The good: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus
brings a ton of new and very welcome features with Ice Cream Sandwich.
The design is sharp, the screen is gorgeous, and the internal
performance is fantastic.
The bad: Ice
Cream Sandwich has eliminated some of Android's learning curve in some
aspects, just to re-create it in others. There was some static on calls,
and there's no external memory card slot. Also, like other Samsung
Galaxy devices, the Galaxy Nexus feels rather fragile.
The bottom line: The
Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a big step forward for Android, but it's not
the giant leap you may have been expecting. As impressive as it is, Ice
Cream Sandwich can be messy, and without it, the Galaxy Nexus is just
another Nexus device.
Every once in a while, a cell phone comes along that changes the
mobile industry forever. Whether it's by design, features, or a
combination of both, those rare handsets can stand out far from the pack
and give the world something new and something very different. The
Samsung Galaxy Nexus is not one of those phones. Sure, it's
groundbreaking and will even incite the occasional gasp of awe, but like
a gymnast having a bad day, it just misses the high bar.
Now before you click over to your e-mail to write us an angry
letter, consider this: Absolutely, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) does a lot
to refine Android and make it come of age. When we first saw Google
unveil the seemingly endless feature list last month in Hong Kong, ICS
looked sleek, glossy, and fantastic.
Now that we have it in our hands, it is indeed hot, but it's also a hot
mess. Without a doubt, the new features are welcome and the interface is
pretty, but it also can feel cluttered, disjointed, and overly
complicated. So while it pushes Android a big step forward, it doesn't
fix all of Android's problems.
Set ICS aside and you're left with an attractive and familiar
device, albeit one that offers a stock version of the Android OS. The
display is rich and the profile is trim, but students of Samsung's
Galaxy device will recognize the design. Likewise, while the features
are admirable, nothing outside of ICS blows us away. Thankfully, though,
internal performance is excellent so far and call quality over
T-Mobile's network was up to par.
Design
A few years ago, we used to joke that Nokia kept building the same phone
design while slightly tweaking it for each subsequent model. These
days, however, we're more likely to apply that jest to Samsung. Ever
since the company started making Galaxy devices last year, many of them
have looked a lot alike. Indeed, the Galaxy Nexus has much in common
with its predecessors, especially last year's Nexus S (a Galaxy device if not by name).
You'll see the same dark color, tapered edges, and "contour" shape
that's supposed to follow the curve of your head. The handset is large
(5.33 inches long by 2.67 inches wide) so it may be too much for some
users to handle. Samsung, however, squeezed off every inch it could to
make it extra thin (0.35 inch).
The Galaxy Nexus fits comfortably in the hand (as long as you have large paws), but it feels too fragile.
It's eye-catching yes, but like other Samsung phones before
it, the Galaxy Nexus also feels too fragile in the hand, even at 4.76
ounces. Here again we fear that we have to be extra careful not to drop
it even once on a hard surface. A case is an option, but that would
fatten up the phone. The "hyperskin" material on the back cover adds
some texture, but it's not quite the Kevlar material that's on the Motorola Droid Razr.
On the right side you'll find a power control/lock button and three
metal contacts that will be used for a future dock accessory. Over on
the left side is the volume rocker and on the bottom end are the
Micro-USB charge/syncing port and the 3.5mm headset jack. We'd prefer if
the jack were in a different place. The camera lens and flash sit on
the top end of the back cover.
Display and interface
The display measures 4.65 inches, though on the home screen, only 4
inches of that space is usable given the programmable shortcut tray that
sits at the bottom (the tray also shows up on some, but not all,
internal screens). Even with that quirk, the display is plenty big for a
smartphone, but not quite big enough for ICS. We'll explain in the ICS
section.
With a 1,280x720-pixel Super AMOLED resolution, the HD
display is wonderfully bright and vivid with eye-popping colors.
Everything looks great, from graphics to photos to menu icons, and you
can customize the five home screens with the Google Search bar, menu
icons, and widgets. ICS brings new folders and new widgets, but we'll
get to those later. The main menu shows the traditional icons, and
internal menus have the familiar list structure. This is a clean,
elegant design that especially shines in the texting and e-mail apps,
where it's dead simple to append an attachment, audio, video, and
photos. Bravo, Google.
