Smartphonesare increasingly popular and there are now so many of them it can be hard to know what’s good and what’s not. Our guide takes you through the key points of the Google Nexus so you can judge for yourself. Firstly, it comes with a 3.7inch display, is light and streamline and is a very attractive phone, meaning it easily stands up to the competition in the looks department from the iPhone and others. Made by HTC, it also benefits from their well-known good build quality.

The display is also stunning and the touchscreen is widely seen as being as good as or better than other phones with similar capabilities. It has a high resolution (480 x 800), although given the size of the screen, you would expect this to be slightly higher. This isn’t a big issue but you do notice the difference on some apps such as Gmail, where it has a slight detrimental effect. The main issue with the display, though, is that some of the colors are massively oversaturated.

The camera tends to be an area of weakness on smartphones, but the Google Nexus’ camera is surprisingly good. It has a 5 megapixel lens, a good flash, and Google have worked to increase the speed of the camera app (although this could still be improved). The camera takes good, detailed pictures and most of the issues associated with other HTC models have been eradicated. The lens focuses really quickly and generally the pictures come out as you hope they will.

Where the Nexus isn’t quite as good as you would hope, though, is in its telephony capabilities. It’s fairly comparable to most other phones, but more was expected from it. The quality of the speakerphone is quite tinny and could definitely be improved, so it’s not ideal for prolonged use. The earpiece is fairly standard compared to other phones and is clear and loud while you’re speaking but it could be more even. There are also connectivity issues similar to those with the iPhone, so the signal drops occasionally.

The Google Nexus benefits from a few software upgrades but is mainly pretty similar to other Droid operated phones. There’s an improved gallery options which is excellent for storing photos and the main improvement is probably the simplification of the homescreen navigation. This has been massively improved compared to previous versions of Android phones and has good graphics. Overall, while there are a few glitches in this model of the Nexus, in general it’s a good phone that should improve with subsequent models.