The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the first phone in the world  running Google’s Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich),  it has been talked about all over the Internet for months and has generated a fair amount of buzz. Android 4.0 has had a major design overhaul and includes many new features, while some ugly ducks grow up to be ugly ducks, not swans, Android has grown into something beautiful and elegant.

The actual handset might not be a quantum leap in terms of specifications, but that’s not really the selling point of the device, that’ll be Ice Cream Sandwich.

Ice Cream Sandwich is pretty much a fusion of both Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), and what we’ve ended up with is a futuristic Tron like UI that’s sure to blow your brains out….maybe. So, what do we at hemorrdroids.net think about the eagerly awaited Samsung Galaxy Nexus? Read on and find out in this full review of the worlds first Ice Cream Sandwich device.

Design / Hardware…

“The Contour Display with its very slight curvature makes the device look extremely sexy”

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is encased in a gunmetal grey plastic, that might not be appealing to everyone, however Samsung has placed a metal frame inside the phone, making it feel just that much more solid than the Samsung Galaxy SII or anyother phone that has been made with similar materials. The device looks stunning due to it’s very minimal design,

it resembles the Samsung Nexus S a fair bit, just slightly less curved. Unlike the Nexus S and many other Android devices that we’ve seen so far, the Galaxy Nexus has no hard or capacitive navigation buttons, instead they’ve been replaced by on screen buttons which dim into smaller buttons when not being used. The  on screen navigation keys also completely disappear when watching videos to make full use of the screen real estate.

The 4.65inch screen on the Galaxy Nexus isn’t using Gorrila Glass as we’ve come to expect of high end devices, Samsung has told us that it’s using some other  ”fortified” glass, proven to be quite durable on some YouTube video I’ve seen, but I’m not going to test any of that myself. The display on the device is just slightly curved, similar to the Nexus S but not to the same extent.

The Galaxy Nexus is fairly big on paper with dimensions of 135.5 x 67.9 x 8.9mm, it’s just slightly bigger than Samsung’s other flagship phone, the Galaxy SII. The device is also just a tad bit on the heavier side at 135g compared to the SII which weighs 116g. However, don’t let all this sadden you, when holding the device it feels very comfortable in the hand, it doesn’t feel that big and heavy for a device with a screen size of 4.65inches.

Towards the bottom center of the display you’ll find an LED notification light,  the light is RGB, which means it’s capable of displaying many different colours depending on the type of notification you’re receiving. As I’ve mentioned earlier, the Nexus doesn’t have any hard or capacitive navigation buttons, so there are hardly any buttons, however what you will find is a sleep/ wake button on the rigjt side of the device, and the volume rocker on the other side. On the bottom edge of the device, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack and micro USB port.

The removable back cover on the device is an extremely thin and flimsy piece of plastic, it feels as if it’s going to snap every time you take it off, and it’s fairly difficult to put back on. When you take off the back cover, you’ll also notice that there’s no microSD slot any where, this might be a deal breaker for many but 16GB of internal storage is more than enough for me, maybe Google wants people to make use of Cloud storage or maybe there’s another reason that we’re not aware of.

So now that we’ve covered the design of the device, lets move on to the nitty-gritty details of the internals, the Galaxy Nexus features a dual-core 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4460 CPU, 1GB of RAM, an option of 32GB or 16GB of storage (since the UK only has the 16GB, that’s what I’m testing). The device also has the usual expected radios, that’s Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, amd GPS. The device is also includes an NFC chip, and everything else you would expect, such as a proximity sensor, compass, light sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, and even a barometer, which Google says improves GPS location times.

On the rear side of the device you’ll find a 5 megapixel snapper with a single LED flash, and at the front there’s a 1.3 megapixel camera for video chat, more on the camera in the camera section of the review.

As already mentioned Samsung has put an NFC chip into the Galaxy Nexus much like they did with the Nexus S, this pretty much means your device is future proof. If you didn’t already know, NFC turns your device into a sort of virtual wallet, you simply tap the phone to a compatible device and the money is taken out automatically without the need to enter a PIN. We’re not sure how well NFC will be adopted in the UK but the network Orange did mention that it expects a massive uptake next year, and even Barclay’s Bank has enabled NFC in their Debit Cards. Imagine a day when you wont have to take out all your payment cards or even your Oyster Card, just tap your phone and your ready to go. Looks like that day may very well come sometime soon, but then again there’s always the risk of putting all your eggs in one basket, imagine if your phone got stolen.

