Google Nexus One

3 minutes read •

Ahh the Google Nexus One! My absolute first Android Phone! I remember ordering it through the Google Store. That device was so charming with its super small size, and the tiny trackball doing double-duty as the notification led. The trackball was even RGB! It was the phone I used during college, while learning programming. And yes, I even used it for Android development!

The beginning of a new era

I know, I know, it really begins with the iPhone… But not for me, it really started with the Nexus One. Those were the early days for Android, the user interface was changing and getting tweaked with every updates. Using the trackball to scroll on websites was a joy, because much of the content was free of any obstacles. Android was quite barebone at that time. For those of you who knew the platform back then, we needed to download an application to enable the flashlight, and another one to clear the RAM. Funny thing is that applications (and developers) were really innovative with interfaces. I mention this because the original image gallery was something wildly different from the rest of the system. It was leaning heavilly on translucent materials, with 3D effects enhanced with the builtin gyroscope. I don’t think this application would look out of place on more modern phones!

The ROM scene

Phones before Android were known to be something akin to a black box. It had an obscure operating system and don’t think about changing it or updating it. Phones were not meant to change throughout their lifetime. But Android changed that. Being open-source by nature, the doors were opened and oh boy it was thrilling! Google never intended to unlock the FM Tuner of the Nexus One so it became a task for ROM developers to do it. These are the kind of things you could hope with a new rom back then. This is why I ended up flashing MIUI on the phone. It is still the ROM it uses to this day, thanks to the stable base, and a friendly UI. Some mad developers even ported Android Kitkat (4.4) on this phone! But this phone had two issues, it lacked RAM and lacked internal storage. With some tools, it was possible to resize partitions and move some parts of the system on an SD Card but even so, the phone was underpowered for Android 4.4.

Specs