Linus Torvalds: I broke down and bought a Nexus One last week
For Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, the Nexus One is apparently the first mobile phone that he doesn’t hate. He bought the phone a few days ago after hearing the news that Google were pushing out an update to enable pinch & zoom on the device. He’s owned a number of phones, including the G1, but according to a post on his personal blog the Nexus One is the first that he’s enthusiastic about:
I love the concept of having a phone that runs Linux, and I’ve had a number of them over the years (in addition to the G1, I had one of the early China-only Motorola Linux phones) etc. But my hatred of phones ends up resulting in me not really ever using them…
But I have to admit, the Nexus One is a winner. I wasn’t enthusiastic about buying a phone on the internet sight unseen, but the day it was reported that it finally had the pinch-to-zoom thing enabled, I decided to take the plunge. I’ve wanted to have a GPS unit for my car anyway, and I thought that google navigation might finally make a phone useful.
And it does. What a difference! I no longer feel like I’m dragging a phone with me “just in case” I would need to get in touch with somebody - now I’m having a useful (and admittedly pretty good-looking) gadget instead. The fact that you can use it as a phone too is kind of secondary.