Like other Nexus devices, the Galaxy
Nexus has a pure Android interface that's not marred by a manufacturer
or carrier skin. It's great for users and developers alike as it lets
Android's true glory shine through. Developers also will love the
dedicated "Developer options" in the main menu, which offers access to
such features as showing CPU usage, setting a background process limit,
and activating a visual feedback for the touch screen. Truly,
personalization options like these set Android apart.
Though we
were hoping that it would be different, the Galaxy Nexus still has that
slight laggy effect that we've seen on other Android phones. Indeed,
you'll notice it here when scrolling through lists. It is better than
we've seen on previous models, so it doesn't ruin the touch interface,
but you do notice the difference when switching from an iOS or Windows
Phone 7 device. You can change the brightness, backlight time, and font
size. The display also has an accelerometer, which you can turn off, a
proximity sensor, and a light sensor.
At the very bottom sit three touch controls for moving backward
through a menu or feature, returning to the Home screen, and opening
your list of recently viewed screens. Yes, you lose the dedicated search
button that's on earlier Android phones, but that's a trait that the
Galaxy Nexus inherited from Honeycomb (the search field is available in
almost every native app and home screen). And as in Honeycomb, these ICS
controls will fade in some apps to three points of light, until you tap
them again. What's more, the controls rotate 90 degrees when you tip
the phone's orientation.
Touch this new navigation button to see the apps you recently opened.
Otherwise there are no physical controls on the front
of the phone. Yet, you'll notice a glowing indicator light when you have
a call and receive messages, e-mail, or notifications. Besides it being
rather soothing, we're just glad it's there since that was a big
omission on the Nexus S.
The virtual keyboard takes up the whole
width of the display, whether you're using it in portrait or landscape
mode. The primary screen has three rows of alphabetic keys with main
punctuation just above. On the bottom row there's a huge spacebar smack
in the center with a voice-activation key just to the left (when
entering an e-mail address an "@" key takes its place). You'll need to
click through to the additional keyboard for more punctuation and
numbers, but the keyboard is spacious and easy to use. Unfortunately, it
does not support Swype. The dial pad shows huge numbers, but tiny text.
Basic features
The phone book size is limited by the available memory. Each entry holds
multiple fields for phone numbers, as well as e-mail and street
addresses, a company name and title, an instant-messaging handle, a
birthday, a nickname, a URL, and notes. You can pair contacts with a
photo and organize them into groups. Unfortunately, pairing individual
contacts with one of the 25 polyphonic ringtones is another nonobvious
feature. You'll have to open the person's profile "card," then tap into
the Menu to set the ringtone or send all calls to voice mail.
Of
course, the Galaxy Nexus has all of the other essentials you'd expect
from a smartphone, like text and multimedia messaging, e-mail syncing
(both Gmail and not), calendar syncing (both Google and not), a
calculator, an alarm clock, and a news and weather widget. Also onboard
are Bluetooth 2.0 (with A2DP), Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n), and a download
and file manager. We're not pleased, however, that even though ICS
supports USB mass storage, the Galaxy Nexus does not.
The speaker-independent voice commands let you do just about anything
using only your voice. They work fine as long as you speak clearly and
use the phone in a place without a lot of background noise.
Google features and apps
Google fans have plenty of Google apps and services to use and explore.
The list is no different from the handset's Nexus ancestors, but they're
worth repeating. There's Google Talk, YouTube, Google Search (with
voice), Google Latitude, Google Places, Google+, Google Maps with
Navigation, and Google Messenger.
Maps also gets a little more 3D treatment with ICS. Zoom in far enough
(with two fingers) and you'll see the buildings start to get some 3D
shape. Glide two fingers up and down the screen to tilt the screen for a
better view.
The headset jack and Micro-USB port sit on the phone's bottom end.
