Samsung Galaxy Nexus – The Review

We’ve taken our time with this review purely because we wanted to give it proper going over and give you a fair and honest review of this new phone. The best way to tackle this review is in 2 parts –> 1) The Hardware and 2) The Software.
(What we won’t be talking about in the review is the well known and documented issue of the volume bug! Why? Well, it’s been resolved and such is no longer an issue!)

The Hardware:
It’s clear the Galaxy Nexus is from the same family as the Nexus S, primarily from the curved glass display and the little “hump” on the back! But that’s where the similarities end.
Taking a quick tour round the handset, on the left side of the phone we’ve got the Volume Rocker,

nothing on the top. Down the right we find the power/screen lock button. Just below that, there are 3 contact’s that are used for various doc’s that will be made available shortly.

On the bottom there’s the micro-USB, Microphone pin hole and 3.5mm Headphone Jack.

The back of the phone has a really nicely textured back panel that snaps off to reveal the user replaceable battery and SIM-Card slot. As with the Nexus S, there’s no user replaceable memory here. Instead you get 16gb of internal storage, which in fairness, should be enough for most users. There’s a 5mp Camera with Single LED Flash. I know 5mp doesn’t sound like much, but there’s much more to cameras than raw megapixels. This 5mp shooter has no troubles capturing video in full 1080p at 30fps, which is nice!

(NOTE: The phone can NOT be mounted as an External USB Device. It uses Windows MTP (media transfer protocol) to transfer songs / videos to the phone. On OSX you need this: http://www.android.com/filetransfer/ to be able to transfer files to the phone. One tip, get DoubleTwist for both the Phone and your Computer (windows or Mac). DoubleTwist will pull your iTunes / Other Media Library info into it and allow you to sync. If I were you, I’d also spring for the “AirTwist” addon, this allows you to sycn your music, photos, videos, etc… via Wifi so you don’t need to worry about connection issues!)

Now to the (literal) focal point of the phone… that glorious screen! Samsung have gone all out here and included a beautiful 4.65inch Super AMOLED HD Curved Glass Screen running at an AMAZING 1280×720! That’s right… Full 720p screen in a 4.65inch form factor. Think about that for a second, a 13” Macbook Pro has a screen resolution of 1280×800, that’s only 80more pixels in a 13inch screen!! That should give you an idea how sharp this screen is. It really needs to be seen to be believed. The colours are deep and well saturated, and both photos and video look amazing on it.

Other than the screen, the front is pretty clean. There’s no physical buttons to be found on the front, not even a row of pre-defined capacitive buttons. The system controls are now all onscreen in Android 4.0 (aka: Ice Cream Sandwich, or ICS as it’s also known). There’s a nice 1.3mp Front Facing camera for self portraits and video calls (it’s even able to record in 720p!) (this camera can also be used to unlock the phone, but more on this later).

One nice surprise is the inclusion of an RGB notification LED. This sits just below the screen and can notify you using different colours for different Apps, which is nice as the lack of notification LED is one of the reasons I couldn’t use the Nexus S for very long. I find it’s a bit slow pulsing, but I’m sure that’ll be tweakable pretty soon!

All this is in a pretty slender body. The phone is only a hair thicker than the iPhone 4s at 8.9mm and actually weighs less at only 135g. While this is a big phone, it’s thinness actually makes it far more manageable in the hand, as does the location of the screen lock button on the right hand side!

In terms of battery performance, honestly, I’ve had no problems with it. I easily get through my whole day on the battery (that would consist a couple of hours listening to music, lots of Texts, Phone Calls, Twitter, Facebook, etc…). Obviously, everybody uses phones differently and have different apps installed, so battery life will vary, but with a 1750mAh battery and the SuperAMOLED screen, going from leaving home in the morning, to plugging it in at bed time, shouldn’t be an issue!

Inside
Inside It’s slender frame we’ve got a 1.2ghz Dual Core Processor with 1gb of RAM and 16gb of Internal Storage. This is the first phone to have Pentaband anteanna inside! I hear what you’re about to ask, what the hell is “Pentaband”. Basically, in our terms is HSPA+, or in other words 4G and thanks to the fact this phone is on Vodafone, who are the only network to support HSPA+, you can expect to be getting anywhere UP TO 21Mbps down and over 5Mbps Up! ON A PHONE!! If you’re thinking of getting this phone you really should be on a HSPA+ network, or else you’re not getting the best that the phone has to offer!! Our tests have show, on average, a download of abut 10Mbps. We didn’t dip below the 6Mbps at any stage and saw it peak when in full HSPA+ coverage at over 16Mbps!! This PentaBand system also means the phone can be used pretty much anywhere in the world!

