Galaxy Nexus is the
first smartphone running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, Google’s effort to
unify smartphone and tablet operating system. In stead of having specific
versions for cell phones and tablets such as Android 2.3 Gingebread for
smartphone and 3.0 Honeycomb for tablet, Ice Cream Sandwich is designed for
both devices. New operating system also provides many new features including unlocking
phone by face, syncing app folder and browser, as well as many small
improvements.
The interface is
designed to work without hard button. But the clearest change is new Favourites
bar, soft buttons for Back, Home and Recent Apps, and unification Apps and
Witgets collections into a single interface. At this time you can scroll
through Widgets trays to preview how they look on the main screen.
Many more important
changes stand behind and aim at developers rather than users. Desktop rate is
improved so as Android screen and apps look the same on screens with different
sizes. A new font has been introduced together with new screen interior – for
example, app menus are found at app’s right or left corner and showed by a
vertically intermittent line.
Nexus has impressive
hardware, with 4.7-inch screen, 1280x720 resolution and 1.2GHz dual core
processor. While it has new technology, it looks rather simple – structure
behind phone’s cover is the only negelecting thing from smooth plastic and
mirror surface. Samsung claims the phone is 9mm in thickness, but like
Motorola’s RAZR, it tapers from the swell 11mm at a head, an if seen from the
side, screen is rather concave.
Density
Plastic body makes Neus
extremely light for this size. It is also comfortable to hold it, and round
shape of corners helps you easily put it into your pocket. A new smart feature
allows you to unlock the phone by face identity. This feature works well,
manages to differentiate members in Shopper team, and works straight
away even at strange corners.
High screen’s
resolution makes the smallest text also become sharp as knife on 4.7-inch
screen. However, the screen is not very bright, even at the higest setting, and
we had to turn off auto brightness that makes everything so bad. At maximum
brightness, colors are lively and contrast ratio is excellent. Back, menu, and
home buttons are now showed in the software and occupy screen’s space, but the
screen is so large that this never bothers us.
Android 4.0 is very
smooth on Nexus. It is one of the few number of phones appearing to be fast
when used without iPhone, certainly thanks to dual core processor although new
Android version also brings speed improvement. The score of 2,038ms in
SunSpider JavaScript test promised impressive web browser performance, but we
had waited for better points. Android’s new versions often create speed leap on
SunSpider, so we were surprised when seeing lfew improvements here.
If app is suitable
The only time the operating
system made us wait was when data were input from internet, and even previous
slow apps such as Google Maps were also opened with record time. Games are
surprisingly smooth – when they run – but unfortunately, not all can cope with
Nexus’s high resolution. It is sure that most will be updated in a few weeks
later. Battery life in our video test was lower than 7 hours, medium for an
Android smartphone.
5MP camera creates
sharp color images with little noise. There is no image anti-shake mode, so you
will need to use LED flashlight for photos taken in weak light, but they even do
not have much noise. The phone also has interesting panorama mode.
Video can be recored in
1080p Full HD resolution, there is even a pre-set video adjustment app allowing
you to stitch photos together and add background music. Video is not lively as
it should, and recording is unsmooth, but colors and contrast ratio are
excellent, with little noise except for the time of zoom in. Performance in
dark areas is very standard although flashlight is not turned on, with very
little noise and blur as compared to what we often see. Our only complaint is
that you cannot control LED manually to act as a record light while recoring
video.
Most Android phones
have memory card slot, which gives them more advantages than iPhone, so it is a
pity that Nexus does not have it. However, it has 16GB storage, which is quite
much. The option attaching Nexus to PC in mass storage mode also disappears. In
stead of that, you have to choose between Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) or Picture
Transfer Protocol (PTP). Both attach phone as a device in Windows Explorer, but
with borther that when you transfer file, you are usually warned that it will
not play on your device.
Since Nexus is Google
phone, it is accompanied by standard Android apps that can process all tasks
you need. All browser, email, message, map, work schedule, music, and social
network are included although Google missed one thing when not adding Google
Docs.
This also means the
phone is not much impeded by pre-set apps chosen for you by a network exploiter
or phone producer that you cannot uninstall – Android 4.0 adds uninstallation
ability these apps in any case. It will be very interesting to see which
software is packed beforehand in future Android 4.0 phones from other producers
– HTC’s Sense and Motorola’s Motoblur add improvements such as auto contact. On
Nexus, you have to adjust a contact, and then choose Join option to find
coincident contacts.
Watch and key
We like small details
proving understanding of user’s behavior, for example, the watch lies on the
screen once locked, so you do not need to open your phone just to see what time
it is – you just need to press a button to unlock the screen. You can also
unlock your phone directly from camera mode. The ability to pull apps up to
each other to create folders will tidy up most Android main screen
dramatically, together with browser sync between phone and Google Chrome on
desktop computer, you can bring saved password and bookmark.
Galaxy Nexus is an
excellent and attracting phone, and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has been the
fastest Android experience so far. Just rather plastic structure and quite dim
screen pull it back. If you are looking for the current best Android, it is
here, but you may want to see what rivals introduce before buying. For example,
it is rumored that excellent Motorola’s Droid Razr will upgrade Android 4.0 at
the beginning of next year.
Summary
Verdict. Large screen, dual core processor and excellent
camera make this leading new Android phone worth money, but it is Android 4.0
that is really a star.
Smartphone. GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G
850/900/1700/1900/2100, EDGE, HSPA, 4.7-inch LCD (720x1280 resolution), 5MP
camera, 16GB storage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB, 8.3 hours of talk-time, 11.3 days
of wait-time, 136x68x11mm, 135g.
