Google: Nexus One not supporting 802.11n (for the time being)
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted January 8th 2010 1:20PM
posted January 8th 2010 1:20PM
Contrary to what we saw two days ago (in this boffo teardown as well as on Google's official spec page) the company is now listing the Nexus One as supporting 802.11b/g and not 802.11n -- conforming at least to the specifications on HTC's official specifications, if not to our hopes and dreams. We'll let you know if anything changes -- again!
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
@GoogleCEO
I completely agree. Engadget has a MASSIVE attraction towards Apple's iCrap, and never gives Apple's competitors any credit (which most deserve).
@Musturd
Yes it's all a big conspiracy, damn loser.
@iDavey
You and a lot of other people are wayyy too gullible. I gotta give Engadget a thumbs up on this one! Don't you get it??? They forcefully slowed down the loading of the page on the Nexus One. So what is the first thing that every new N1 owner going to do? The first thing they do is hit up Engadget, and they do this over and over and over again.
Goog job Engadget! Every Nexus One is existence has been to your site.
I'm still getting one.
This doesn't change the fact that I still want one.
Yeah this really isn't an issue. Most mobile users would be lucky to get a sustained speed of over 1Mb/s anyway on their phone, and most probably don't get 54Mb/s on their broadband line at home for Wifi, and I'm sure we can all cope with having to walk *inside* a café (or just, you know, your house) to get a good signal.
They've avoided an unnecessary power hog, good job.
Can we vote down stories as totally useless?
with the majority of people saying that not supporting wireless n is a good thing since there are no real applications for those kind of speeds on a mobile device, then why have it there in the first place?
maybe they are going to be enabling transfers over wifi at some point and then will flip the switch?
@Anonymoose Probably because it's easier for the chip maker to make a device with b/g/n all built in that to have separate chips limited to b/g only.
I better go check if this is actually true, I don't believe a word of what is said about the Nexus One after Joshua Topolsky's horrendous review.
Although it would be nice to have n enabled at launch 802.11g or hsdpa is still more than fast enough for me for what i'll be doing on the phone, plus as others have said if google won't enable it in a fix soon then xda sure as hell will. It's obvious google intended it to have n enabled as it did list it as enabled on the product page when i ordered mine.
At least if/when google do decide to activate it i won't have to pay for the update...
The iPhone has it.
@ashleythehottiest
Not so much.
Direct form apple.com
Cellular and wireless
UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR wireless technology
@jon Well duh they dont list it they found the chip in a teardown with it supporting 802.11n but apple just has to unlock it.
@ashleythehottiest
Which is exactly the situation here. The chip supports it, Google doesn't.
The difference being, when in the entire history of the company has Apple unlocked anything?
So, no the iPhone doesn't have it.
@jon
And what makes you think Google will?
Well it may not officially support it but my router broadcasts in n and both my MT3G and my N1 both work just fine on it. My guess is that n is a little buggy and they don't list it because they don't want to support it.
Odd, when I connect my N1 to my n router it reports it's speed as 65mbps
@RobS Ditto here with my N1 connected to an 802.11n router
It's not even worth buying without support for wireless N.
I would gladly forego N for Exchange Calendar support
Hey I thought Goog also paid you guys (apart from Apple) for favorable reviews?
first thing when i got the phone was why is it missing the fourth gold dot on the bottom of the phone. wifi n did not come to my mine.
It's because the iPhone doesn't have 802.11n and the Nexus One is obviously nothing but a blatant iPhone ripoff.
Gaaaaaawd I wish all other companies would just stop trying to copy Apple already..
Funny how little not having 801.11N means if you are on Sprint with no Nexus phone, no HD2, no iphone just a plethora of pink phones.
I wonder why there are so many hardware restrictions for this device
no metter i still am getting one
I have tested Wireless N on my Nexus One ADP and it works just fine
Not sure if it ever got mentioned, but if you buy this thing unlocked, you can use it on whatever t-mobile plan you'd like - not just the individual plan that google is touting.
I purchased it unlocked and didn't have to change my family plan - just had to upgrade my phone to have android unlimited web and a texting bundle (this will vary from about $20/month bucks extra with no texts to $34/month extra with unlimited). So right now I pay $25/month for unlimited web and 400 texts on top of the base family plan rate. Not bad at all. I would highly recommend going the unlocked route:
1. Cheaper (in the long run)
2. No contract
3. Can use any t-mobile plan
Hadn't noticed the lack of wireless n yet...oh well.
@bigtimebooch
I don't think anybody is going to notice the lack of wireless-N on a smartphone, it's more just an annoyance if you're running a N-only network at home and have to switch your router to dual banded operation. Your internet connection is the bottleneck, not the WLAN you're running on.
My Nexus One claims it is connected at 65Mbps which exceeds what 802.11g can achieve, so I would expect this is just a spurious rumor.
@pachi72
It seemed like a rushed release for CES. Many people have mentioned the weirdness of the front soft buttons, only 2 colours on the trackball, no multitouch in the U.S, a crashing Live Wallpaper (When I worked in QA, if ANYTHING crashed we would not release the product at all).
Plus, since I'm in the UK, the launch is looking shambolic and like a company who hasn't released a physical product in their life..oh wait...
Is there an actual reason why these people don't enable the 802.11n capabilities of these chips? I understand 150 or 300 mbps for these small devices aren't all that important, but the extended range capabilities of the spec, not even including the RF shaping of dual or triple antenna setup, should make using this a priority to implement. x.x
my nexus one connects to my 802.11n router at 65 Mbps, and while that's not the 144 Mbps my laptop gets, it's marginally faster than my 802.11g router at 54 Mbps.
Yup confirm i'ts one ugly phone.
maybe they will just turn it on later (no fee hopefully). Plus, as more people hook up internet capable devices, it would be nice to have more things not default to the lower/slower .g when you have only one of many devices that use.g instead of .n
Most regular people still have .g or even .b routers, so I'm sure that companies still push what is easily sold @ the wally worlds etc.....
Bummer. It's still sweet!
I wanted One.
Since there is no slide out tactile keyboard, no WiFi n, and no multitouch, maybe I will just wait for the Nexus Two to come out before I buy one.
How about asking the people who did the tear down what the chip supports, and then letting use know with a new post? sound good?
this explains why the 3gs won in Engadgets browser audits against the droid and n1 since the 3gs uses 802.11n
Iphone may have 10,000 apps, but 3,000 of those are fart machines and another 2,000 are tip calculators. Basically any good app on one platform is on the other. I prefer Android apps though, there are apps out there that are just amazing. My G1 is a Mifi hotspot thanks to root and tethering app. Does the IPhone do that?
http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2465477