GPS features performed well, though we were a
little wary given the GPS issues that have plagued previous Samsung
Galaxy devices. On the first try it located us about a block away from
CNET's offices, which is normal. On the second try, however, it
pinpointed our location precisely. For the best experience, you should
activate Wi-Fi and the GPS location feature in the Settings menu. The
Galaxy Nexus has a gyroscope and a compass and a big leg up over the
iPhone: it supports real-time turn-by-turn voice directions out of the
box. The built-in barometer could be partially to thank; its purpose on
the Galaxy Nexus is to assist with GPS locking.
With a pure Google experience, you have the freedom to use
whichever apps you want through the Android Market. What's more, you can
use non-Market titles, as well. Just keep in mind that the unlocked
version of the Galaxy Nexus has just 16GB of internal memory (the
Verizon version will have 32GB). Yes, that's a lot, but we say "just"
because the Galaxy Nexus does not have an external memory card slot.
Camera, video, and music
The main camera has a 5-megapixel resolution, but you also can shoot in 3
megapixels, 1.3 megapixels, QVGA, and VGA. There's also a front-facing
1.3-megapixel camera for photos and video calls.
The shooters
come with a fair, but not overwhelming set of editing options while
taking the photo (more options are available in the photo gallery).
You'll find a digital zoom, face detection, location tagging, four
white-balance choices, seven exposure settings, and four "scene" modes
(action, night, sunset, and party). The flash on the rear side is
powerful to a fault. In dim environments it can wash out the lighter
colors. You can set the flash to auto, keep it always on, or turn it off
completely.
ICS brings a host of camera improvements, which we'll discuss in
more detail below. We'll say here, though, that the lack of shutter lag
is remarkable. In fact, when took the first photo, we didn't realize
that the shutter had closed. Believe us when we say it's really that
quick. Nice work, Google.
We're glad to see Google investing in photo-editing tools.
More interesting and useful in our eyes is the full suite of built-in
editing tools in the photo gallery: cropping, red-eye reduction, face
glow, straightening, rotating, flipping, and sharpening. There are also
effects you can add like warmth, saturation, and sepia tones. In total,
there are 16 color and style effects, and another four options for
adjusting lighting. Google could have easily stopped short and continued
to let the manufacturers add their own filters, but onboard editing
makes the Android OS that much stronger on its own.
The
camcorder shoots clips in three resolutions: 1080p HD, 720p HD, and
480p.You can adjust the white balance, you can use the flash as a
recording light, and ICS added zooming while recording and several
time-lapse intervals, from 1.5 seconds up to 10 seconds. Exactly how
much you can record will depend on the available memory.
If you really want to get creative, the camcorder has several
effects that will add some zaniness to your videos. Some of the options
are nothing but fun--the sunset, disco, and space effects will add a
background to your clips--but others are weird and pretty freaky. For
example, a "big nose" effect will give your subject an enormous honker,
"big mouth" will do the same for the smackers, and "big eyes" will give
your friend vaguely disturbing bug eyes straight out of a Lady Gaga
video.
Photo quality on the Galaxy Nexus was mixed. Our standard studio shot showed muted colors.
Photo quality was mostly satisfying, but color
accuracy was uneven. In some shots the brighter hues were faded, while
in other pictures, we had too much saturation. There was also some
questionable focusing from time to time. You can see some comparison shots with the iPhone 4S, Samsung Skyrocket, and HTC Vivid.
Videos were a mixed bag. HD clips were crisp and bright, though
quick motions were blurry. Lower-res clips are usable in a pinch, but
nothing appropriate for your wedding. The Galaxy Nexus also has an
integrated Movie Studio app for creating your own video projects.
When you're not using the camera, the Galaxy Nexus has a Slacker
radio app and a music player (MP3 and AAC files) that's linked in with
the new Google Music. Features aren't extensive, but it's easy to use,
and loading music on the phone is a seamless process, either wirelessly
or using a USB cable. We'll explore Google Music in a future post.
We love the new video rental store that operates through the Android
Market. We haven't plowed through the store completely, but the
selection appears to be broad and the prices ($3.99 for a standard title
and $4.99 for HD) are fair. In any case, an easy way to get videos is
something Android has badly needed for a long time. Google Books also
gives you access to plenty of titles.
