Samsung recently unveiled its flagship phone the Galaxy Nexus. This is the first phone to implement the latest version of Android (Ice Cream sandwich). Although the phone did not have the smoothest of starts (courtesy of a few bugs) critics claim this is the best smart phone available in the market today.
There is some controversy regarding the release date vs pre-order date. Most people are convinced that pre-orders will begin on the 29th, however even with many phone calls to Verizon by consumers, there is a lot of contradictory information circulating. Some stores say pre-orders are already underway, some say they start on the 29th, and some say they aren’t going to be taking pre-orders for a while. In essence, we don’t really know, but have our fingers crossed for the 29th!!
Hardware
The phone has a combined form factor of its predecessor the Nexus S and the Galaxy S. Weighing in at 135g, with a thickness of 8.94mm, it has a great feel on the palm. Although the back panel is durable, it could have had a better design given the cost of the phone. The front is reinforced with curved glass with a 1.3MP camera embedded to the right of the earpiece. The back comprises of a textured battery cover with a camera pod that houses a 5MP camera with LED flash an autofocus capabilities. The capacitive buttons have been replaced with three soft keys courtesy of the ICS. Also included is a notification LED just below the display. Although the design may not be much of a plus point for the Nexus, the resolution makes up for it. A 4.65 inch HD Super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1280X720 is one of the best by far.
The Galaxy Nexus is powered by TI’s OMAP 4460 processor. This is a Dual core processor with a clock speed of 1.2GHZ with a PowerVR SGX540 GPU combined with 1GB of RAM. There are two options for internal storage i.e. the 16 and 32GB.
Performance and Battery life
The phone has been a smooth performer till date. The ICS obviously needs a little change in code as most apps fail to implement the 2D acceleration that the phone has to offer. The benchmark results were all excellent, though not spectacular. The SunSpider benchmark gave it a score of 1984ms, indicative of blazingly fast browsing speeds.
Battery life is also good. On a test, the phone managed to squeeze out a drain time of 5hours and 15 minutes (when a looped video was played from full charge). The benchmark tests indicated a lasting time of 28 hours for its 1750mAh battery.
Camera
This is one area where the phone could have done better. The 5MP auto focus camera is a fast shooter but there is little improvement in quality when compared with its predecessor. The colour balance is good, but the exposure is off at times. The camera is capable of 1080p recording with mono sound at a rate of 24Fps.
Software
The phone implements the ICS which is astounding to say the least. The ICS is more attractive and implements a more coherent user experience. First time users may find it a little difficult to adopt though. The UI is good and one can expect many surprises from Android in the future.
