These five Nexus One smartphones may seem to have defects, but there’s actually nothing wrong with their AMOLED screens — the funky colors are an attempt to improve battery life by turning off unnecessary sub-pixel LEDs. Hooking up his handset to an industrial power meter, Android engineer Jeff Sharkey discovered a blood-red screen drew 42 percent less current than full color — the least of any combination by far — purportedly doubling the effective battery life of the phone. While you’re probably not going to be able to test the requisite software patch for yourself unless you’re mildly familiar with Google code, you’ll find a video of the crimson wonder after the break to fuel your dreams of a eyestrain-free astronomy cheat sheet… and Android bullfighting, of course.

HTC EVO 4G

Google Nexus One

Motorola Droid

As you’ve probably noticed, we have something of a propensity for charts — hey, organization is key to a well-balanced life, right? Since we last tackled an Android device faceoff, the sheer number of competitors has branched out far and wide, but despite the propagation / fragmentation, including today’s unveiling of the HTC EVO 4G, three clear frontrunners have taken most of the spotlight for being the pinnacle of the Android experience: the aforementioned, HTC / Google’s Nexus One, and the Motorola Droid. Here, the latter device is looking a bit long in the tooth, but that physical QWERTY keyboard and its volcanic rise to prominence gives it some strong staying power. Cold, hard data isn’t going to tell the full story, but until you can get to try each of these yourself — all at the same time, if you’re lucky — it’s a great place to start.

It hasn’t quite been out (in public hands, anyway) for two months, but Google’s Nexus One has managed to grab the world’s attention and focus it squarely on Android. Specs wise, it’s not the superphone that many had expected, but it’s certainly delightful in its own right. For those who have sprung for one, we’re bubbling over in anticipation to hear how you’d change it. Would you have snuck an overclocked processor in there? Would you have ditched the trackball for a sensor pad? Do you wish it were available on more carriers? Is the call quality up to snuff? Look — there’s a better-than-decent chance that you threw down some serious bills on this, so don’t hold back. The Nexus Two just won’t be the same without your pair of pennies.

It’d be kinda funny if someone was live-bleeping your profanity, right? Sure, but five minutes later you’d sober up to regret and lingering annoyance. Turns out the Nexus One does it for real, courtesy of Google’s speech-to-text engine — it replaces notorious curses like the F and S words with a ‘####,’ which is a more dramatic take on the Zune HD‘s now-obsolete Twitter censorship. As silly as this sounds, Google has come up with a good reason:

We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent.

Kudos for caring, but it wouldn’t hurt to have an on / off option either — after all, it’s not like we’re asking for pinch-to-zoom here, and we’ll promise to use a swear jar.

The Nexus One. In the modern climate of hyped (and over-hyped) smartphone launches, Google’s official entry into the phone-sales game has excelled in a department where many find difficulty: generating legitimate excitement. Of course, long before the name Nexus One or the recent bounty of pictures and details existed, the very concept of a “Google Phone” had been ingrained in the public conscience, predating even the Open Handset Alliance and Android itself; the company dabbled in the concept of direct sales through its offering of the Android Dev Phones 1 and 2 (alias Ion), but this time, it’s a public retail ordeal, not a couple of one-off developer specials. The genuine-article Google Phone is finally here — for better or worse.

The device, a Snapdragon-powered, HTC-built phone looks — on paper, at least — like the ultimate Android handset, combining a newly tweaked and tightened user interface with killer industrial design. A sleek, streamlined phone that can easily go toe-to-toe with the iPhone 3GSs, Pres, and Droids of the world, powered by the latest version of Android (2.1 “Flan,” if you’re counting), and hand-retooled by Google. But is it all it’s cracked up to be? Can the Nexus One possibly live up to the hype ascribed to it? And more importantly, is the appearance of the phone the death knell for the OHA and a sign of the coming Android autocracy? In our exclusive review of the Nexus One, we’ll answer all those pressing questions and more… so read on for the full scoop!

We know, you’re so surprised. Google’s finally confirmed the Nexus One. We’ve naturally heard all about the phone already from dubious sources, and even reviewed the purported device, but now that they’ve got one in hand up on a stage, we suppose we’ll have to set aside all of our doubts. So, the nitty gritty: 3.7-inch AMOLED display, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, compass, GPS, accelerometer, light and proximity sensor, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, 3.5mm headphone jack, and a multicolored LED under the trackball. There are also two mics onboard, one on the bottom and one on the back, for the purpose of noise cancellation à la Motorola’s CrystalTalk, and the phone is naturally running the brand new Android 2.1. The phone is actually HTC branded, unlike the pre-release versions we’ve seen, and can be custom engraved with two lines of text at the time of order, for that extra personal touch (there’s a picture of the phone’s back after the break). The phone is available today off contract with a T-Mobile compatible radio for $529 unlocked, shipping to the US, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong, or with a two year T-Mobile US contract for $179 (both with free overnight shipping in the US). Most surprisingly, the phone is also headed to Verizon this Spring, and Vodafone will score the device eventually as well.

Just when you thought you’d seen it all with Nexus One, along comes an old friend with some higher resolution shots of the handset (hooray!) and a pretty impressive 3D benchmark test using Qualcomm’s Neocore. Video’s after the break –that Snapdragon chip outputs a mean framerate, no?

Our buddy Tnkgrl just had a sit down with Google and HTC’s lovedroid, the Nexus One. She “wasn’t allowed” to take pictures or video but she came away with plenty of detail. The biggest point of clarification might not be what’s included in the handset, but what’s missing: multitouch. She confirms, “no multitouch support in the browser or in Google Maps,” just like Verizon’s Droid (but available on its European Milestone brother). The unit she tested included a 4GB microSD card, 1400mAh battery, worked on T-Mobile’s 3G only (AT&T is limited to EDGE data), and was “super snappy! Faster than the Droid.” She also noted “gold contacts” along the bottom edge presumably for a docking port thus jibing with whispers of a Nexus One Car Dock accessory. Now hit the read link for all the details if you still have the strength.

P.S. We should probably clarify that while the Google Apps tested don’t respond to multitouch, the OS and hardware are presumably multitouch capable. See our previous exhaustive analysis of this topic if you’re wondering why.