Browser
The basic shell of the Web browser is the same, though ICS adds "Request
desktop site," which opens the full version of a Web site and syncs
with your bookmarks. You also can save Web pages offline, view your
browsing history, share a page, and find text on a page, and use up to
16 tabs. And in true Android fashion, you can change the browser's
settings down to the smallest detail. All of this adds up to make a
useful and powerful mobile browser that's very much like one you'd use
on a computer.
Another new feature is an "incognito" mode that allows you to
browse pages without them appearing on your history or search bar and
without leaving traces like cookies. Third-party apps have done this
before, but now Google has baked it right into the browser.
Even
with all the new features, the browser user experience doesn't feel too
different. The interface isn't cluttered and it doesn't involve a
learning curve. Both mobile and full versions of Web pages look great.
There's pinch-to-zoom multitouch, you can change the text size, and you
can change how far you'd like to zoom when you double-tap.
Ice Cream Sandwich screenshots
Ice Cream Sandwich
By all accounts, Ice Cream Sandwich is the Galaxy Nexus' star
attraction. More a full-on revamp than update, an OS bump this deep and
broad brings with it a truckload of new goodies that (as we've said before) make Android 2.3 Gingerbread look like a stale cookie. However, Google has somehow missed the cherry on top. But more on
that later.
Ice Cream Sandwich is so packed with such a laundry list of
detailed changes that it's easy to drown in the minutiae. As a result,
we're going to keep this review focused on the bigger-picture features
that are new to ICS, including that crowd-pleasing favorite, Face
Unlock. Later, we'll expand the review after some more time getting to
know the OS more fully. As for the rest of the additions and
enhancements--of which there are many--we think the pictures in the screenshots gallery will be worth several thousand words.
New look and feel:
Say goodbye to the Android you thought you knew. Google has all but
transformed the visuals, leaving almost no screen as it was before.
Instead, it blends many Android Honeycomb tablet sensibilities--the
navigation buttons, tabs for recent apps, darker colors, and a more
assertive look--with reworked Android flair.
The
Galaxy Nexus has a thin profile and a contour design that's slightly
curved. On the left side, the power control rests above three metal
ports for a future dock accessory.
Google's goal is to unify the smartphone and
tablet designs, so that Android looks like Android on any screen size.
From a features standpoint, it seems to work. From a design position,
much of the new look is simple, elegant, grown-up, and, dare we say,
sexy. Just look to the new menu button and menu lists, the redesigned
notifications pull-down, the highly organized settings menu, and the
photo-editing Gallery app for examples.
Yet, there's also a side of Ice Cream Sandwich that suffers from
conflicting design ideologies, like a Honeycomb Mini that's also trying
to make sense as a smartphone OS.
Interface and home screens: Right off the bat, the default home screen is just gorgeous. It's the first place you'll encounter a new typography called Roboto--it looks crisp and clean as promised, but unless you're looking for changes, most users won't notice a huge difference.
From the top to the bottom of the main home screen, other ICS
changes include a transparent search bar, a stylized clock, and a round
icon denoting a folder that's been filled with Google services. You can
create and name your own home screen folders by dragging app icons on
top of one another. The implementation is easy to use and looks
terrific.
The new home screen is just gorgeous and clean, and we love the folders.
Resizable widgets are another Ice Cream Sandwich addition. You can drag
and drop them onto the home screen from the app tray (more later), and
press and hold the widget to surface the selection handles. Most of the
time, a widget will resize when you drag it on the X or Y axis, but some
widgets, like the one for the photo gallery, don't resize. Overall, the
home screen's look is clean and familiar, but also new, and it pushes
Android into edgier, less cutesy territory.
Sharp-eyed
smartphone fans will notice that Google appears to have borrowed some
touches from a few of its competitors. The main menu control (the only
icon in the shortcut tray that isn't editable) looks very BlackBerry,
for example. Also, in another touch from Honeycomb, the pop-up menu
control disappears entirely and is replaced by a very cleanly designed
menu button that looks like a triple-tiered colon (that's a page from
the Windows Phone 7 design book). We have to gripe, though, that this
control moves to the top or bottom of many apps, which can be hard to
track. It would be better if it were consistently at the top.
