I've had my Nexus One for about a month and have used it every day.
The four buttons on the bottom are indeed a little weird at first, I can verify that. However, I can also verify that it's more of a perception problem of where and how you should push the button compared to what it actually is. Once you use it for a little while, you can push the button and have it be detected with 100% consistency. All you gotta do is push a little bit on the upper part of the button and keep your finger there a bit longer than a tap and it will work every time without issue. The phone also vibrates a small amount when you hit those buttons so you know without a doubt if you hit the button or not.
The only multi-touch I have used is pinch to zoom, and for that it is completely flawless. I can't comment on other types of multi-touch since I've never tried them. It's entirely possible that the problems that have been reported could be solved by a driver or software patch.
The worst thing about this phone is trying to use it outdoors in direct sunlight. It is very difficult. Setting the screen to maximum brightness helps a little bit. The only thing this has made a bit troublesome is taking pictures outside in the bright sunlight since you won't be able to see what the pictures you took look like until later. That said, this hasn't bothered me very much. The phone is readable in the shadow of a building. The phone is readable inside a car that is in direct sunlight. I've never had a situation where I couldn't find a place where I could look at the phone perfectly fine within a couple seconds of walking. This is definitely the biggest flaw with the phone though. It's the price you pay for the beautiful AMOLED screen. I live in Florida.
The default keyboard is pretty average. It's not really possible to type fast and accurately on it if you have the phone in the vertical position. The horizontal keyboard works a lot better, I've become quite proficient at typing on it. There are other keyboards you can install but I have not tried any of them.
The phone is extremely fast. Applications load and run extremely smoothly. The phone doesn't flinch when you run several applications at the same time. It all works seamlessly. Turn off live wallpapers for even more speed.
The screen is really good. It is incredibly clear and the colors are great. You will definitely notice just how nice the screen looks when you use it for the first time. Not that it matters much, but the viewing angles are great too, much better than a typical LCD. I installed a PDF Reader(RepliGo Reader) and read books with it. Haven't had any eye strain or anything.
Web browser works very well. The phone renders pages really quickly and it all feels natural. On most web pages that are not mobile, double tapping the screen will make all the text on the page conform to your screen so all you have to do is scroll vertically to read the entire page. This doesn't work on all sites but it does on most. For the ones that it doesn't, you can just use pinch zooming to obtain your preferred zoom level.
There are a lot of applications on the marketplace and more to come in the future. When Flash comes out, there will be countless flash games to try. Also Hulu media streaming. I'm personally really excited about that.
The phone's camera takes very decent quality pictures and the flash works great for taking nice pictures in low lighting situations.
The phone has a very nice feel to it. I love just holding the thing.
The box the phone comes in is very nice looking.
The trackball isn't needed, but I've found some uses for it. Sometimes I use it to scroll web pages when I am reading instead of touching the screen. Sometimes I push the trackball button to take a picture instead of hitting the button on the screen for taking a picture.
Android OS is extremely nice. Very customizable. I like pretty much everything about it. Everything really comes together extremely nicely if you make extensive use of Google services. I use Gmail and Google Calendar primarily. Something incredibly awesome is that I can edit contacts in Gmail and they show up on my phone. This is cool for two reasons: 1. It's a lot faster to enter lots of contact info with a PC. 2. No matter what happens to the phone, you can never lose your contacts.
The Nexus One feels more like a hand held computer than it does a phone. This is a good thing.
The GPS in this phone is the best GPS I have ever used. First of all, the framerate and how often it updates is amazing. It blows away my Garmin. It shows you cruising the streets very smoothly. When you set a destination, it gives you lots of information right off the bat. You get a phone number for the place, and you can see what the building looks like. The voice navigation actually speaks the name of the road so there is no confusion on where to turn if there are a ton of streets nearby.(Since many GPS systems just say "turn left now") When you arrive at your destination, it automatically shows you a street view picture of the building you are looking for hands free. The search is really awesome too. You can type something like "McDonalds" and then bam a bunch of little arrows appear on the map showing you where every one nearby is. It is very cool.
The default music player is very basic but it works. You're free to install another one if need be.
For the most part, reception has been good for me. I'm not sure if the problems people are having are problems with the phone, problems with T-Mobile coverage itself, or a little bit of both. I've seen accounts from people that said the problems randomly went away one day, making me think it was just something T-Mobile fixed on a nearby cell tower.
The phone's security technique where you draw a symbol to access the phone isn't super secure unless you do a very complex one. If you hold the phone to the light just right you can see a fingerprint showing you the exact symbol.
The phone feels comfortable when making calls. This was something I was really worried about before I got the phone since it's just a rectangle, but after making lots of calls, I've been pleasantly surprised. Feels completely natural to me. I've tested the background noise canceling with a friend and it appears to work very well. Sitting at my computer with music playing, my friend couldn't hear it unless I made it extremely loud.
The phone's speaker is very decent. It's perfect for looking up a youtube video and showing it to friends and having it be loud enough for the whole group to hear without issue. I've also used the speakerphone function and it works very nicely.
I've never rooted the device, so I can't tell you much about that. Most people that do seem very happy with it though.
Wifi works extremely well and seamlessly. All of my internet using applications seamlessly switch between using wifi and 3G depending on if I am in range of my wifi. It's very easy to set it up with an encrypted network.
Transferring data to the phone is extremely easy as well. All you do is hit the USB connected notification on your phone and hit mount. The phone will then show up as a storage device on your computer. Then just put stuff on it however you want. Once you are done, make sure to unmount your phone because applications won't be able to use the SD card when the phone is in the mode for receiving files from the PC.
Battery life is pretty reasonable. When the phone is in sleep mode it uses virtually nothing. When browsing or playing an intense game, it drains battery fast. I've never had my battery run out on me yet and I've been away from home for up to 12 hours with it before. I just hook the phone up to the USB cable every time I get home. To get more battery life, you can turn off features like wifi, gps, autosync, live wallpapers, and adjust screen brightness. I've never disabled any of these except live wallpaper, but the option exists if I really need to push the battery time.
I've never needed to contact Google for support so I don't have any first hand experience. I have browsed the Google help forums though. Sometimes Google employees reply, sometimes they don't. That's what I see.
I think I've gone over just about everything I can think of and tried to be as unbiased as possible(I am hugely in favor of this phone). This phone is a really nice handheld computer that can make phone calls. That's what you should be expecting from it. I paid $570~ for this after taxes and very quickly decided it was worth every penny.
Edit: Forgot to mention that the speech to text feature is really awesome. It's far more accurate than any speech to text program I have ever used before. It knows the names of products and terms that aren't in the English language, so if you say something like youtube, iphone, xbox, and such, it understands it perfectly. I have one of my friends in my contacts listed by his nickname, which isn't a real word at all. I can still say it into speech to text search and it will pull his name up without issue.
). Google services are integrated seamlessly; the turn-by-turn nav is excellent and always totally up-to-date since it comes from the cloud. The voice recognition and gesture search features are very useful. There are tons of great apps for both fun and productivity (I use Gmote to control my HTPC which I just find ubercool). Voice quality is excellent. Battery life is surprisingly good.
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