Here goes...
Build quality and design
I think the Galaxy Nexus looks like a phone of the future. It’s a plain, unmarked black slab from the front, and a silver, tidy looking device from the back. The Google logo is always a nice thing to have on there. It looks fantastic, but how does it feel? Well, in a word – excellent. The feel reminds me very much of the HTC Sensation, it feels like it has been made to fit your hand, it sits nicely despite being on the border of what I consider to be an acceptable phone size. No matter how it’s designed, you won’t want a phone to get any bigger than this; it’s right on the limit. Despite being slightly larger, it doesn’t really feel much bigger than the Galaxy S II. Depending on how you’re holding it, it actually can be slightly more comfortable to hold than the rectangular shape of the Galaxy S II. There isn’t really that much of a noticeable difference when it comes to size, which is pretty impressive to say the least.
The ever so slightly curved design of the device is a welcome addition too, I wouldn’t say it enriches the user experience very much (if at all), but it’s something you just tend to notice and think ‘Actually, that’s pretty cool’. Unfortunately, there are still the trademark small gaps around the edge of the screen that you tend to find on Samsung devices. There is nothing particularly wrong with this, though dust and other related things tend to find their way in quite easily – it would be better if they weren’t there. The power/wake button is on the right hand side, about two-thirds of the way up. This is very easy to press. If it was on the top, it would be fiddly to wake the phone using one hand. It feels very re-assuring to press and the same goes for the volume rocker on the opposite side. The back feels ever so slightly more textured than the one on the Galaxy S II, the feel of it isn’t as harsh and it does seem to enhance the grip just a tiny bit. The wafer-thin rear doesn’t tend to fit quite as cleanly as the Galaxy S II rear does, but it went on without any issues for me.
The inclusion of a notification LED is a wonderful thing. It is incredibly useful in a variety of situations and people shouldn’t be so accepting of phones that don’t include these. Samsung tend to leave them out for some bizarre reason but the Nexus shows why they shouldn’t. The visibility level of the LED is on par with the BlackBerry Bold 9900 – brilliant and very useful in most conditions.
All in all, this is the best looking Android device on the market for me. I genuinely think the Galaxy S II is fairly ugly in comparison – this design is what we should be hoping phones start leaning towards in the future. I still don’t think it feels as premium as the iPhone 4S, and it certainly isn’t as easy to handle due to the size, but I generally have no complaints.
Screen
The screen is quite arguably the most important feature on a touch screen device. Every interaction you have with the phone (apart from when actually using it as a phone) will be done via the screen, so having a high quality screen is always important.
A lot of people have bought this device for the 720p SuperAMOLED screen alone, however, the SAMOLED technology isn’t identical to the variation found on the Galaxy S II. There are well documented distortion issues on older SAMOLED screens, small text can be difficult to see due to the lower DPI and this can create problems in some situations. Thankfully, this issue has now completely vanished with the 720p SAMOLED on the Nexus. I’d love to tell you that the sharpness is on par with the iPhone 4S screen – but it isn’t – not quite. The difference is fairly tiny but you can and do still notice it.
The rather extreme contrast found on the SAMOLED+ has been toned down to friendlier levels and the blacks appear exactly the same. The viewing angles are pretty much identical as well – if they bother you.
The Nexus screen is considerably larger than the Galaxy S II and certainly the iPhone and you really do notice it. I threw a few movie trailer MKV’s on there and the quality is absolutely incredible. The 1080p picture was pin-sharp and looked fantastic. Outdoor performance is pretty good as well, no better or worse than anything else really.
At low brightness, the screen does exhibit a grainy effect due to the pentile matrix being used. However, to put a positive spin on this, it makes white backgrounds look a lot like paper, similar to the Amazon Kindle screen. I actually quite like it in a strange way, though it should really be counted as a flaw. The auto-brightness was very aggressive to begin with, but since the antenna bug fix update (ITL41F), it has improved a bit and it generally does a good enough job.
Software buttons
I wanted to keep this separate as it really falls under the design and the screen sections.