So what else can one do with NFC,  I hear you ask, well Google has included a new feature in ICS that makes use of NFC technology. You can now exchange data with the new Android Beam functionality. What this means is, you can bump your Galaxy Nexus to another NFC enabled device and transfer information between them, things like contact cards, images and even music.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the Galaxy Nexus in terms of looks, the Contour Display with its very slight curvature makes the device look extremely sexy but I’m not sure if it brings about any noticeable benefits in day to day use. The device is definitely one the best looking phones I’ve used, and it has managed to grab a lot of attention. The phone doesn’t bring any big changes to the industrial design we’re used to, whether that’s a bad or good thing, I’ll leave it up to you to decide. The hardware in the device isn’t anything to write home about, many will say it’s outdated, but you have to bare in mind that the hardware isn’t the main selling point of the device, it’s the latest version of Android that is.  One thing that did annoy me though, is the speaker at the back of the device, the volume is too low, you can barely hear the notifications, or ringtone and playing back music seemed to be quieter than most other phones I’ve used.

Screen…

“Samsung is bringing sexy back”

Samsung is bringing sexy back with the 4.65inch display on the Galaxy Nexus, it’s simply amazing, it’s probably the best feature among the rest of the hardware, the device is one of the first to feature a full 720p screen, that’s a resolution of 1280 x 720 in a 4.65inches display, giving you a ppi of 316. When the screen is lit up, it looks fantastic,

 

 

it’s extremely sharp and features very vibrant colors while also consuming a lot less battery power.

As with most high-end Samsung devices, the Galaxy Nexus features a Super AMOLED screen, no Plus in that like the Galaxy SII I’m afraid but it’s definitely just as good. The screen uses a pentile display, regardless, the text and images look very crisp and it’s much superior to other pentile displays I’ve seen, possibly due to its higher resolution.

When you set the device to auto brightness, it seemed to be a little too dim, I wouldn’t say it’s a hardware issue, most probably more software related. It’s possible, this was done to conserve power, but I generally found it annoying, hence the reason why I set the brightness myself at most times.

Another issue with the device is outdoor visibility, the glass on the screen is quite glossy compared to that of the SII, so you end up looking at your own reflection rather than the contents of the screen. However, it’s not a big issue, the Super AMOLED screen certainly helps out in outdoor situations, just make sure you have it on full brightness (damn, I wish it had a Mirosol display, maybe next time).

Camera…

 ”One of the Galaxy Nexus’s strengths is the zero shutter-lag feature, oddly enough, that’s one of its weaknesses too.”

The camera on the Galaxy Nexus is surprisingly good for a 5megapixel snapper, you don’t really need more than that and it handled itself very well compared to the Galaxy SII, but that’s still a matter of personal opinion and taste. Even though it’s possible to get good results from the camera, it’s also quite easy to get bad results too.

 

 

One of the Galaxy Nexus’s strengths is the zero shutter-lag feature, oddly enough, that can also be one of its weakness too. The Galaxy Nexus is amazing when you’re trying to take pictures quickly, however, the quick auto focusing and zero-shutter lag can also result in slighter blurry looking photos, luckily this isn’t always the case.

The macro shots on the Galaxy Nexus are very good, images are well focused and clear. It’s obvious to say that snapping pictures in bright daylight is the optimum environment for any camera, the Galaxy Nexus done very well in that situation. Colours on the images taken with Galaxy Nexus looked more life like and wasn’t over saturated, the images were fairly vibrant and colourful, but it would seem images weren’t as crisp as the images taken with the Galaxy SII.

In a darker environment like night shots, I don’t expect any camera phone to do that well, but as you can see from images below, that’s where the Galaxy Nexus really shines, yes there was the odd bit of noise in darker scenes, and focusing did take slightly longer but overall the images were very clear.

