The Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be the first phone to market with the Android 4 operating system. It will be the first powerhouse to land on Verizon's network in a while, and one of very few 4G LTE phones on the network. There's a pile of reasons to lust after it, but there are a couple of aspects to the phone that make us apprehensive.We're only discussing the hardware here; a more in-depth look at the Android 4 OS will come in a follow-up piece.
In the hand, the Galaxy Nexus feels so huge, it's borderline silly. The screen measures 4.65 inches and there is about half an inch of bezel on either end, and feels like it's giving 7-inch tablets a run for their money.The body and front glass on the Galaxy Nexus are curved slightly, with the bottom much thicker and heavier than the top. The back is a crosshatched plastic panel that can be pried off easily for access to the SIM card slot and battery. The phone feels thin, though not quite as small as the Galaxy S II or Motorola Droid Razr.
The sleep button is on the right side towards the top with volume rocker is on the opposite side. The headphone jack and microUSB port are located on the thick bottom edge of the phone, and the only speaker is on the back of the phone, centered at the bottom. A small, pastel rainbow indicator light pulses in the bezel below the screen, though we can't even make out of the indentation where the light sits when it's off.
The Galaxy Nexus has two cameras: a front facing 1.3-megapixel one, and a rear 5-megapixel one. Google boasts that the smartphone's rear camera is "low-light optimized", but in our experience that only meant that the flash triggers very easily in low light situations. Even in a moderately well-lit indoor setting like in the photo featuring a cat, the flash popped. Without the flash, the same photo was pretty grainy. In less ambiguous light settings, the camera has a good level of detail but the color is a bit washed out. On the plus side, there is essentially no shutter lag and we can take a burst of pictures with a series of taps, though the camera will have a hard time maintaining focus from shot to shot.
The aforementioned giant Super AMOLED screen on the Galaxy Nexus is one of the first 720p displays we've dealt with on a smartphone. Its 720x1280 resolution means it can display a high level of detail and render text well, despite the fact that it's a PenTile screen. At the very least, the Galaxy Nexus leaves behind the obvious-pixel problems of 800x480 resolution displays that are stretched so thin on 4-inch-plus phones.
Even with the brightness all the way up, the screen has a yellowish cast similar to the Galaxy S II, though it's not quite as jarring. Some people prefer yellowish screens over bluish ones, so this may not bother many people at all. The screen is fairly readable in sunlight, though it definitely packs less maximum brightness than other phones.
We tried playing some videos on the Galaxy Nexus, and found that while the picture quality was fine, the phone's speaker is not very loud at the highest volumes—an average conversation could entirely drown the phone out. The speaker lacks depth, which is normal for a smartphone, but has less distortion than usual at the highest volumes, probably because it can't get as loud as most phones we've encountered.
Call quality on the phone was as good as we've heard on recent phones. We didn't hear any background noise or feedback, though the voices of our conversation partners were a little fuzzy.
We're not going to discuss the Android 4 operating system just yet—the OS is saving itself for Ryan Paul. But as far as performance, we get the sense that the OS is married much more closely to the hardware than older versions of Android were to their respective phones. We say this partly because interactions with the OS are very fluid in our use. Also, like on the Galaxy S II, the keyboard lets us type like the wind with accuracy, and it is sublime. But we say it too because even with its 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, the few benchmarks we ran do not hold the phone up as a contemporary of the iPhone 4S or Galaxy S II.
The Galaxy Nexus performs very well at the browser benchmark Sunspider 0.9.1, scoring 1990-2010 milliseconds on the test (the iPhone 4S hovers around 2200 milliseconds). But in Linpack, the Galaxy Nexus scores a modest 43-45 MFLOPS in single-threaded processes and 35-38 MFLOPS multi-threaded. For comparison, the Galaxy S II that launched in the US a couple of months ago scores about 93 and 53 MFLOPS, respectively.
The smartphone's performance in graphics rendering is likewise unimpressive. The Galaxy Nexus scores around 24 frames per second in the GL Benchmark 2.1 Egypt Standard test, and 40-42 frames per second in the PRO Standard test. For comparison, the iPhone 4S scores 58-60 fps on both of those tests. The Samsung Stratosphere, with its year-old hardware, scores 25 and 42 fps, respectively.
The Galaxy Nexus's battery is rated at 1750mAh, which is middling-to-high for the most recent batch of cell phones. The phone's Super AMOLED screen will help it to not lose catastrophic amounts of battery life, but it is running a new operating system on a dual-core processor, and the flagship version is on Verizon's LTE network. Our version of the phone was working off a T-Mobile SIM on the carrier's HSPA+ network, so we didn't get the full measure of intensive power consumption. Still, the battery indicator seems to empty out fairly fast, even when the phone is inactive.
Google and Samsung haven't released official battery estimates, but we found that the battery had some trouble lasting a full day of use. With WiFi on, full volume, and the screen at half brightness, we found the phone could play back video for 5.5 to 6 hours. Not terrible, but not great. This phone is likely shaking in its boots over the shadow 4G LTE access is casting (though the LTE version will have a slightly larger 1850mAh battery, according to Google's docmentation).
Overall, the Galaxy Nexus is a bit of a mixed bag. Performance is good as far as the operating system goes, but the benchmarks suggest apps could be harder for the phone to deal with than its competitors (to date, we haven't had any difficulty with any apps we've tried to run). The camera is good in most respects and the screen is pretty, but the battery life gives us concern, though we'd wait to see how it goes over on LTE in real time. We're also not sure what the advantage of curving the phone's body is, be we suspect only Raffi (NSFW) knows the answer.