On top of that cracking processor and super fast network connectivity, you’ve also got the usual assortment of extras (and one or 2 not so usual). We’ve got A/B/G/N 2.4ghz and 5ghz Wifi, Bluetooth 3.0+HS, MHL HDMI out (via the Micro USB), GPS, Gyroscope, Proximity and Light Sensors, a Barometer (for weather prediction and more accurate GPS locks) and last but not least the much touted NFC (Near Field Communication) chip (i.e. like the Bus “beepy” passes)

All this makes this one future proofed device as well as being SUPER speedy. Seriously, it’s easily the fastest phone I’ve used! I mean I’ve been using the HTC Sensation XE with it’s 1.5ghz Dual Core Processor for some time now, but this is just silly how fast it actually is! Top the physical speed, the HSPA+ connectivity on the Vodafone network, meant I rarely had to wait for any thing happen!

(If you’ve any specific hardware questions that I’ve not covered here, leave a comment below or email me and I’ll do my best to answer them)

The Software
This is the main reason for the phones release, a new, even more awesome version of Andriod. This time we’re hitting version 4 and as noted above, Google have decided to call this version, Ice Cream Sandwich (or ICS as I’m going to refer to it from here on). I should preface this by stating that I’m a HTC Fanboy. I love their phones and the HTC Sense interface. I know loads and loads of you out there don’t like the Sense interface as you feel it slows down the phone / makes it sluggish, but personally, I’ve never had that issue. I’d been using the Sensation XE for a while now (and the Sensation before that) and love it, but gave up using it to give a fair review in terms of software. The HTC is using Android 2.3.5 so the jump to ICS was quite a large one and honestly, one that took a bit of getting used to, so if you’re currently on a different Android phone, there is a learning curve. It’s not like moving to a completely new OS, but stuff has moved around, most for the better, but there’s a couple of question marks over one or two items.

Right, with that out of the way, on to Ice Cream Sandwich (or as we here in Ireland know it a HB Iceberger). I’ve used the previous 2 “raw” Google devices (Nexus One and Nexus S) in one capacity or another and well to be honest, I’ve always reverted back to a different phone, purely because I’ve always felt that it was a little too raw and cumbersome for every day use. Thankfully, that isn’t the case here! ICS is an amazing operating system. Google have really pulled out all the stops with this update. It is slick and super fast (partly in thanks to the now graphics being rendered on the GPU instead of the CPU – in non-geeky terms, this is a good thing and will help with the battery life as well!). If I was to cover all changes in ICS, I’d be here a very long time, so to keep this review under control, I’m going to cover what I consider the main changes. (if you’ve any specific questions you’d like answered, please leave a comment below / email me / tweet me!)

So, those “software” buttons! I’m using the word “buttons” loosely here, as they are on the screen, and not actually buttons. They consist of your standard Back and Home buttons, but in ICS there’s the addition of the “multi-tasking” button. This pulls up all recently opened / used apps in a list you can scroll through and jump back in to quite quickly. You’ve also got the ability here to “swipe” away the app to close it. Just push it off screen and BAM, it’s closed. This swipe mechanic is also used in the notification area as well.

You’ve got SMS / Email / App notifications that you don’t want there, just swipe ‘em off screen and they are gone. It’s a much nicer way to dismiss notifications than anyone else has implemented (yes, even Apple. Their current 2 tap to dismiss all notifications for specific apps is really annoying on my iPad2). While we’re talking about the notification area, not much as changed here, really. It’s slicker, and has a nice semi-transparent look to it. There’s also a quick link to the system settings now located at the top of the area, which is nice!

ICS also adds new “Security” features, with the most notable being the facial unlock feature. NOW, while not really a “Secuirty” feature, it is pretty cool and nice to show off to your friends. You basically set it up and then just look at the phone and it know’s you and unlocks the device! (if it can’t detect you / gets it wrong, it’ll prompt you for your pin/pattern to access the phone!)
Here’s an TV Ad Google is currently airing the US about this feature:

Another area where ICS has improved is in the Camera (see the end of the post for sample images / video). You can launch the camera as you normally would by going to the App icon, or in ICS, you can swipe the unlock ring to the left (to the right is the “normal” unlock) and it’ll launch the camera.

