4.5/5 $:780
The good: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus brings a ton of new and very welcome features with Ice Cream Sandwich. The design is sharp, the screen is gorgeous, and the internal performance is fantastic.
The bad: Ice Cream Sandwich has eliminated some of Android's learning curve in some aspects, just to re-create it in others. There was some static on calls, and there's no external memory card slot. Also, like other Samsung Galaxy devices, the Galaxy Nexus feels rather fragile.
The bottom line: The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a big step forward for Android, but it's not the giant leap you may have been expecting. As impressive as it is, Ice Cream Sandwich can be messy, and without it, the Galaxy Nexus is just another Android device.
Every once in a while, a cell phone comes along that changes the mobile industry forever. Whether it's by design, features, or a combination of both, those rare handsets can stand out far from the pack and give the world something new and something very different. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is not one of those phones. Sure, it's groundbreaking and will even incite the occasional gasp of awe, but like a gymnast having a bad day, it just misses the high bar.
Now before you click over to your e-mail to write us an angry letter, consider this: Absolutely, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) does a lot to refine Android and make it come of age. When we first saw Google unveil the seemingly endless feature list last month in Hong Kong, ICS looked sleek, glossy, and fantastic.
Now that we have it in our hands, it is indeed hot, but it's also a hot mess. Without a doubt, the new features are welcome and the interface is pretty, but it also can feel cluttered, disjointed, and overly complicated. So while it pushes Android a big step forward, it doesn't fix all of Android's problems.
Set the OS aside and you're left with an attractive and familiar device. The display is rich and the profile is trim, but students of Samsung's Galaxy device will recognize the design. Likewise, while the features are admirable, nothing outside of ICS blows us away. Thankfully, though, internal performance is excellent so far and call quality over T-Mobile's network was up to par.
Design
A few years ago, we used to joke that Nokia kept building the same phone design while slightly tweaking it for each subsequent model. These days, however, we're more likely to apply that jest to Samsung. Ever since the company started making Galaxy devices last year, many of them have looked a lot alike. Indeed, the Galaxy Nexus has much in common with its predecessors, especially last year's Nexus S (a Galaxy device if not by name).
You'll see the same dark color, tapered edges, and "contour" shape that's supposed to follow the curve of your head. The handset is large (5.33 inches long by 2.67 inches wide) so it may be too much for some users to handle. Samsung, however, squeezed off every inch it could to make it extra thin (0.35 inch).
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