You may have been aware that I’ve been on vacation for the last week visiting family in Florida. We decided to drive down so we could take the dog too and thought it would be an adventure for the family. I also decided that my HTC/Google Nexus One would replace my Garmin as the GPS for the journey. This was almost a big mistake.
Many people have commented and complained to Google about the heat getting generated when their phones are on charge, I can attest that this fact is most certainly true.
With My Nexus One plugged in and ready for the 20 hour journey from Illinois to Florida I punched in the destination address to Google Maps and we set out on our travels.
The first time I noticed anything was when we stopped and I went to unplug my phone and take it out of the car, I immediately noticed how hot the casing was. I assumed it would be fine as it was hot, but not burning hot.
The final straw came when we where a couple of hours from our destination and a phone call came through while Google Maps was actively navigating on my Nexus One placed on my dash board. The phone totally froze except for the ring tone which continued. The callers details where on the screen but I could not swipe across my screen to answer the call. The phone was completely frozen apart form the ringing of the call that was coming through. A few seconds later the phone rebooted itself, came back to the unlock screen and froze once more.
To say that my phone was hot is an understatement. I immediately removed the cover from the phone, took out the battery and left it to cool down for a while.
Now this is from a phone that had plenty of ventilation around it. My phone was resting on my dashboard at a 45 degree angle so only the top and bottom edges of the phone where touching any surface.
So how on earth are you suppose to use this device for the purpose it’s supplied for. It may be a phone but its touted as a device to replace many devices. Great if you don’t mind only using it in short bursts and not having it on charge at the same time. How on earth can you use it as a GPS when the battery drains so fast that it’s only useful if you can have it plugged in at the same time.
My conclusion and disappointment at what appears to be ever increasing failures for Google’s first foray into the hardware market sadden me. I’ve had issues from day one. First we have the 3G signal problems that are still ongoing for me. I’ve tried 3 radio updates released in the community and none have resolved my data connection dilemmas. Now I have this. I’m so disheartened that I would be returning my Nexus One if it was an option.
Imagine if my phone had been slipped into a cradle that surrounded the entire back of the phone and gave less air flow than my hand placed phone on the dashboard.
I, like many others out there, have already unlocked my phone, or unlocked my software so I now have no know recourse with Google as they null and void your entire warranty even when it’s clear that there are hardware issues and the unlock is only related to the software. All because a software flag that says my phone has been unlocked. I could even be running the stock ROM and never done anything else except unlock the boot loader and still Google would wash their hands of any responsibility.
I am currently running Enomther’s excellent “TheOfficial Nexus1 v1.8.1” with no overclocking or under volting and I’m sure if I could get any sort of response out of Google they would try to blame the software I was running. As many of you already know, the issues exist and have been mentioned on stock devices all over the net.
So if anyone from HTC or Google happens to pass by this article and would care to make any comments, we’d all love to hear from you.
