Google Phone - great for geeks, not as much for humans

Google just unveiled their Nexus One Phone in an attempt to unseat Apple from its throne. Unfortunately, it falls far short of being capable of achieving that objective.

The visual appeal of the phone does little to improve on what a number of smartphones out there already offer. But the problem lies with the way applications are designed. There's plenty of blatant copying of the iPhone's designs in terms of selection of apps and layouts - but it's the bad kind of copying that doesn't improve upon the original.

Maps does well to integrate the visual of street view - but to do it under the name of "layers" is a classic example of what happens when geeks design applications. A similar example of that is Google naming their latest breakthrough in messaging "Wave". Neither "Wave" nor "Layers" convey anything to a common person - you have to explain to them why it's called what it's called, and that just defeats the purpose. Google's apps have features "layered in" - something that iPhone apps stayed away from, for the most part. The rationale behind that is a simple design thesis - the deeper a feature is embedded, the less intuitive it is, and therefore it's less likely to be understood and used.

Overall, what I'd call an "also-ran". Google and T-Mobile, unfortunately, will have to spend a lot on marketing to make it a blockbuster success.