The main menu has a simple, easy-to-use interface.
The apps launcher looks essentially the same as
Gingerbread's, though it has a slightly different layout and a fancy
graphical transition as you swipe horizontally through your apps. We
really like that the Market app is persistently accessible on the top of
the screen, and that the app launcher has expanded to include widgets.
However, the "tiled look" for widgets that Google proudly showed off at
the Ice Cream Sandwich launch event looks cluttered and confusing.
Screenshots: If you like this screenshot tour of Ice Cream Sandwich,
you can thank, well, Ice Cream Sandwich, and its new native screenshot
capability in particular. Late to the game compared with Apple's iOS
(and even some Android phones, like the Samsung Galaxy S II),
the feature is nevertheless a boon for app developers, for us
journalist types, and for anyone who wants to diagnose an error or save a
snap of a game for bragging rights.
The trick is pressing the hardware combination of the volume-down button
and power button in the right way to trigger the native screenshot
tool. Unfortunately, it took time to get the feel for it on the Galaxy
Nexus. The action was awkward, and not always successful, especially at
first. The ease of snapping screenshots will vary by a handset's
individual proportions.
The new panorama mode works well, but is it worth turning into its own mode?
Cameras and video: The panorama feature in the
Ice Cream Sandwich camera was one of the first secrets to leak. Several
Android-bearing phones have seen the feature before, but only as an
addition to a Samsung or HTC camera, never as a blood-and-bones part of
Android. Now, Google has made it front and center, one of your three
camera "mode" choices, in addition to the standard camera and video.
As helpful as it is that the software instructs you as you shoot
(telling you to slow down, for instance), we wonder how many people
will take panorama shots often enough to warrant its prominence in the
app. At any rate, the tool worked smoothly in our tests.
The joint photo and video gallery gets a few tweaks, most
notably the "magazine tile" look we also saw with widgets. This time,
the photos are even more cluttered, a barrage of thumbnails with little
room between them to let your eyes take it in. In addition, when you
open an image, you'll also see a ticker of other gallery images along
the bottom. The utility of being able to scroll through them is nice,
but the visual noise it creates is not.
The newly redesigned calling screen makes contacts front and center, but may also make them blurry.
People and calling: Google has completely
reworked the look and feel of its Contacts app--down to the color and
layout--and we like it. Photos are more prominent, a good thing so long
as they're higher-resolution or you don't mind a little graininess. The
drop-down menu lets you set the ringtone or send all calls to voice
mail. Gone is the alphabet on the right-side rail, though if you touch
the scroll bar while scrolling quickly through your contact list, you'll
still be able to skip through your contacts.
When you place a
call, the photo enlarges. The colors here are bold, with strong color
blocking, a deliberately hipper look than what we've been seeing for the
friendly green Android. While everything feels more open and breezier,
it also doesn't feel like it visually mirrors the rest of the Ice Cream
Sandwich design. This may not bother you on a day-to-day basis and it
doesn't impede usability. Nevertheless, it's an oddity of (in)cohesion
that shouldn't exist in a polished OS.
The virtual keyboard is big and we like the clean design.
One thing that is missing is the ability to long-press a
contact's name while you're in the phone view to see options for sending
a text--something you could do in Gingerbread. Instead, Google has
replaced this with a different kind of behavior. Now, to text, call, and
even e-mail contacts from any native communications app, just tap the
photo icon. The logic is easy to follow once you remember it, but it
isn't immediately apparent.
Google+ integrates with ICS, of course. As a perk for your Google
social network, contacts you have starred as "favorites" will show up
with a high-resolution image, so long as "sync contacts" is enabled in
the separate Google+ app. (Warning: A lot of high-res photos can affect
data usage.)
E-mail: Many small changes add up to a
smarter, cleaner, more stylish, and overall improved Gmail experience.
Fresh icons and space to read certainly help, but it's the new way that
your contacts' e-mail addresses (and photos) pop up that we love, along
with the ability to drag and drop highlighted text along the screen
without first using onscreen controls to cut and paste. Gmail will now
also let you search offline messages dating back to 30 days.