Pictures taken with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall the Galaxy Nexus can take great photos, it’s very capable, opinions on how well the camera performs is bound to be divided. Some will argue that the Samsung Galaxy S2 has been out since summer, and that features an 8MP snapper where as the Galaxy Nexus, nearly 6 months later has only 5MP, without getting into the Megapixel argument, I can tell you that the Nexus does a fairly good job for what it is.

Google has managed to pack in many new features into the camera, one of those is panoramic mode, something I quite enjoyed using and it actually manages to yield very nice results. There’s also the ability to edit your pictures after you’ve taken them, such as the ability to add filters (similar to what Instagram is capable of doing) and the ability to add a whole lot more effects.

For more camera samples check out our Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs Samsung Galaxy SII (S2) [Camera Test] article.

Day Light Video Sample…

Night Video Sample…

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus can capture video up to 1080p, although the quality seems to suffer just by a little, the video was pretty good but didn’t seem as vibrant as what I’ve seen the SII record.  Google has also included a bunch of realtime video effects, there are quite a few effects that use face tracking to turn your subjects into something more goofy looking, you can give them big smiles, big eyes or even give them a big nose. There’s certainly no practical use for these effects  but generally it’s quite funny and it’s a great example of what the Nexus is capable of doing.

The video recorded at night was fairly good for a camera phone, it’s not the best I’ve seen but it definitely performs better than most. I was very impressed with how smooth the recording was and the lack of significant noise in low light, so overall a pretty good job.

Front Facing Camera Video Sample…

The Galaxy Nexus also features a 1.3megapixel front facing camera obviously intended for video chatting, As with any camera of this sort I wouldn’t bother to use this camera to try and take real photos, use the rear camera for that instead, surprisingly the front facing camera records video at 720p (check the video above).  In terms of video chatting, I tried out Google Talk Video and it performed as expected, it was fairly poor in low light, you’ll have to be in a very well lit area to make full use of it

Software…

“This is the evolution of Android right before your very eyes.” 

As I’ve said probably said quite a few times already(not to sound like a broken record), the Galaxy Nexus isn’t about the hardware, it’s about Ice Cream Sandwich. With Android 4.0 Google is making a huge statement, they’re showing the world that Android can be beautiful and it can be loved by all. The new OS is a huge leap both visually and in functionality, it isn’t the Android you’ve grown to know anymore,

 

this is the evolution of Android right before your very eyes.

Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is an update that looks completely different from earlier versions, Gingerbread used all sorts of colours in the OS and ICS is much more unified. The user interface uses a lot of blue, black and gray and you tend to see that everywhere, the bluish theme gives it a very Tron like style, and personally I think it’s gorgeous.  Everything, well nearly everything has been redesigned in the OS, the home screen, applications, widgets and even the notification tray looks different, Google has even designed their own typeset called Roboto which they use in the OS. The new typeset has mixed opinions but in my view it’s certainly a welcomed addition, it makes text look much sharp and clear.

The first thing you’ll notice when waking the device, is the new lock screen, you don’t simply just swipe left or right to unlock the device, now you’re given the option to unlock the device into the home screen or the camera application depending on which way you swipe. It’s certainly useful but OEMs like HTC have already included this feature in earlier builds, but it’s great that Google has now made it a native feature. If you’ve got a pin setup you wont be able to jump into the camera from the lock screen, and since we’re talking about pins, ICS also gives you the ability to set up Face Unlock, a feature by which you take a mugshot of yourself, and then next time the phone can only be unlocked by your face…or erm, lets say an image of yourself. It’s not very secure, it’s fun to use, but if you want your phone to be secure I suggest not using it (just stick to a pin or pattern lock).

The notification system has been tweaked and cleaned up a little so everything looks that much nicer. If you get an email, you’ll see an image of the sender and the subject which looks pretty good, if you’re playing music, the album cover and a few controls are also visible. You can now also pull down your notification tray while the phone is locked (assuming you haven’t set up a pin), you can press the x button to dismiss all notifications or you can swipe them away individually based on what’s more important to you.

You’ll also find the settings icons near the date, to access the menu (a button no longer available as a navigation key).

