In a previous article, I posted that I was sold on an Android 2.0 device knowing that Adobe AIR was coming to the platform.  In full disclosure, I was also sold by my brief experiences with them.  Well, now that I’ve sold my G1′s I picked up a Nexus and have put it through the ringer.

While I had complained, many times, about there being a lack of a physical keyboard I’ve moved on.  It’s still a drawback, but with practice I’ve gained the ability to be decent with the keyboard on the iPod touch. I’m hoping I can do the same here, however it’s no where near as efficient as the physical keyboard on the G1.

Now that I got the “OMG I have one” and the “I know I said I’d never” out of the way, I will focus on the amazingness which is this phone.  Rocking a 1ghz processor, 512mb of ram and a 5mp camera is just the start of the awesomeness.  While the phone runs as smooth as one would imagine, with those specs, the Nexus continues to shine with Android 2.1 under the hood.  I’d probably say it’s the smoothest phone I’ve used in a long time, which was really the selling point.  While I don’t play a lot of tasking games, I’m able to notice a huge difference in the performance through the simplest of tasks.  I could picture being able to throw anything I desired at it and being laughed at.

With bing screen comes big resolution.  Aside from having a larger screen and the higher resolution, the colors are right where I’d imagine with an AMOLED screen. Since AMOLED also saves power, it means I should be seeing slightly better battery life on the phone, though I’m not sure I’ll notice it.  The one fall back, with many touchscreen devices, is that finger prints show like it’s the new style.  I’ve noticed that, unlike the G1, they don’t really interfere with the content on the screen. I wish I could take a picture to show the difference.

The touch screen, while not my favorite interface, seems a lot more responsive then that of the G1. This could be a change in the firmware or because the hit areas are a bit larger on a larger screen.  In comparing it to the iPod Touch, I would go as far to say that it behaves a little better.. but not much.

The next big difference I noticed was that the camera is just beautiful.  Below is a video taken from the phone, however still pictures are just as nice. Packing a built in flash really improves the versatility of the phone, a flaw most of my other phone cameras had. While I don’t snap pictures with the phone’s camera, that often, it’s nice to know I can without worrying about the quality of the pictures.  For me, really, it’s about stability, and I can’t hold phones for shit when trying to take a picture.

Along with 2.1, there’s a lot of minor user interface changes.  The first thing you notice, after turning on the device, the launcher has changed it’s look significantly.  It is a lot more appealing and doesn’t require you to slide your finger across the screen to open it.  The next big change comes in the gallery, the gallery is a lot fancier and has more sharing options.. including integration with Picasa, which is huge in my book. Other UI changes come in subtle changes throughout the OS, things like 5 home screens (instead of the original 3 on Android 1.5) as well as tweaks to the virtual keyboard.

Despite reading about all of the changes in the past, I think they are all something you need to experience to appreciate.  I hadn’t been sold on one until I had it in my hand and could compare it to the other devices in my arsenal.  At first, I thought Google’s idea was ingenious, sell phones through an online store front killing the middle man in the process.. However, taking away the ability to experience the phone really can hurt the phone buying experience.