This phone is exciting because it's the first with Android 4 and is on the best-reviewed network, but it's not quite a dream come true. Just out of interest, I went to Wikipedia to look up the exact original meaning of the word "flagship". The entry reads, "Because its primary function is to coordinate a fleet, flagships are not necessarily more heavily armed or fortified than other ships." Sounds about right.
And remember, in the next part of this review, Ryan Paul will discuss the real-world execution of the Android 4 operating system.
Good
In the hand, the Galaxy Nexus feels so huge, it's borderline silly. The screen measures 4.65 inches and there is about half an inch of bezel on either end, and feels like it's giving 7-inch tablets a run for their money.The body and front glass on the Galaxy Nexus are curved slightly, with the bottom much thicker and heavier than the top. The back is a crosshatched plastic panel that can be pried off easily for access to the SIM card slot and battery. The phone feels thin, though not quite as small as the Galaxy S II or Motorola Droid Razr.
The Galaxy Nexus has two cameras: a front facing 1.3-megapixel one, and a rear 5-megapixel one. Google boasts that the smartphone's rear camera is "low-light optimized", but in our experience that only meant that the flash triggers very easily in low light situations. Even in a moderately well-lit indoor setting like in the photo featuring a cat, the flash popped. Without the flash, the same photo was pretty grainy. In less ambiguous light settings, the camera has a good level of detail but the color is a bit washed out. On the plus side, there is essentially no shutter lag and we can take a burst of pictures with a series of taps, though the camera will have a hard time maintaining focus from shot to shot.
A photo with the Galaxy Nexus's camera, low light, no flash
A photo with the Galaxy Nexus's camera, low light with flash
A better-lit indoor shot from the Galaxy Nexus's camera
Even with the brightness all the way up, the screen has a yellowish cast similar to the Galaxy S II, though it's not quite as jarring. Some people prefer yellowish screens over bluish ones, so this may not bother many people at all. The screen is fairly readable in sunlight, though it definitely packs less maximum brightness than other phones.
We tried playing some videos on the Galaxy Nexus, and found that while the picture quality was fine, the phone's speaker is not very loud at the highest volumes—an average conversation could entirely drown the phone out. The speaker lacks depth, which is normal for a smartphone, but has less distortion than usual at the highest volumes, probably because it can't get as loud as most phones we've encountered.
Call quality on the phone was as good as we've heard on recent phones. We didn't hear any background noise or feedback, though the voices of our conversation partners were a little fuzzy.
We're not going to discuss the Android 4 operating system just yet—the OS is saving itself for Ryan Paul. But as far as performance, we get the sense that the OS is married much more closely to the hardware than older versions of Android were to their respective phones. We say this partly because interactions with the OS are very fluid in our use. Also, like on the Galaxy S II, the keyboard lets us type like the wind with accuracy, and it is sublime. But we say it too because even with its 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, the few benchmarks we ran do not hold the phone up as a contemporary of the iPhone 4S or Galaxy S II.
The Galaxy Nexus performs very well at the browser benchmark Sunspider 0.9.1, scoring 1990-2010 milliseconds on the test (the iPhone 4S hovers around 2200 milliseconds). But in Linpack, the Galaxy Nexus scores a modest 43-45 MFLOPS in single-threaded processes and 35-38 MFLOPS multi-threaded. For comparison, the Galaxy S II that launched in the US a couple of months ago scores about 93 and 53 MFLOPS, respectively.
The smartphone's performance in graphics rendering is likewise unimpressive. The Galaxy Nexus scores around 24 frames per second in the GL Benchmark 2.1 Egypt Standard test, and 40-42 frames per second in the PRO Standard test. For comparison, the iPhone 4S scores 58-60 fps on both of those tests. The Samsung Stratosphere, with its year-old hardware, scores 25 and 42 fps, respectively.
The Galaxy Nexus' Sunspider score
The Linpack score for Galaxy Nexus's single-threaded processes
The Linpack score for Galaxy Nexus's multi-threaded processes
A round of GLBenchmark 2.1 scores for the Galaxy Nexus
Google and Samsung haven't released official battery estimates, but we found that the battery had some trouble lasting a full day of use. With WiFi on, full volume, and the screen at half brightness, we found the phone could play back video for 5.5 to 6 hours. Not terrible, but not great. This phone is likely shaking in its boots over the shadow 4G LTE access is casting (though the LTE version will have a slightly larger 1850mAh battery, according to Google's docmentation).
This phone is exciting because it's the first with Android 4 and is on the best-reviewed network, but it's not quite a dream come true. Just out of interest, I went to Wikipedia to look up the exact original meaning of the word "flagship". The entry reads, "Because its primary function is to coordinate a fleet, flagships are not necessarily more heavily armed or fortified than other ships." Sounds about right.
And remember, in the next part of this review, Ryan Paul will discuss the real-world execution of the Android 4 operating system.
Good
- Screen is highly detailed, can play 720p video
- Camera's pictures are nice with decent lighting
- Phone feels decent in hand, and people with bigger hands may find it more comfortable to use than sub-4-inch phones
- Performance is smooth, in spite of lackluster benchmarks
- Ice Cream Sandwich OS is delicious in ways that you will find out
- Curved design is a little weird
- Speaker can't get very loud
- Battery has potential to flounder on 4G LTE
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