I much prefer hearing that people were not given things to make a good review, but chose to purchase one and loved it. The latter makes me want to buy one, the former puts me off a little bit as I can't be sure that the good review is untainted by the freebie.
As someone said on the comments to the blog, it seems surprising that he didn't buy a N900 instead. It's far closer to being a full Linux machine than the Nexus One.
I understand what you mean by a "full linux" machine - but Linus, of all people, would see GNU/Linux as being what it really is: the kernel, and nothing more. The community has wrapped lots of things around it, but really, they aren't linux. I think it is good that him and people like him still realise that. Android makes a linux phone. Period.
I got one N900 and I don't see why it's a bad small PC, let alone a really bad one. Granted, most interesting tasks involve accessing a remote machine via ssh, but you can still toy with (for example) ipython, the shell and, in general, a good number of Debian packages. What is bad about it? (Pricing shouldn't qualify as part of the diagnosis.)
I wasn't enthusiastic about buying a phone on the internet sight unseen, but the day it was reported that it finally had the pinch-to-zoom thing enabled, I decided to take the plunge.
Having handled both the Android Maps app (sans pinch) and the iPhone Maps app... yes, yes it is. Hitting the "plus" and "minus" buttons work, but so does clicking on the arrows at the end of your scroll bars. To me it qualifies as barely functional, not the right solution at all.
Not as far as I'm concerned. Thankfully it's not the only way to zoom on the nexus, because it pretty much requires two hands to use, one to hold the phone and the other to pinch. I don't think any other function requires two hands on the nexus, although it is sometimes faster to type with two hands. (This messages was typed on my nexus).
On the Nexus, can you double-tap an area on a web page to zoom in to that area? That's one way of zooming in with one hand that I like on the iPhone. I'm just curious to see if Google brought that gesture to Android with the recent update.
It is to me. I've gotten so used to all the iphone gestures that when I have to go back to pushing buttons I get really frustrated. I can't even use a Kindle now.
While the N900 is a nice phone it still requires too much screwing around for someone that wants an easy device to use. The Nexus One is that sweet spot of usability between the iPhone and the N900 and still runs the Linux kernel.