The homescreen isn’t too different from what we’re used to, you get five screens to play around with, but finally now you get a persistent application dock at the bottom that is customisable, you can place any of your favorite applications in there or even drop folders into it if you wish. Among the four customisable application icons, there’s a center button which brings up the application drawer and widgets. The application drawer now moves horizontally rather than how it was before. At the top of all the homescreens, Google has placed a persistent search box, and by persistent I mean there’s no way of removing it, love it or hate, it’s there to stay.  Below the application dock, you’ll find a row of on-screen navigation keys, back, home and multi-tasking that dim into white dots when not being used and completely turn off when the screen goes to sleep. The Menu/settings page has also been changed, it’s a lot easier to navigate and find things you’re looking for and it’s certainly more pleasing to the eye than it was before.

It’s obvious that ICS includes a lot of Honeycomb features, and that’s to be expected, one of the new features that has jumped in for the ride is the multi-tasking feature. Tapping the multi-touch navigation key brings up a list of most recent applications with a thumbnail overview. You can tap on any application to go into it, or you can either swipe it to the left/right to move it from the list, unfortunately this doesn’t actually terminate the application, let’s hope a future update enables that feature.

A very huge new feature that Google has included is the ability to set data warnings and limits, you’ll find it in the settings menu. This feature has been available through third-party applications like DroidStats, but now it’s native. You have the ability to set data limit warnings, set hard limits, see which applications are using data, and even the ability to limit certain background data on an individual application basis. This is certainly a welcomed feature for people who do not have true unlimited data and want to control how much they spend.

In previous iterations of Android we were able to create folders, although they looked somewhat dull, well, that has now changed. You’ll now be able to create folders by simply dragging one icon onto another, and the applications even auto-arrange themselves when you move them around in the folder. This feature is definitely a lot easier to use now and should come in handy for those wanting to organise their applications to their own preference.

I’ve always heard people talking about how they dislike the native keyboard on Android, I’m not one of those people but I do understand the gripes people have had with accuracy. Well, from using the keyboard on ICS, I can tell you that it has been improved drastically.

There is a noticeable improvement in accuracy and auto-correction works nearly flawlessly, it’s much easier to type using the keyboard and I even managed to write some pretty long emails very fast effortlessly. If you spell a word incorrectly, it’s made very clear with a red highlight and just tapping it reveals the possible words you might have wanted to type in a dropdown menu.

It’s also worth noting that Google has substantially improved the voice-to-text feature, it pretty much processes speech in realtime, thus making it easier to dictate longer messages. In testing the feature (check out Andy’s video below) we found that the voice-to-text feature is much more accurate than it used to be and it’s something that you could use on day-to-day basis.

All in all, ICS is very smooth, I’ve hardly experienced any lag when moving from screen to screen, everything seems to be more fluid, even the animations are much smoother. As I’ve said before ICS is very unified, one of the new unified features is the swiping from left to right (and vice versa) on panels of most Google applications, for example if you’re in a contact, swiping to the right reveals that contacts latest social status updates, this feature is evident in nearly all the Google applications and works very well.

Another aspect of the new ICS that has to be mentioned is that application settings are no longer hidden away, they no longer require the press of a settings navigation key and it’s generally visible somewhere on the application as a consistent triple dotted icon.

Core Applications…

 

There are obviously many core Google applications in Android, forget a cup of coffee, I would ask you to sit by a coffee machine if I chose to write about all of them and expected you to read it, hence the reason I’ve chosen to go through a few of them.

 Dialler / People…

As with the rest of ICS, the Dialler has been significantly changed in terms of UI. As mentioned earlier, you also get the bluish Tron like style here and it helps out  towards the overall consistency of the UI. The dialler is as expected, yep…you can make calls with it, unfortunately it still doesn’t support smart dialling, which I quite miss.  While in the dialler, you can swipe to the right to go your recent calls and a further swipe to the right will take into your favourite contacts.

The People application is pretty much new, there’s no more “contacts” application, it’s all in the People app now. The People application is mostly white, (what happened to the consistency?) with hints of blue and grey. The app aggregates all your contact details and social network services together in one package, at the time of writing this review, it seems Google+ and Twitter are the only social applications that are working with it. Google is offering a social API for the People app which should allow developers access into it, let us hope lots of developers take advantage of it.