If you misspell a word, you'll have the usual options to let Android
autocorrect, or to pick from an autosuggested word right below the
composition window. With Ice Cream Sandwich, you can also tap the
misspelled word (it'll be underscored in red) and choose from a
selection of related choices, or even add a new word to the dictionary.
Facial unlocking is the fun, but not particularly secure, way to unlock your ICS phone.
Facial unlocking: We've known since last May
that Google's facial-tracking software would make it into Ice Cream
Sandwich one way or another, and here it comes in the form of Face
Unlock, a security option that lets you unlock the phone by holding it
up to your face for a few seconds. It's one of those quirky features
that's fun to play with, but even Google's copywriters warn in the
software that it's less secure than a PIN or pattern, adding that
someone who looks like you may succeed in unlocking your phone.
In fact, we were able to hold up a photo of a face (taken with the HTC Rezound)
to the Galaxy Nexus to unlock the phone. If the facial-recognition
engine fails, however, you'll still have a four- to nine-digit PIN or a
traceable pattern as a fallback.
We should note that neither pattern nor facial unlocking works
if your IT group requires a PIN in order for you to access your
corporate e-mail. For security purposes, every time you disable Face
Unlock, you'll have to set it up again in order to use it. It worked in
the dozen times we used it.
The back of Galaxy Nexus has a 'hyperskin' material. The camera lens and flash sit up top.
Android Beam: One of the most interesting new features
in Ice Cream Sandwich, Android Beam uses NFC to transfer things like
maps, contact information, and the name of a running game or app between
two compatible phones within the same proximity. To make it work, go
into the Settings, and find the More menu under Wi-Fi. Make sure NFC is
enabled, and that Android Beam shows that it's ready to transmit. Learn
more, and watch a video of Android Beam in action.
Visual voice mail: Remember the visual voice mail demo from
the ICS launch event in Hong Kong? So do we. We have not been able to
test this yet for the simple fact that the Google Voice app in Android
Market does not yet use the compatible developer API. So stay tuned.
Extra stuff: Other ICS additions include the ability to
swipe alert messages away one by one from the pull-down notifications
menu, recent apps list, and Internet bookmarks (they call it
"gestures"), double-tapping the clock on the home screen to set an
alarm, new Gmail messages that flash the name of the sender in the
notifications bar, and more options to deflect unwanted incoming calls.
Where Ice Cream Sandwich soars, falls short
Nobody can accuse Google's Android team of putting forth a weak or
insubstantial OS update. ICS has tweaked Android's style from head to
toe, giving it a far bolder identity than ever before, often with a
polished look. For the most part, Google has succeeded in splicing
together Gingerbread and the tablet-centric Honeycomb OSes to create a
single experience that can work identically on both phones and tablets.
It can't have been easy merging two OSes with different identities, and
unfortunately the seams sometimes show.
On the one hand, the OS
has surfaced many previously
buried features, like adding the Market icon on the top of each screen
in the app tray, making the search bar persistent, making it easy to
call up recent apps via a navigation control, and moving widgets to the
app tray where they can be seen. The long-press will still unearth more
features at times, but Google is moving away from that common complaint
overall.
On the other hand, there's that recurring issue of cohesion and
occasional clutter (which the tablet design will surely resolve for
larger devices). Ice Cream Sandwich is a patchwork of visual themes, and
one that lacks flow throughout the entire experience. The elegant home
screen and notifications menu has one motif, the crowded photo and
widget tiles another, and the high-contrast address book and calling
screens a third. It's as if three separate groups of designers came
together in the 11th hour. No, the sometimes disjointed look and feel
don't detract from Android's usability (unless you find it confusing),
but it's also not a problem you see in iOS, Windows Phone, or BlackBerry
OS 7, as tame as it is.
Moreover, even as Ice Cream Sandwich simplifies some actions, it
also adds other features that aren't obvious. True, Android always
tucked aside hidden features to reward power users, and we're not
talking about Easter eggs. For instance, there's no indication that you
can swipe away notifications in the pull-down menu, and that action
isn't persistent across the OS.
