A short time after I got my first Nexus One and began to use it, I discovered some issues with the phone. The phone would not maintain 3G signal, the display would repeatedly go from bright to dark and back under constant lighting conditions no matter where the brightness control was set, and it would not hold a wi-fi signal no matter where the sleep policy was set. I did as requested (although I don’t believe it’s the proper way to handle this type of thing) and contacted HTC. I was told that a replacement phone would be sent to me after talking to a tech. rep. that could not get it to work properly over the phone. A few days later I had not received the replacement so I called HTC again and was told that the phone was never sent out. I was told that it would be sent out that day. I called back later that day to get a tracking number and was given one. When I went to check on the tracking number I found that it didn’t exist. I called HTC back the next day and the again was told the phone was not sent out. To shorten this up, I finally did receive a replacement on 1/21/2010.

The second Nexus One however was defective as well. It had the same 3G issues and the same wi-fi issues only this one would not reconnect to the wi-fi until I either turned off the wi-fi radio and turned it back on, put it into “airplane mode” and then back out or turned the phone off and then back on. I then called HTC and again arraigned for a replacement. Needless to say it took several phone calls, but I received my third Nexus One on 1/23/2010.

The third phone still had some 3G/EDGE problems, but it was better and the wi-fi issue was the same as the first one. During this time there was news of an OTA that “might” help with the 3G issue so I held on to it and waited for the OTA. My phone received the OTA on the night of 2/4/10 and I installed it as soon as it was downloaded. There was no improvement in the 3G or the wi-fi. Two days later on 2/6/2010, sometime before 6:30 PM, the phone completely lost all phone and text messaging capabilities. I could not make or receive phone calls, could not send or receive text messages, got no missed call indicators or any voice mail indication. During that time I had missed calls and received two voice mails. I tried to shut the phone off to get the signal back but I couldn’t. It got to the last screen where the background is blurred and it says "Power Off" and under that it says "shutting down" and it has the spinner, and that's where it stayed. The spinner stopped spinning and the trackball kept flashing until I took the battery out. This happened several more times over the next two days. After checking the loss of signal with my wife’s Blackberry (Also on T-Mobile) right next to it and getting 3 to 4 bars of signal, I decided to call T-Mobile and check with them. All the tests T-Mobile did showed that my account was working fine. When the phone did it yet again, I called HTC on 2/8/2010. They had me do a factory reset and that worked for a few days. On Friday, 2/12/2010, same problem again! I contacted HTC and they started the process to ship out the fourth replacement. That was received on morning of 2/17/2010. Phone number 4 received the OTA as soon as I signed in to my Google account. When I started using the fourth Nexus One I noticed that it had the same wi-fi issue that the other three had and that it was having the issue with the screen going from bright to dark and back just like the first one had. That afternoon I got the disconnection error described above and again the following morning. This led me to call HTC yet again. I asked that the next replacement, Nexus One, phone number 5, have the OTA preinstalled and be tested. I was assured it would be. I received the fifth one on 2/19/2010 in the morning and proceeded to set it up and it did indeed have the OTA preinstalled. It doesn’t go from bright to dark like before, it does have the wi-fi sleep issue and it seems to have less flipping between 3G/EDGE. Most importantly it didn’t loose its phone signal……..until the next day. At a little before noon the problem of losing the signal described above started again. I did some experimenting comparing it to my wife’s Blackberry and then putting the SIM from the Blackberry into the fourth Nexus One to compare it to the now locked-up fifth one. The results can be viewed in the pictures here:

http://s995.photobucket.com/albums/af78/mrbill03/N1-No%20Signal/

One picture is of my wife's Blackberry with 3 bars of voice on the left and my Nexus One #5 on the right with an "X" and no voice signal. The other is of Nexus One #4 with the SIM from my wife's Blackberry in it showing 4 bars of voice signal on the left and my Nexus One #5 on the right with an "X" and no voice signal. Upon further investigation I discovered that when this happens there is no way to call 911 either. I pulled out and reinstalled the battery and then it worked fine for about another hour before doing the same thing again. On 2/22/2010 I called HTC to inform them that I was having the signal loss problem above and and I emailed them the link to the pictures above. On 2/24/2010 I called back to request another exchange since the phone had locked-up a couple of more times. During that phone call I agreed to get and try a new SIM card from T-Mobile, which was sent out to me that day (there is no T-Mobile store near me). I should receive the SIM card today, but in the meantime the 5th Nexus One has lost signal as described above on the 26th, 27th, and 28th during which time I also discovered that I am unable to call 911 (emergency). I called T-Mobile on the 27th while the phone was experiencing the problem and they said they could see it logged on to the tower nearest my house, but again I could not use it. My wife's shop is 2.5 blocks from this T-MO tower:

http://www.t-mobiletowers.com/TowerDetail.aspx?towerid=SF05886A&a=&c=&s=&zip=&lat=&lon=&b=0&m=0&t=&i=&mlat=36.61363&mlng=-121.850064&mz=13&tabid=2&mode=

and I drove right up to it on the 27th while the phone was having the problem and I still had absolutely no voice service at all as I explained above nor could I cal 911 and this tower is the flagpole at the Sand City California Police Station/City Hall! I had to pull the battery out and replace it to get the signal back as usual.

I have made well over 300 posts on the Google help forums during this time and the response from Google employees has been all but nonexistent.