A couple days before CES, Google played their hand in the mobile handheld market with the Nexus One. An Android based multimedia smartphone much like the Apple iPhone. With understandable comparisons flying around between the two, here’s what you need to know.

Hardware wise on the outside, the Nexus One has nice rounded edges, sports a subtle two tone finish, and features a touchscreen similar in size to what you would find on an iPhone. It has the obligatory, but slightly protruding 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash. On the face of it you have 4 touch sensitive buttons and a Blackberry like trackball to navigate the menus. On the inside it comes with a 4 GB microSD card which can be expanded to 32 GB, and everything you can possibly jam into a phone. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, light and proximity sensors, accelerometers, it slices, it dices, and juliennes. All of this in a relatively slim and sleek package.

The user interface is impressive and balances a new feel with familiar stylings. The dynamic backgrounds are a neat trick, and the page previews in little cards makes everything quickly accessible at a glance no matter what home screen you’re on. The Nexus has this cool 3D scrolling wheel effect when spinning through your various applications. Its like the wheel on the Price is Right, but instead of monetary values between a nickel and a dollar, you get your rows and rows of apps that you probably never use. The onscreen keyboard is almost identical to the iPhone’s. Unfortunately, even with all the fancy graphical effects, the Nexus didn’t take the same creative liberties with their music player. The standard Android media player looks like the same lame PC program plug-in you had in the 90s. Then again, who listens to music on their phones anyway.

Right now there are no official plans to bring the Nexus One to Canada, but its not a question of if but when. In the meantime, if you have an iPhone or any G1 HTC Google phone then you’re not really missing out on much. Sure the screen is gorgeous, the interface is interesting, and the camera is decent for a phone, but don’t bother importing one from the US. Early reports show that you can make calls normally, but anything data related is a no can do in Canada. So paying an arm and a leg for an unlocked Nexus will essentially get you half a smartphone, and we all know half a smartphone is just a phone.

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