Google have decided to take an interesting route with the software buttons. Hardware buttons are generally quite popular and quite a lot of people complain about the capacitive ones that you find on a lot of phones as well. There isn’t anything really wrong with the software button approach, but it does create a couple of problems. Firstly, in certain applications the screen size is being taken up because of them, thankfully, they disappear in some applications such as when you’re watching a video for example. Secondly, you can occasionally miss pressing them, something that probably wouldn’t happen with a hardware button.
Overall though I like them, the multi-tasking button makes the function much more useful than it was previously.
Camera & Video
I haven’t really got any great sample shots to hand and I’m sure most of you have seen plenty of these anyway, so I’ll just give my thoughts on the camera.
I think a lot of Nexus owners (certainly when it comes to some reviews, anyway) are somewhat in denial about the camera. This camera is simply not as good as the one found on the Galaxy S II or the iPhone 4S. They are comparable some of the time, but overall the detail levels are just lacking. It is bizarre and disappointing that Samsung left out the 8MP camera from the Galaxy S II here as otherwise, it would have been a significant improvement over the other Android devices out there.
Having said the above, that doesn’t mean the camera is bad. To give you an idea, I’d say the picture quality is marginally worse than the iPhone 4 (not 4S), which was and still is a great phone camera. However, there are a few upsides. The shutter speed is as close to instant as you are going to get, this can lead to issues with the auto-focus being at the wrong focus level but more often than not it usually finds the right level of focus. The 4S shutter is roughly the same though, but it is noticeably quicker than the Galaxy S II, you do tend to find yourself waiting a little bit after taking a photo on that – the same goes for most other phones.
The low-light performance has received a lot of praise as well, and rightly so. The camera is quite possibly one of the best low-light phone cameras there is, but unfortunately this isn’t a great badge of honour to have as the pictures still tend to look a bit rubbish in low-light anyway. However, it can be the difference between a usable picture taken in the dark and a useless one.
I’m actually quite impressed with the HD video recording as well, again, it isn’t quite up the standard of the 4S and Galaxy S II, but it’s only just behind them. It looks brilliant when being played back on the screen.
Ice Cream Sandwich – Android 4.0
I like to be critical of Android from a user experience perspective. There are too many people content with the fact that you can do X, Y and Z in order to solve a problem with it, but that doesn’t satisfy me. There shouldn’t be the need to have to faff about to sort problems that shouldn’t really exist to begin with. In the real world, XDA Developers is not a solution. On a forum such as this, it certainly is a lot of the time, but it shouldn’t act as a defence for Android being able to do no wrong.
However, Ice Cream Sandwich has vaporized the need for me to do much in the way of moaning. What Google have achieved here is what I consider to be a step towards an operating system of the future.
The general feel of the OS is one of artistic brilliance and seamless design. That is the first time this has ever happened for me without the need for HTC Sense. I’m a big fan of HTC Sense but as of right now, I’d be gutted if I had to suffer a phone with it on. ICS is just that good. The lock screen is responsive, fast and looks good. The notification bar icons and Roboto font look great as well. The included widgets have been improved a lot as well, which has been a long time coming. The Gmail widget and app are both excellent. The design aspect of both just bleeds thought and quality and everything feels well put together. Android has never really felt as well put together as the likes of iOS, but now it does. Now it’s even better in many respects.
The settings menu, as an example, now looks brilliant. The one on iOS looks absolutely dire in comparison with the 90’s style background. This just feels like the kind of phone you’d expect people in Minority Report to be walking around with. Things like the face unlock feature work brilliantly as well, only being limited by darkness (a bit of a crippling limitation at times, but what can you do). I think the data usage screen possibly best demonstrates the strides that Google are taking when it comes to design and usability. As I touched upon briefly in the software buttons section, multi-tasking now plays a more important role when navigating the phone. Pressing it brings you to a WebOS-esque screen that lets you switch applications, or swipe them off the screen in either direction. It’s a huge step up from Android of old and certainly the comparatively pitiful excuse that is multi-tasking on iOS. It makes such a huge difference.
