaper. Regardless, I still think that the behavior of that particular live wallpaper is erratic. However, all the other live wallpapers have never given me an issue.
2) The only time I've seen anything like a force close was when I got a message indicating that the application launcher was not responding. This occurred when I would drag down the notification bar. Given that I'd had the phone a few weeks and had never seen this issue, I concluded that it was an issue with one of the apps I recently installed (or a conflict between applications) I uninstalled the Seismic Twitter app and the Dialer Bar app and have not seen the issue since.
Though there are always some one off hardware issues with a new phone, the main issues plaguing the Nexus One are software issues. It seems like the radio needs to be tweaked and the screen calibration also needs to be tweaked, and those are (most likely) issues specific to the firmware build of the Nexus One.
However, the issues you mentioned in your original post were all issues that are most likely related to Android 2.1. The fact that there are issues with the version and with app compatibility with the version should not be surprising because of the following reasons:
1) 2.1 is the newest version of Android. There were alot of GUI related changes so I would expect to see most of the Android related bugs there.
2) From what I've read, developers were not given much time to play around with the Android 2.1 SDK, so I would not be surprised if there are app compatibility issues.
I do agree that the live wallpaper issue should have been caught in QA. The reason I'm saying that is because there are only 10 or so live wallpapers to test and the Polar Clock like wallpaper has been failing since the Nexus One reviews came out (before the phone was released) However, I do am not willing to say that the entire QA of the Nexus One was lacking.
Also, the Nexus One is not more expensive than the Droid. They both cost about the same subsidized ($179 for the Nexus One, $199 for the Droid) and they both cost about the same unsubsidized ($529 for the Nexus One and $599 for the Droid -- I think) I can't comment about the Samsung Moment because I'm not familiar with the price (though I know it started out at $179 subsidized)
I would not be concerned that google has moved onto the next phone. Here's why:
1) From everything I've read, the plan from day 1 was the the Nexus would be a line with different phones focusing on different functionality. I think the next Nexus phone will be a Motorola phone that has a hardware keyboard and is more business oriented. This device should just provide more variety to the Nexus line of phones and is not intended to replace the Nexus One.
2) Android 2.1 will be used on any phone that can support the software. As Android matures (and the Android bugs are fixed) the Nexus One will get those upgrades.
I'm hoping we'll see an OTA firmware update soon that deals with the Nexus One specific issues (The OTA dealing with the 3G issue is supposed to hit very soon) so I'd just give it a little time.
That being said, the Nexus One is absolutely a test that Google is taking in learning how to sell & support a handset. In that regard, anyone who has the Nexus One is truly a guinea pig. I am impressed at how quickly Google/HTC/TMobile have come up with an improved support roadmap, but it's a huge fail that solid support was not there from day 1.
