I have had the Nexus One for a few weeks now and while I love the operating system (Android 2.1) and the power of the device I think the industrial design is significantly flawed.
Firstly, I hate fixed touch screen buttons without any proper physical mechanism to them. I hated them on the first LG Chocolate and I have hated them on every device since. I think they are a gimmick and a bad one at that. The user experience is appalling and the Nexus One is, unfortunately, no exception. I use my phones in landscape mode a lot and the fixed back button on the Nexus One is badly placed in this orientation (at the button where it is harder to get to with your thumb) but more importantly it is also not nearly sensitive enough. I often end up having to rotate the device to portrait mode simply to press the back button. Another problem with the fixed touch screen buttons is that the on-screen keyboard floats directly above them in portrait mode and when I'm typing quickly I often accidentally hit the MENU or HOME buttons. All of this is hugely frustrating!
Second issue is the lack of bezel at the top of the device. Look at the picture of the Nexus One side by side with my iPod Touch below. See the enhanced bezel at the top and bottom of the iPod Touch? Well its there for a reason (as it is with the iPad). When holding the Nexus One in landscape orientation the bottom fleshy part of my thumb tends to come in contact with the screen. This causes the notification bar to drop down or interferes with the game I am playing. Grr!
There are also a couple of other smaller issues I could go into but they are relatively minor so I won't bother.
I would dearly love an Android web tablet but because of little things like this I think I'm going to end up buying the iPad. Jonathan Ive is worth every penny Apple pay him.
