Nexus S First Impressions

My recent Nexus S purchase was a strange situation. I was of course thrilled, as any gadget nerd would be, to get a new phone. Typically however when I purchase a gadget, especially a phone, I enjoy a 3 – 6 month window where said device is vastly superior to everything in the market. I obviously have my reasons for purchasing the Nexus S but earth shattering specifications are not on the list. The point is when I purchased the phone I was happy but in an entirely different way then when I purchased my Nexus One (a phone that was arguably THE phone for a few months at the very least).

Please keep in mind everything I write is with respect to the Nexus One. I phone I hold in such high regard that I actually sent it back to HTC for repair. So how do I feel now about my phone two weeks later? In short I love it. Those Sammy screens are very nice and the 4 inches of real estate vs the 3.7 on the N1 makes a huge difference all around. Lets go through a mini review:

Call Quality: My experience has been great. I am running Cynogenmod 7 (Gingerbread 2.3.3). The biggest issue with my N1 was the sensor that knows when the phone is beside your head or not. With my N1 I was constantly having issues midcall when I needed to hit buttons etc because the dial pad would not appear (the screen would stay blank). With the NS I have had no such problems.

Phone Speed: Excellent all around. Much faster than my N1 and rarely experiences any lag or hiccups.

GPS: Better than my wifes Galaxy S, but not quite as good as my N1. The only qualifier to that is when I would use my N1 it would heat up so much so that it hurt to handle. My NS doesn’t change temperature.

Build Quality: I have really come around on this one. The build quality is great. It isn’t aluminum but I was so sick and tired of that phone becoming molten lava on my dasgboard that plastic is a welcome change. Also coming from an N1 you really apreciate how well placed the internals are on the NS (likely all modern phones) as everything is packed in so tightly. Looks really good under the hood.

Crazy Curved Glass Screen that eliminates Glare: Nice marketing ploy – I don’t notice any benefit from the curved screen at all.

Wifi: Works great. As I am capped at 1GB of data I typically have my data off and my Wifi on. So far this has worked almost perfectly. The only issue I have had is Gmail Priority Inbox enabled accounts do not work on Wifi only (!?!?!?!). As long as I do not enable Priority Inbox everything works fine.

Surfing Off Wifi: Same as my N1 I would say. For me personally I think I will be happy when 5G comes along – until then I will never be happy with the speed of the Internet (I get frustrated at home on a hardwired connection at time!).

So there you have my initial impressions. I am working in a CM7 write up that will be much more in depth. Also have a short story coming up on my Koodo experience to date for those that are curious. If I missed anything or if you have any questions please ask.

Posted under: Android Phones