Ryan’s Review: Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Okay, so I’ve joined the Nexus rank, and recently been able to pick up my own Galaxy Nexus.  Pretty sweet.

Now, this is a top-end phone.  Just like a Ferrari, it’s not for everybody, but it’s pretty wicked none-the-less.  As one friend described it (who’s an avid iUser), “this is a very clean interface, definitely looks very sexy and appealing, whereas the iOS is starting to get ‘clunky’.”

For those of you who aren’t in the know, the Nexus line of phones are the ‘flagship’ phones that Google collaborates with a manufacturer to build SPECIFICALLY to coincide with a new version of the Android OS.  This phone is then built without any ‘top layer’ of a UI (like Sense, or TouchWiz etc…), it’s vanilla.

At this point in time, we’ve all seen plenty of Nexus videos.  Tom’s reviewed his twice here (#1, #2), and even talked about some of the issues he’s seen.

Form factor

It’s a nice size… a little wide, so hard to reach everything with one hand.  And it’s a little thin on the back, so it feels a little too light and you feel like it’s going to slip out of your hands.

The bezel is really nice, when you have a black screen on it’s hard to see the edge.

Display

This is probably the only real disappointment I’ve found.  On ‘greys’ it’s very … hate to say pixellated, but you can make out a faint ‘linen’ look to the screen.  This is especially noticed on whites where you have it on low brightness too.  Blacks are VERY black, and it’s awesome.

I must say, I really do like the Roboto font.  Really makes the letters easy to read.  Looks so much better on the phone than on my computer.

Snappy-ness…

…really really snappy.  I’ve bogged it down with just about every app I’ve downloaded and it hasn’t slowed.  Sure enough exiting out to the home screen sometimes causes it to delay a refresh, but just barely noticeable.

I don’t like how it’s slow to rotate.  That’s not cool.

Battery life

Not a big problem as I usually have chargers everywhere, but I haven’t noticed a super huge need to make use of them.  So I can’t really comment on it.

Cool Stuff?

Data capabilities – being able to see what’s eating your data plan, just how you’re able to see what’s using up your battery.  However, the numbers don’t seem to come close to each other compared to the data counter widget I’ve installed.  Maybe I’ll give it some time and see.

ICS swipe to discard notifcations, same for discarding tabs on the browser or running apps.

Really good camera — fast!  But there’s no changing the resolution of the photo.  Here’ a sample shot,  (it’s not as vibrant as I would like, but nothing a little photoshop can’t help with).

And so much other neat stuff in ICS as you’ve already seen (Google Voice Input, Panorama, face unlock, etc…)

Other than that?  Issues…

Well, it’s new.  I’ve had to get used to that.  I’m not a fan of the stock dialer where it can’t look up people by dialing a number and it interpreting the letters.

There’s been big issue with the screenshot.  I fumbled a few times trying to get it to work.  But even after that, if you choose to “share” it, the end source is blurry.  I’ve used blogger and G+ and they both show up blurry.  I’ve gmail’d myself one and it was fine then.  Backed up photos into a cloud storage (i.e. SugarSync) show them as fine… it just doesn’t make sense.  I only noticed after a reader of our blog was complaining.  And then funny enough, the conversation attracted the attention of a Googler (one Punit Soni) who has said that they have had an issue and are working on it.

I’ve had about 4 random reboots with it now.  Now that’s about a week’s worth of use.  With my Captivate I’d almost get one a day.  So no complaints here.

No 4G only” switch.  In my area, 2G is REALLY strong, as such it tends to want to hop back and forth.  And sometimes when it hops to 2G it stays and won’t switch back.  Most likely this is a cellular network issue, but I like telling the phone to STAY in 4G and not switch.

Camera is 5MP only.  No option to go lower.

I REALLY miss the rich features of the Alarm Clock on my Captivate.

I got too used to GoLauncher/Launcher Pro, that I had to put on Nova Launcher to give myself a few more options.

What else?

Seriously, this is an excellent phone.  And at $99 on a 3 year plan it’s a steal for a top level phone.  I paid more than that for the HTC Magic AND the Captivate model I got.  I bought this phone outright personally, however.  You’ll have to just get your own to really feel how this thing works.  How it’s snappy, the screen feels amazing… such a nice phone.

Now I have some ‘issues’, but most of them can be fixed with a 3rd party app… just wish I didn’t have to go that route.

How’s it compare to the rest?  Well, below I’ve put down the list of how much it costs.  Now compare that to the slew of other Androids and it fares well for cost’s sake, it’s about average, for an above average phone..  Heck, the s2 LTE is MORE expensive.  It’s about average cost, but what you get is a true Android experience.

That being said, about the ‘true Android experience’, many folk’ll tell you that the Nexus is for ‘developers only’ and if you’re not going to tweak the crap out of it with ROMs and whatnot, just go with another phone.  To that I say phooey.  I may eventually mod it, but for now I’m enjoying what the Ice Cream Sandwich experience is supposed to feel like before some other manufacturers put their UI layer on top.  It’s quite good on its own thus far, and as I’ve said, for the price it’s probably the best bang for your buck.  So get it, mod it if you want, don’t if you don’t feel you need to.

So, where can you get it?

• Rogers/Fido/tbaytel:  $599 outright / $99 on a 3 year contract (Fido lists it as $160 on a 3 year plan)
• Telus/Koodo: $649 outright / $159 on a 3 year contract (No Koodo listing yet)
• Bell/Virgin:  $649 outright / $159 on a 3 year contract
• Wind:  still coming soon – apparently just in time for Valentine’s day!
• Mobilicity:  Feb 6th.
• SaskTel:  $599 outright / $159 on a 3 year contract
• Videotron:  still coming soon