Stat Clash: The iPhone Vs. The Nexus One

The iPhone since its release back in 2007 has pretty much had every single aspect of the mobile phone market covered - it had all the apps, all the tech, all the features, and all the style. However, 2009 has seen some strong challenges to the iPhone’s sovereign reign, most notably the Palm Pre, the HTC Hero, and the Nokia N900. And 2010 shows no sign of letting up with the release of Google’s heavily anticipated handset, The Nexus One.

But which, out of these two behemoth devices is the best? Smartphone tracker has compiled a stat-clash to sort the men from the boys. Read on to see who will win in a head-to-head stat clash between the iPhone 3GS and the Nexus One.

Processing Power

The processor is one of the most important aspects of any smartphone, it helps make everything run smoothly, grants you the power to multitask, and at the end of the day is incremental to the overall performance of the device. And in this context, the iPhone’s ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz really can’t hold a candle to the Nexus One’s, nearly twice as powerful, Qualcomm QSD 8250 1 GHz processor. So, in this sense, the Nexus One is the clear winner.

Display

Both the iPhone and the Nexus One has ample screens and brilliant touchscreen interfaces. However, the Nexus One does have a slightly larger screen, measuring in at 3.7-inches, compared to the iPhone’s 3.5-inch display. In addition to this, the Nexus One’s display has widescreen WVGA AMOLED built into it, which, unfortunately, the iPhone does not. As we said, the iPhone still has an ample screen, both in terms of its size and quality. However, in a stat-clash, there can only be one winner and in this context, it is the Nexus One.

Onboard Storage

For many, having a lot of onboard storage is a necessity - users’ like to carry all their music, films and e-books with them where ever they go. In this context, the iPhone is the initial winner as it comes with the most onboard storage, which clocks in at 32GB. The Nexus One, like the majority of Android smartphones out there, has a rather meagre 4GB of onboard storage but has the option to upgrade this with an external MicrosSD card to 32GB. So, in this context, the iPhone is the winner on paper as you will have to pay upwards of £30 for a MicroSD card to get the Nexus One’s onboard storage up to the same level.

Camera

The Nexus One beats the iPhone hands down in this department with a 5 megapixel Autofocus (from 6cm to infinity), 2X digital zoom, LED flash camera. Compare this to the iPhone’s 3.15 megapixel camera and there really is no competition. The Nexus One wins over all in the battle of the cameras.

Operating System

While the jury may still be out on which OS - Android or Apple - is better, Android has certainly been making leaps-and-bounds in what users come to expect from an OS and 2009 certainly was the year of the Android. The Nexus One uses a 2.1 Eclair Android processor, which builds on the successes of Android 1.6 adding some bug fixes and a plethora of new features and tweaks. However, if we had to choose between the two, we’d go with Android 2.1 simply because it is a more malleable OS that is constantly changing and adapting to users' needs and wants - plus it’s Linux based, and we really like that.

Price

The cost of the iPhone has always been a contentious issue for many when contemplating whether or not to make the jump to Apple - the tariffs are expensive, the handset is expensive, and you have to pay for it as well on most contracts. The Nexus One, to buy, is significantly cheaper than the £429 iPhone at £333, which will certainly make it an attractive option to many users, especially since it is - on paper - a significantly more powerful device.

Result

Overall, it doesn’t look good for the iPhone with the Nexus One beating it practically hands down on all fronts - except onboard storage, which is hardly a deal breaker for anyone anyway. That said, this is merely a ‘Stat-Clash’ and it doesn’t take into account usability, functionality and overall user experience. Nevertheless, if this is anything to go by, it certainly looks like the iPhone has its work cut out for it in 2010. We wish you the best of luck Mr. Jobs.