YouTube / Music…

The YouTube application looks very different from what we’re used to, it’s white with red highlights so generally different in terms of aesthetics. Other than the looks everything else is pretty much the same,but now you can also watch videos in High Definition. It has been updated to make use of the HD 720p screen on the Galaxy Nexus, so things do look fairly more vibrant and sharp.

The music player has been slightly redesigned,  it’s still very similar to what we’re used to but this time around we’ve been given access to the equaliser settings, which includes bass boost and 3D surround sound effects (obviously you’ll need to use headphones for the last 2). As with prior versions of Android, there’s a music widget that you can place on your homescreen, allowing you to control certain aspects of playback, and you can also access these controls when your screen is locked, making things that much more convenient.

GMail / Messaging…

 

Just like the other applications GMail has also had a face lift and now it looks a lot like the GMail from Honeycomb. Navigating around this new GMail app is extremely nice and easy. It requires a whole lot less effort reading and managing email, you can swipe to the left or right to move between emails and Google has even given us the ability to search emails offline to at least 30 days back, now that’s what you call time travel.

The messaging application has also had cosmetic changes made to it but generally it’s pretty much the same. At first you see the list of the latest message from each contact, and then tapping on that message takes you into a conversation mode, nothing else to really talk about here.

Third-Party Applications…

 

Most third-party applications I’ve tried have run pretty well, with buttons where they’re supposed to be. Applications like Twitter, Whatsapp, IMDB, Movies and many others ran the way you would expect it to although there were certain applications that didn’t seem like they were updated to support ICS. The Facebook application is missing the settings buttons, so it’s not possible to sync contacts or do anything else that requires you to press the settings button first. I’m sure Facebook will be updated some time soon to deal with this issue. Another problem I discovered and wasn’t too hard to find is that in certain applications the formatting was a bit off, text and images were very small, these applications have most probably not been updated to support the higher resolution screen but this is a problem any early adopter would face, so it’s just a matter of time till they get ironed out.

Browser…

I have to say this, the browser in ICS is amazing, it’s seriously fast and it’s pretty much the best browser I’ve used. As with the rest of the OS, the browser brings in a lot of stuff from Honeycomb, and I’m not just talking about the new look, you get incognito mode to browse erm….all the dodgy stuff like a ninja without leaving any traces in your history…hmmm. Tapping the tabs button shows you your open tabs in a similar fashion to multi-tasking, you can also close a tab by swiping the thumbnail to the left or right. If the browser loads up a mobile version of the webpage you’re visiting, there’s also an option to “Request desktop site” which is very useful indeed.

SunSpider 0.9.1 gave it a score of 1998.4ms compared to that of the Galaxy SII which scored 3440.9ms so as you’ll probably agree, the real life speed of the Galaxy Nexus’s browser compared to that of the SII’s browser is pretty surprising. In tests against the Galaxy SII, regardless of whether plugins were disabled or not, the Galaxy Nexus loaded pages much faster. Considering the Nexus doesn’t really have better internals than the SII, it’s definitely something you have thank ICS for. Although the Galaxy Nexus loaded pages quicker, it wasn’t as smooth when it came to zooming in or out, and that’s with both pinching and double tapping.

Something else you should note is that as of writing this review Flash doesn’t support ICS so it’s not available in the Android Market for the Galaxy Nexus. Google has said that Adobe will be updating Flash Player to support ICS and it should be available sometime near the end of year, since right now, it’s nearly the end of November, there isn’t much of a wait so this shouldn’t be a deal breaker.

With Plugins Enabled…

With Plugins Disabled…

 

Benchmarking…

 “Benchmarking results are a bit odd, possibly because the tools haven’t been updated for ICS yet.”