It’s not the most advanced Android camera, but it’s definitely a step up on a Nexus device, it’s also unbelievable quick! This is partly in thanks to the continuous auto focus (that means, that it’s always checking focus while the camera is open, as opposed to when you press the shutter button). Because of this, you can capture pictures almost as quick as you can tap the capture button. Even with the flash enabled, it takes less than a second to take a picture and be ready to take another one. The picture quality is good, no complaints there. It’s not Sony Ericsson Arc S good, nor iPhone4s good, but it’s good for every day use and in “normal” lighting conditions, it produces good pictures!
The camera will also capture really nice 720p and 1080p video with nice clean audio. Google have even included a “Movie Studio” app in the phone to allow you to edit your captured video directly on the device!

(sorry about the wind noise, it’s been quite windy out there of late you know! )

Finally, ICS has added a panorama photo mode. It’s nice and simple to use. Click the shutter button and move the camera from right to left (or vice versa) and the on screen animation lets you know if you’re moving too fast / slow. Once done, it compiles a nice, clean panorama.

Next we have the “People” App. This is what contacts used to be. Google have completely overhauled this area. Set up your accounts (Google, Twitter and Google+ for example) and assuming the names are the same, it’ll join them together. This is much like what other manufactures have been doing on their own for a while nice. I like Googles use of profile pics and swipe navigation.

All the contacts info is in one nice place! There is one gripe though and that’s Facebook Intagration. Google and Facebook had a falling out a couple years back about contacts / sync’ing contact and well, Google don’t allow you on their Nexus devices to sync your Facebook contacts to the phone. This is a bummer if you’re coming from something like a HTC where all the profile pics are from Facebook, BUT, I’ve found a work aroud for the time being. There’s a app called “SyncMyPix”. It’ll populate the persons Facebook Profile Pic to their Contact. It’s pretty intelligent and got most of mine first time. If it didn’t get a contact first time round, you can go and manually assign a pic to a contact. (note: there’s currently a bug in the app that causes it to crash after a manual link, but it still populates the image correctly. I see this bug being fixed as soon as the phone is out in the USA)

Then we have the App Drawer (i.e. where all your apps are listed). Google have changed this slightly. There’s a nice transition effect when you move between pages.

All the Apps are listed as you would expect them, but what you might not expect is this is now where the Widgets are stored as well. When you get to the end of the App Drawer, it moves to the Widgets, you can flick through your available widgets and select the ones you want to add to your home screens. It’s nice to have them here, but this took a bit of getting used to as for the last few years, I’ve been used to holding my finger on the home screen and been given an option to add a widget. Oh, and widgets are also now re-sizable on screen. So the Google Widgets can be changed size to your needs!!

The last area I’m going to specifically address is the Keyboard. Google have worked wonders here. It’s brilliant. Easily the best keyboard on any device I’ve used. It’s smart, fast and you can now go back to a word you’ve misspelled and tap it to select the correct word you meant. It’ll know if you’ve forgotten to put a space in between 2 words and auto add it. Also, the size of the screen makes it really comfortable to type on in both landscape and portrait mode. The keys are big with nice spacing between them! Honestly, if this isn’t the best keyboard you’ve used on a phone, I’ll eat my hat!

 

There is so much more that could be said about the Galaxy Nexus, like the “core apps” (i.e. Gmail, Calendar, etc..) have all be updated and work better than ever, the new folders system is really nice to used and looks sexy as hell, the voice search / voice input works brilliantly and is a real Siri challenger and the Music App is slick, simple with the ability to add custom EQ settings is a god send, and the web browser is easily the fastest on any phone at the moment, but you’re probably bored right now with how much I’ve gone on and on, so I’ll leave it to you. If you want to know something specific about the hardware or software, let me know. I’ll link to all my contact methods below so feel free to get in touch!

(If you want to see how sharp and awesome the screen is, click the image above of the BBC website. That’s the full, standard site zoomed out to the max. You can still clearly read all the content on the page!! Amazing!)

Wrap Up:
As you can clearly see from above, I’m a convert. Ice Cream Sandwich is AMAZING. All the Minor and Major change Google have made make this, finally, an OS you can pick up and use with out the need for a OEM Custom Skin on top (i.e. HTC Sensce, Sony Ericsson Time Scape). The hardware, while being primarily plastic and not as “premium” feeling as say, the iPhone4s, is solid feeling and there isn’t a creak to be heard. The screen is stunning. Video looks amazing on there. You’d have no problem watching TV Shows / Movies on there any time!

The Score:
4.5/5
(what it lose the .5 for? Well, it’s a touch on the large side for some people and well, nothings perfect so it’s as close as it’s going to get right now!)

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is available right now on Vodafone Ireland from Free! If you’re in the market for an upgrade or a new phone, you’d be a fool not to give this phone some serious consideration, it’s easily the best phone out there right now and, well in the running for being the best phone of 2011 (and even for some time into 2012!)

Sample Photos:

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