Linux Godfather Linus Torvalds has offered a ringing endorsement of Google’s Nexus One smartphone.
Indeed, Torvalds confessed his true feelings for the Linux-powered phone in a personal blog post in which he admits to having “broken down” and purchased the device.
“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,” wrote Torvalds.
“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.”
Torvalds added that he had always “loved” the concept of owning a phone that runs Linux, but noted his old G1 had mostly been used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights.
“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). 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.”
It should be noted that the Nexus One smartphone has been plagued by a number of 3G connectivity related issues, including a recent widespread outage that left a number of customers without data coverage.
The outages prompted Google to release an over-the-air the update on February 2 that added multi-touch support and offered a possible 3G connectivity fix.