Linpack

• Galaxy Note – 93 (Multi Thread)
• Galaxy SII – 82 (Multi-Thread)
• HTC Sensation – 69 (Multi-Thread)
• Galaxy Nexus – 38 (Multi Thread)

Quadrant

• Galaxy Note - 3,132
• Galaxy SII – 3,000 (An earlier score)
• HTC Sensation - 2176
• Galaxy Nexus – 1810

As you can see above and from the video, the benchmarking results are a bit odd, possibly because the tools haven’t been updated for ICS yet. Now, when I say odd, I mean, the scores are the lowest among all the dual-core devices that we have reviewed. There are a lot of reasons why it could have scored so little, but I’m not going to go into that, all I can tell you is that the Galaxy Nexus in real world usage is extremely smooth, I cant even mention a time when I experienced any lag and that’s because I haven’t. Everything is buttery smooth and fast, applications load up pretty quickly but once apps are updated to include hardware acceleration they’ll be even faster.

Battery…

“It’s not the size of the battery that matters, it’s what the device does with it”

Samsung have been very kind by including a 1,750mAh battery with the Galaxy Nexus, that’s 100mAh more than the SII. 100mAh might not seem like much on paper, but it has done really well for me. I’ve used the device since its launch on the 17th, that’s about 2 weeks so I guess I’m in a suitable position to talk about battery life, it’s pretty much the main reason as to why I’ve taken so long to write up this review.

 

I’m very pleased with the results, it’s even far better than I expected. I thought I would give the battery a thorough test and this is how it went. I took the Galaxy Nexus off charge at 06:13AM to go to work, I used the music application with headphones on for 30 minutes on my journey and turned it off. Once I got to work I didn’t do much with it other than sending a few text messages and looking through a few feeds on GPlus, Facebook and Twitter but when I finished work at 1PM, that’s when I started using the device fairly heavily and you can see that from the image above (the sudden drop in power). From 1PM I received and made plenty of calls, adding up to a total of 1 hour or so, I set the screen on full brightness, played around with GPS, took pictures/video, played Angry Birds here and there, browsed the web and watched a couple of videos on YouTube. I filmed the browser test video and benchmarking video that you saw above and obviously received a few more calls and texts. After all that, the battery finally went down to 5% on the following day at 02:50AM, so it managed to last 20 hours and 37 minutes, and also bare in mind that it done all this with WiFi on at all times, Twitter, and Google+ on automated syncs and GMail running on push. I consider that quite a feat as I would say that I used the device fairly heavily.

On a normal day with a lot less usage (I’ll use yesterday and today as an example) I took the phone off charge at 09:00AM yesterday and now at 02:00AM the next day, the battery is at 39%, not bad at all. If you’re someone who manages battery consumption much better than I do, you’ll definitely get more lasting power, so just remember, it’s not the size of the battery that matters, it’s what the device does with it and ICS seems to manage power very well.

Conclusion…

“It’s fast, it’s smooth, it’s fresh and it shows us what Android is capable of..”

I’m going to get straight to the point, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is one of the best Android phones ever made if not THE best, it offers fairly good hardware and the brand-spanking new OS, Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). This is the phone to purchase if you want to experience ICS on a device it has been optimised for.

 

 

Since the first day of Android, I’ve been eagerly awaiting for an Android phone that destroys its competition, and the Nexus is as close as it gets right now. The hardware is sexy and well designed, the software is beautiful and futuristic, but the changes aren’t just cosmetic, there’s a whole plethora of new functionality and I certainly have no doubt in my mind that this the most intuitive and easy to use version of the OS yet to date.  The software is amazing and certainly lives up to all the expectations I’ve had, and the hardware isn’t bad either.

The 4.65inch 720p HD screen is brilliant, it makes everything better, from browsing the web to watching videos, add to that the amazing Super AMOLED technology and things get even better. The device includes NFC so it’s future proof and shouldn’t become irrelevant too soon and since it’s a  Nexus device, it’ll get all the OS updates first (another selling point).

Other than the lousy speaker, I’ve had hardly any issues with the phone, but if I had to nitpick, I would say that the plastic casing doesn’t really make it feel as luxurious as it could have been.

Overall the device is extremely elegant and sexy, considering it has a 4.65inch screen it still feels fairly small and it’s certainly pocket-able. It’s fast, it’s smooth, it’s fresh and it shows us what Android is capable of and of course, I highly reccomend the Galaxy Nexus if you’re in the market for a new phone.

If you have any questions regarding this review, please leave them in the comments section below, thank you.