You’re totally kidding, right?
the iPhone is the first and only phone to have COMPLETE touch-to-speech capability for the blind… you can control and “feel” EVERYTHING on the screen…have it read the buttons, zoom in to 800%, reverse the whites/blacks, the “rotor” to control preferences by touch… you can even operate the phone completely with the screen TOTALLY OFF… unbelievably complete and powerful for the blind. Check it out.

Compared with that, the Google phone would definitely not be a blind person’s #1 choice!

You went on to say that the iPhone has an app that does the “same thing”. If you mean change voice input to text output, that’s a real over generalization. Mapquest in a browser and Google Maps on a mobile phone do the “same thing” basically, but they are radically different in use. In functionality, Android does not do the same thing because of the integrated functionality, but you sounded a lot like the “there’s an app for that” Apple commercial. Only in this case, it was an app that doesn’t even come close to the same functionality.

“I doubt very much that you’ve actually compared the two phones’ cameras, as I have”

You didn’t mention under what conditions those pictures were taken, which is what I asked.

“megapixels means NOTHING to “photo quality”–only determines how many dots make up the one lousy picture!”

Which I mentioned as well, that all things being equal, more is better, key part “all things being equal”.

As for the audience, I suspect a fully voice capable phone appeals to every audience still turned off from smartphones who don’t, or can’t, type on smart phones. For instance, my elderly father and the blind.

For the blind, this phone is a godsend! Voice input, and hopefully voice reading soon for all apps. What an incredible door that opens for the disabled that makes it their #1 choice.

As for the iPhone polish, a null SMS message could crash them when it was released. I wouldn’t call that polished. Not blaming them, bugs are bugs are bugs. iPhone had plenty of them, Nexus One will have their own share.

The actual point was simply that just about everything that is right with iPhone, they can do. And most of things iPhone is lacking they do right. Much of that has to do with the Android platform more than the HTC hardware. But the distance between iPhone and Android is widening. Most of the critiques you had lacked a specificity, and generalized and used vague references.

If you are going to review the camera, give a specific. Put up side by side pictures at the minimum. If you are going to talk about the crashes, tell me more than your background crashed. Did you try other programs, were there other crashes, was this a phone problem or just a badly written background gadget.

I read a lot of opinion, not a lot of facts, nothing of factual comparison. Everyone has an opinion, no doubt. But many readers what some meat and potatoes in their reviews.

As for the layman audience, I am the Lehman, hehe, quite litterally. I am not an Engadget or Gizmodo gadget specs freak. I like phones, I like tech, and I work a blue collar job. No blue collar worker I’ve ever worked with subscribed to the NYT. It’s not quite “general audience” around here, it’s considered high brow to many of them.

Much of the review felt like an iPhone lover writing a review that pained them to admit something might be better.

Many of the people I work with have Blackberries and iPhones. No Palm Pre’s that I’ve seen. When I talk to them about the features, users are looking to only two phones Droid and iPhone. When I read some stories to them from my Blackberry about the Nexus, most responded the same way. “Wow, I bet that phone will cost a fortune!”

I suppose us simple folk are fascinated by shiny gadgets, search by picture, and voice recognition. But, that’s what sells phones. Usually a single feature or two. Not lack of ringer buttons.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the parts of your article that did the tit for tat comparisons. I just found much of that lacking, with more opinion than anything. I just didn’t find much in the way of Tech, or even “Tech for dummies” as in how I compared the two displays. It was some tech fact, some dumbed down explanation, and my opinion mixed in.

But hey, that’s just my $0.02. I’m just an occasional blogger without a college degree in journalism, and that’s why you are paid the big bucks for good reason. Time will tell if this phone sells or flops.

As for my being “out of touch with who the real audience the Google Nexus One is for”… I wouldn’t put it that way. I write for a layman audience. I’d definitely expect Engadget or Gizmodo to LOVE the Nexus (although they didn’t), because the Nexus is a pretty geeky phone, and it’s targeted at geeks. Definitely more complex than, say, iPhone. And not nearly as polished–come on, error messages and freezes on your PHONE? That’s not cool.

But to your point: You’re right. The Times is for a general audience. I might have written a different review if I were writing for gadget freaks.

–Pogue