Continuity mistake: When Captain Robau enters the bridge of the Kelvin he is wearing his Star Fleet insignia. When he sits in his chair it is missing. It re-appears through all of his subsequent scenes. (00:01:30)
Continuity mistake: When the USS Kelvin is attacked by the Romulan ship, there is significant damage done to the front half of the saucer section. However, after Ayel appears on the viewscreen demanding the captain, there is no damage or debris on the saucer section visible through the front windows of the bridge. (00:03:25)
Continuity mistake: When the Captain of the Kelvin is walking through the engineering section, in the background can be seen walls of concrete block. When he ascends a staircase the wall behind him looks like cast concrete. (00:04:20)
Continuity mistake: When young Kirk is driving the stolen car he unhooks the latches to the convertable roof. Cut to a side view when the roof flies off and we see that the car is kicking up a big cloud of dust from the roadway (so much dust that it looks like they cut from the paved road to a dirt road on the side shot, but the grass obscures the road top). Cut to a camera angle behind the car when the roof lands and the dust cloud has instantly disappeared, there is no trace of it. (00:12:40)
Continuity mistake: As young Kirk jumps out of the car, just before it crashes down into the canyon, his right arm is backwards along his body as it opened the door, while the left arm is stretched forward. In the following side shot, both his arms are stretched backwards. (00:13:50)
Continuity mistake: When young Spock approaches the three bullies at school, the shot from behind Spock shows he is at least as tall if not slightly taller than the other three boys. But when the shot reverses to see Spock between two of the bullies, he is instantly much shorter than they are. This isn't a matter of camera angle, but rather the choice to have young Spock positioned lower to make the bullies more intimidating - a choice the earlier angle didn't take into consideration. (00:15:15)
Continuity mistake: When Kirk meets Uhura in the bar, there is an alien nursing his beer between them, and he never takes a sip, yet in one of the following shots, the beer is now significantly lower in the glass. The alien is in shot between Uhura and Kirk for the majority of the scene, and in the intervening shots, there is not enough time for him to have taken a sip of his beer. (00:20:15)
Continuity mistake: After Kirk is in the bar fight, he is sitting down and talking to Captain Christopher Pike. Pike asks him a question and Kirk replies back with "Maybe I love it." The shot just before he says this is behind Kirk's head. Watch his head movements. He turns his head to the right, then straight again and tilts his head back some. Then the next shot where he says that line, he is suddenly looking down to his right. (00:23:30)
Continuity mistake: The first ship seen in the film is the USS Kelvin, which Kirk's father kamikazes into the bad guys' ship to save all the escaping shuttles. Later, Captain Pike is talking to Kirk about his father's heroic action and how he saved 'over 800' people from the Kelvin. So, since several died in the battle, that ship had to have at least 900 crew members. The USS Kelvin, a pre-alternate timeline vessel, is depicted as having a far larger compliment than the largest Star Fleet vessel (Dreadnought class, holding 500 people) from TOS times. Since the timeline had not changed at that point, this violates the "established" history. (00:24:25)
Continuity mistake: During the scene in which Kirk first meets McCoy in the shuttle, watch the safety harness strap over McCoy's right shoulder. As the perspective changes back and forth from McCoy to Kirk, the strap is bunched up, then flat, then bunched and then flat again without McCoy touching it. (00:27:05)
Continuity mistake: When Nero is (lying down? I can't tell during this scene) and waiting for Spock to arrive, we can see that he has a very faint tattoo of some kind beneath his lower lip. However, when he mentions to his first officer that he doesn't want Spock dead and wants him to watch Vulcan being destroyed, the tattoo has become black and very dark and also extends onto his lower lip. (00:28:40)
Continuity mistake: Right in the beginning of the scene where Kirk is taking his third attempt at the Kobayashi Maru, it starts out with Uhura telling Kirk what 'Starfleet' commands. Right as she finishes what she is saying, she cocks her head sideways to her right in an almost mockingly fashion. The very next shot jumps behind Kirk's shoulder with Uhura still in frame and her head is up straight. (00:31:25)
Continuity mistake: When McCoy brought Kirk onboard a shuttle as a patient, they boarded a shuttle with round nacelles near the bottom. Most of the shots of it in flight show this. But the shot that zooms out from their window while heading to the Enterprise shows they're on a shuttle with wings near the bottom and nacelles at the top corners. (00:37:50 - 00:38:55)
Revealing mistake: When the Federation fleet is preparing to warp to Vulcan, you'll see the first ship blast off, but the second ship blasts off out of nowhere. You could argue that the ship was out of sight and below the Enterprise, but the light trail isn't that long. The light trail starts in front of the Enterprise where you should be able to see a star-ship. (00:40:45)
Continuity mistake: When Spock points out to Sulu that he has forgotten to disengage the external inertial dampener, we see a close shot of Sulu as he corrects the situation on his controls, and Pike can be seen sitting behind him with arms by his side. It then cuts to a long shot where Pike suddenly has his arms crossed. (00:40:55)
Factual error: USS Enterprise's onboard computer initially refuses to acknowledge Chekov's authorization code. The reason, it seems, is Chekov's Russian accent, which pronounces the letter "V" (pronounced labiodentally) like a British "W" (pronounced bilabially). Problem: Chekov pronounces his ensign authorization code in the NATO phonetic alphabet. ("Nine, Five, Victor, Victor, Two", which resolves to 95VV2) This alphabet is specifically designed to alleviate this exact same situation. The 26 code words in the NATO phonetic alphabet are assigned to the 26 letters of the English alphabet: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, and Zulu. The slightly mispronounced "Wictor" should not be a problem. (00:42:05)
Continuity mistake: When Kirk, McCoy and Uhura enter the bridge to tell the captain about the attack on the Klingon ships, Uhura stops right in front of Spock. In the next shot they are standing apart. (00:44:45)
Continuity mistake: When Kirk, Sulu and Olson are space jumping down to the platform, they are shown on camera as falling with Olson in last place. He is furthest from the platform. Yet on Chekov's screen, he is displayed (by the red color associated with his red uniform) as being the lowest and closest, in first place. (00:52:00 - 00:53:00)
Continuity mistake: In the scene on top of the drill, Kirk falls off the edge. When Sulu helps him up, he's holding onto the platform with his right hand and being helped up by his left, but in one shot he's holding on with his left hand, and being lifted up by his right. (00:57:25)
Plot hole: Despite their awareness of the red matter and the power of the singularity, no one on the bridge had the common sense to suggest pulling back to a safe distance. Nero had already refused their assistance so there was no need to stay so close to the singularity. And when a black hole was created inside Vulcan, an officer mentioned they had to reach minimum safe distance, so they know what they need to do, but no-one does it. (01:00:30)
Suggested correction: You're applying today's standards to a fictional future. We've seen in every iteration of Star Trek that security includes both a passkey/password and voice authentication. The actual mistake here is that regardless of how Chekov speaks, the computer should recognize it as his voice because he always speaks that way.
I am afraid the computer's error message leaves no doubt that there was no voice matching at work this time; only pure speech-to-text.
FleetCommand