From left, the Galaxy Nexus, the Motorola Droid Razr, the iPhone 4, and the Samsung Galaxy S II.
It also isn't clear that the grid numbers you
see next to a widget in the app tray (1x1, 2x4) correspond to a grid
that shows up on the home screens when you move around app icons and
widgets. When you answer a phone call, it isn't until you press the
incoming ring button that you can drag it to answer, hang up, or reply
in a text. Our point is this: though Ice Cream Sandwich solves some
problems with the learning curve, it also creates a few others.
The first piece of good news is that these are all issues that
Google can tackle in successive updates, while also working to make the
back end more powerful still. The second piece of good news is that
there's plenty of room for invested hardware makers like Samsung, HTC,
and Motorola to continue creating custom graphical shells to run on top
of Android. Ice Cream Sandwich is no longer plain old vanilla, and we
suspect its design will be more polarizing, not less.
At the end
of the day, Ice Cream Sandwich does succeed in moving Google forward,
and establishing it as having staying power in the mobile OS space. As
conflicted as the OS' personality may be, it's also emblematic of Google
leaving less of its cultivation to the handset makers, and taking a
stronger stand on defining its 'Droidy personality.
Processor
The 1.2GHz dual-core processor is a big step above the Nexus S'. Menus
opened instantly and most features took a couple of seconds to power up.
Even the photo gallery, which took about 5 seconds to open on the Nexus
S, was up and running in 2 seconds. The phone also kept up during a day
of heavy use. We switched between applications quickly and without any
hiccups.
When we tested the Galaxy Nexus next to the iPhone 4 we
got varying results. Some apps, like messaging and maps, for example,
opened faster on the Galaxy Nexus, while other features, such as the
camera, opened faster on the iPhone. And to make things even more
confusing, it was a tie between the phones for the settings menu. We'll
dive deeper into the processor over the next few days.
Call quality
We tested
the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) Galaxy Nexus world phone in San
Francisco using T-Mobile service. Call quality was respectable on the
whole. The volume was plenty loud and voices sounded natural. We didn't
have a problem finding a signal in our test area, though we heard some
static on calls, especially right after we connected. It wasn't constant
and it went away quickly, but it was there nonetheless. Even with that
problem, though, the phone performed well.
Samsung Galaxy Nexus call quality sample
Listen now:
Callers were mostly positive. They could hear
us fine even when we called from a noisy place and they didn't find any
issues with the voice clarity. A few friends heard static and a couple
complained that the phone picked up wind noise. Calls to automated
systems went well, as long as we spoke slowly and clearly.
The speakerphone is very loud, though the static and
interference was exaggerated at the highest volumes. This isn't unusual
for a cell phone, but the Galaxy Nexus had more than its share. As such,
we recommend using the speakerphone sparingly. Bluetooth headset calls
were satisfactory, but quality will depend on the headset.
Data speeds
The Galaxy Nexus supports five HSPA+ 21 bands, which can be considered
4G depending on who you ask. That makes for great worldwide coverage
including T-Mobile's high-speed network. We'll test the data speeds over
the next few days and add them here. For its part, Verizon's Galaxy
Nexus will support the carrier's LTE 4G network.
Battery
We're still checking with Samsung to get the rated talk and standby battery times. Of course, we'll also conduct official tests with CNET Labs. We'll also add the digital SAR once we have it.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is unmistakably an Android phone. It's
powerful, you can tinker with it down to its core, and it offers some
features the iPhone can't touch. Without a doubt, Android fans will see
the Galaxy Nexus that way and they're likely to savor every morsel of
Ice Cream Sandwich. Without ICS, the phone is more or less just a phone,
but with it you're looking at a sleek and powerful smartphone.
As we said, ICS is a big leap forward in making Android friendlier
to entry-level users while satisfying the pros. Google has struggled to
find that balance in the past, with some devices being too simple and
others being too geeky. The trouble is, though, that iOS and Windows
Phone, with their manual-not-required interface and attention to the
user experience, are waiting to scoop up consumers who find the new
Android to be too much. By taking a step forward, ICS will win a few of
them back, but it also keeps a foot in Android's cluttered past.
cnet.com