Unfortunately though, phones of this nature are still app-driven a lot of the time and the Android app selection still doesn’t impress me a great deal compared to iOS. That isn’t to say it creates much of a problem, the new Facebook app is just about on-par with the iPhone one, as is the Twitter one. This just shows that with the right developers, iPhone app quality can be achieved on Android and hopefully with the new ICS universal standard across devices, we’ll get there quicker than ever. It’s very hard to be critical of ICS because it’s everything that I’ve been waiting for Android to become. A few small issues linger, like the option to reduce the amount of home screens on the stock launcher would be nice, but again, it’s largely a non-issue. The native folder system works very nicely as well, drag and drop apps over each other and a folder is created – simple and effective.
The phone and messaging interfaces look great too, they really don't lack anything for me and are all very aesthetically pleasing. The browser hasn't changed a great deal, but it has had a few improvements and it is very, very fast.
This does, however, create a massive problem for all of us. Samsung are no doubt going to plague the likes of the Galaxy S III with a new version of the magnificently terrible TouchWiz, which could potentially cripple a lot of the above good points. HTC will probably do the same with HTC Sense as well, their early efforts of Sense on ICS have been absolutely dire from what I’ve seen and you might as well not be running ICS at all. Still, time will tell with this. I haven’t gone into a huge amount of detail here, but I’ve attempted to summarise the general feel of ICS in a few short paragraphs. There is an awful lot more to it than that, but the universal praise it has received is completely deserved. Well done Google.
Battery life
With such a large screen, battery life was never going to be anything particularly special on the Nexus, and it isn’t. If you use the phone a lot, it will go flat at a fair rate of knots. However, this is basically the case on all devices (iPhone included). The battery life itself is great on standby, pretty much dropping at worst, slightly less than 1% per hour. With light use you’ll manage between 2-3 days with no trouble, and if you’re a heavy user, expect to be charging daily as is the same with any device.
GPS, keyboard and media features
The GPS seems to perform the same as the Galaxy S II. I’ve noticed that occasionally it takes a few extra seconds to get a lock but that could be due to positioning and all sorts of differing factors.
The stock player has managed to play a wide selection of video files without any trouble, I’m not sure what codec support it has, but it certainly has some! The keyboard doesn’t seem that different to the previous Android ones, but it’s generally good. They have adjusted the interface a little bit so it matches the new look of ICS. Text prediction doesn’t currently work in the browser which is a bit frustrating when trying to post on forums, etc.
Loudspeaker & antenna ‘bug’
There have been a few concerns voiced over the volume of the loudspeaker. I heard it being compared to the Desire HD, which was worrying. Thankfully, it isn’t that bad. It isn’t as loud as the Galaxy S II, but it isn’t particularly quiet either. You can at least rectify this if it concerns you quite easily with apps like Volume+.
I did experience the antenna bug before I got the OTA update to fix it. It wasn’t good. What caused this doesn’t really matter now as it has been fixed with a small software patch.
Google still have a bit to learn about how to launch a product, it felt very low key compared to what they could have achieved if they really wanted to put on something special. The fact they gave our very own uvarvu a dodgy developer phone wasn’t particularly great either…!
Conclusion
If you haven’t realised by now, I think the Galaxy Nexus is brilliant. It is by far and away the best Android device ever released despite the few shortcomings it suffers from. Nothing running Android can provide the combination of slick hardware and epic overall user experience that the Galaxy Nexus does.
The device certainly isn’t perfect, the missing Galaxy S II camera and expandable storage are both very odd, inexcusable omissions. Like me, they may not bother or affect you (certainly the latter), but they should still be there anyway. Obviously this is Samsung not wanting something to eat too much into Galaxy S II sales; but I bet it has anyway.
I still think that iPhone users will remain iPhone users for the time being at least. They aren’t going to suddenly flock over to Android because of any of this, certainly not due to this particular device (size, etc). There is work still to be done, I think the biggest and best thing Google could do right now is pay/force development teams to get rid of adverts within a lot of the apps, and get all of the ‘big’ apps up to a universal standard, and ensure they come complete with a decent, reliable widget as well.
As for Android and the Nexus, for the first time in a long time, I'm in no hurry to change it.
*I will have no doubt probably missed some points that some of you consider to be important, if I have, I apologise. If you want to ask any specific questions or want me to add anything, please go ahead!
. nice phone. love the screen. so far so good
The S3 will be "the" ICS phone to own if the current running rumours of it hold correct.
