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Google Galaxy Nexus review

By Julian Prokaza, 20 Dec 2011

Rating:

Price as reviewed:£199 on £31 per month two year Vodafone contract

Google's latest own-brand Android smartphone is here. Its massive high-resolution screen and brand new Ice Cream Sandwich operating system left a big impression on Julian Prokaza as our review reveals.

The Galaxy Nexus is the third Android smartphone to appear with Google branding since the mobile OS first appeared three years ago. As with previous devices released under its own name, Google’s intent for this new Samsung-made model is as a technologies showcase for its new ideas and this time around, the biggest of these is Android 4.

Android 4, AKA ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ (ICS) finally unifies the two different versions of Android that have been in active use over the last year: Android 2.3.x ‘Gingerbread’ on smartphones and Android 3.x ‘Honeycomb’ on tablets. Google cited fundamental technical issues as the main reason for not releasing Honeycomb for smartphones before now, so ICS will be the first time a common version of the OS with a consistent interface has been available for both platforms.

Although meant to be a flagship smartphone, Samsung hasn’t really pushed the boat out with the Galaxy Nexus’ construction.

Although meant to be a flagship smartphone, Samsung hasn’t really pushed the boat out with the Galaxy Nexus’ construction. It’s a slim and stylish looking handset that feels more than robust, but the metallic grey plasticky case doesn’t exactly tally with the premium price. The core specification isn’t anything we haven’t seen before either, and the Galaxy Nexus has the same 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core processor with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of user storage space as the Samsung Galaxy S II and Motorola RAZR, though it lacks the memory card slot found on those models.

The specification might be the same, but the Galaxy Nexus isn’t quite as quick as those two other Android smartphones in the Quadrant Standard synthetic benchmark, where it scored 2011 to the Galaxy S II’s 2977 and the RAZR’s 2570 (higher is better). That could be down to the extra processor overhead of ICS, but the new OS is also the reason for the improved JavaScript performance, where web browser optimisations meant it scored 1890ms in the SunSpider test, compared to the Galaxy S II’s 3423.3ms.

Our usual video player benchmark wouldn’t run properly with Android 4 and so we couldn’t run our usual battery test, but 30 hours of MP3 playback in Flight Mode is reasonable, as is the claimed 17 hour talk time/290 hour standby time.

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5 comments

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How many things misss

"Samsung has equipped the Galaxy Nexus with a full away of sensors"
Did you get someone with a lisp to write this article? I'm sure it has an "array" of sensors :-P

"The calendar is still limited to week view"
Unless I've hacked my GN, the way I can view my calendar in 4 modes kind of make this comment rediculous - it swaps between Day, Week, Month and Agenda with the tap of the date or month in the top-left of the screen, maybe if the reviewer had spent some time in the app they might have noticed this!

No mention of how easy it is to add Widgets to the home screens, or the fact that when you're adding icons/widgets that you can switch screens from the last displayed one, or how you can get to the Widget List or direct to the Marketplace from a link in the App Drawer.

Also completely ignored is the way you can have folders in the quick links section of the home screens, or the upgraded phone & contacts sections where the phone part shows "recent" and "frequently called", making it more user friendly, the contacts also has groupings so you can see Coworkers, Family & Friends or any groups you want to create, as well as the Frequently Contacted (by any method).

Missed from the camera review is the built-in panorama feature, which amazingly quickly (for a phone) stitches together a photo, and during the process tells you if you're moving too fast for it to stitch cleanly, or the morphing features in the video camera (fun, but not really useful).

Overlooked is the new locking mechanisms, the Face Unlock is seen on no other phone, and although people complain that it can be over-ridden by a photo, how many people have a large face-on photo of someone that they carry around? The unlock also allows Slide (no security, but with a slide to camera as well as unlock), Pattern, PIN (4-16 digits) or Password - no other mobile phone OS has this variety!

Can you please explain how long the reviewer spent with the phone, because I found all of these things within a day of having the phone, and I was working during that day as well! How can they have missed some of the features which are the OS's "selling points" from this review?

Overall, I give this review 2 stars, because of the amount of things missing which are "important" in the latest upgrade of Android, unless of course the review is an avid Apple user, and thus wishes to down-play the competition!

By PhilA on Saturday Dec 24

How many things missed from the review?

By PhilA on Saturday Dec 24

What the hell?

ITPro's comment system has completely messed up the posting of my comment - doing it twice (while I was editing the Title), and what's with the removal of all paragraph formatting??

By PhilA on Saturday Dec 24

Review Plus

Since you're pointing out spelling problems, PhilA, you might like to know that ridiculous is spelt thusly. Otherwise thanks for the extra info. Btw, are you stuck with 16GB or is there an option to take the phone apart and swap out the card?

By qbitz1 on Friday Jan 6

Weak email app when using pop account...

I recently purchased a Galaxy Nexus.
One feature that I cannot believe is missing is the ability to search emails on the email app. Neither will it hold more than 20 or so emails at a time. It will load more but loses them over a period of a few hours. I cannot find a setting to change this. These features are available on the Gmail app but not on the standalone email app.
Many apps that I would use on a daily basis are not updated for ICS and simply do not work yet.
A stunning phone in many respects ( coming from iPhone 3GS) but is not perfect or even good enough by any stretch of the imagination.
I assume the compatibility issues will be resolved over time...

By Rob_Bateman on Friday Jan 6