After several false starts, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is finally here. The much-anticipated handset arrived December 15 on Verizon’s 4G LTE wireless network, and is the first handset to deliver the long-awaited Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system to a US smartphone. The last year has not seen too many variations as far as handset design is concerned, and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus arrives in the typical candy bar form factor we have seen in the smartphone market recently. As a black, rectangular slab, the Galaxy Nexus measures 5.33 x 2.67 x 0.37 inches (135.5 x 67.94 x 9.47 mm), and weighs 5.29 ounces (150 g). That is an average size and slightly heavier weight than the typical 4G smartphone.
At 4.65 inches, the display on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is currently the second largest in the entire smartphone marketplace. Samsung uses their own Super AMOLED technology to deliver 720 x 1280 pixel resolution at 315.80 pixels per inch. The brightness on that display is adjusted automatically, and compensates for the amount of light hitting the screen. A battery saving proximity sensor is also built into the display, allowing for automatic shut off after extended non-use. Visuals and video are rendered in 16 million colors, and capacitive multitouch navigation is employed to operate the touch screen. A final overlay of Corning Gorilla Glass offers scratch resistance and glare reduction.
The average 4G smartphone offers 8.0 hours of run time on a single battery charge, and the extra weight of the handset mentioned earlier is predominantly due to the oversized battery. The 1850 mAh battery on the Galaxy Nexus provides 12.0 hours of talk time on a single battery charge, and roughly 6 days standby. The processor on board is a dual core 1.2 GHz chip, a graphics processing engine is also on board, and 16 GB of onboard storage joins 1.0 GB of RAM memory in the hardware profile.
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A rear mounted 5.0 megapixel camcorder joins a 1.3 megapixel chat cam on the front of the handset in the camera package. That rear snapper offers video capture at 1080P HD and 30 frames per second, and offers an LED flash, geo-tagging, white balance, special effects and autofocus features. Web browsing supports HTML 5, HTML and Flash technologies, and YouTube and Picasa applications have been preloaded. The onboard audio player supports all major file formats, and offers filtering by artist, play list or album. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is also one of the first handsets to offer support for NFC applications.
