| Review of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus |
 |
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the third in a line of Google phones that runs a pure undiluted version of Android. The first was the HTC Nexus One, followed by the Samsung Nexus S. This new model is the first phone to get Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Last Updated: 29-Jan-2012 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
My original review for the Galaxy Nexus was posted in late November and it was based on a short (less than 24 hour) intensive session with the phone. I have since been given the opportunity of re-testing the Nexus without the heavy time restrictions. In addition I have since purchased a Samsung Galaxy S II LTE as my day-to-day phone to replace my aging Samsung Galaxy S Captivate. Subsequently I have a much more powerful phone to compare the Nexus to, and as a result the review has been updated to reflect this.
Both loaners were courtesy of Howard Chui. You can check out his review on
HowardForums at:
www.howardforums.com/content.php/803-My-Galaxy-Nexus-Review
I started out with very high hopes, because the Galaxy Nexus had been hyped as the
greatest thing since sliced bread. I therefore expected it to blow me away, but
what I discovered instead was a fairly capable device, but not something (that
at the time) I’d
want to replace my Captivate with. Now that I have something more powerful than the
Captivate, the underwhelming feelings I had about the Nexus only got worse.
I’m going to shake up the usual order of my review to cover the points about the
phone in the order of importance, which means (not surprisingly) I will begin
with the screen.
Display:
The Galaxy Nexus sports an eye-popping 1280 x 720 resolution on a 4.65-inch
Super AMOLED display. To say that this is one of the best displays ever made
(including the iPhone’s Retina display) wouldn’t be understating things in the
least. Like the Retina display, the text on the Galaxy Nexus is so free of
detectable jaggedness (even on extremely tiny characters) that it seems almost
painted on. The overall clarity of text on this display is shocking, and the
depth of black provided by the AMOLED technology is striking.
Now having said that, I didn’t find that the display was markedly better in
any meaningful way to the 800 x 480 display on my S2 LTE. Before you get
your knickers in a twist over that, let me clarify what I mean.
I pulled up identical web pages on both devices and I shrunk them enough to make the text so tiny that I had to rely on my ability to focus up close when I removed my glasses. This is a feat anyone with myopia (AKA short-sightedness) should be quite familiar with. I could read the ultra-tiny text on both displays, though the characters on the Galaxy Nexus screen looked much cleaner, obviously.
However, I’d expected
I’d be able to read much smaller text with the higher-resolution screen, but
that really wasn’t the case. The screen could indeed go to much smaller font
sizes and still render recognizable characters, but by then they were so small
that no one with normal human vision could ever hope to see them anyway. So
effectively there was no advantage to the higher resolution other than the
cleaner-look to the characters.
Pictures don’t look noticeably better either. Looking at a 5 megapixel image
(natively 2560 x 1920)
scaled down to fit the screen in question, I didn’t find that 1280 x 720 display
provided much more identifiable detail than the same picture displayed on
a screen with just 800 x 480. Unless you are looking at your screen through a
magnifying glass it is highly unlikely that you’d really be able to appreciate
the difference between the two photographs.
Don’t get me wrong, the Nexus display is stunning, and when examined very
closely it is astounding. However, in real-world day-to-day viewing I rather
doubt that most users would really be able to appreciate the difference. Present
apps don't take full advantage of the higher resolution, but perhaps once they
do things may change somewhat.
Camera: Many people have already complained that
the Galaxy Nexus only comes with a 5-megapixel camera, whereas many other
high-end Android devices (including Samsung’s own
Galaxy S II line) come with an
8-megapixel camera. Let’s begin by noting that megapixels are largely a
marketing gimmick and don’t necessarily result in better pictures. At the end of
the day, a 5-megapixel picture that has the same overall quality as an
8-megapixel picture is not inferior. Compared to the camera in my S2 LTE
however, the Nexus one does come up a bit short. It produces more noise and it's
pictures are less sharp.
My big issue with the camera in the Galaxy Nexus is that it appears to be IDENTICAL
to the one in the aging Captivate. This is based on careful examination of pictures
taken with both phones of the same subjects under the same lighting conditions. The noise is the
same, the color is the same, and the overall quality of the picture is the same.
In other words, it’s the same device (or as close as makes no difference). Now I
like the camera in the Captivate well enough, but I expected the imaging
device in the Nexus to be a cut above and at least a match to the camera in the
iPhone 4S or the Samsung Galaxy S II, but alas that is not the case.
Ice Cream Sandwich does make picture-taking easier by providing virtually
instantaneous shutter response, but this isn’t a Nexus-only feature and it should apply to
all future phones that get ICS. The same goes for the panorama feature. Besides
those two new twists, the camera app provided with ICS is uninspired. It
provides very few settings above and beyond the usual stuff like white balance,
resolution, etc, and so I’d be looking for a replacement for it
anyway. The camera apps provided by Samsung in their Galaxy S II line are vastly
superior (instant shutter response notwithstanding).
The Galaxy Nexus can shoot 1080p video at 30 frames per second, but don’t expect these videos to match those
from your camcorder or digital camera. The issue is the same with all current smartphone cameras in
that each frame of the video is a separate “photo” which provides none of the
transitional blur that makes professional video look smooth (even at lower frame
rates).
Additionally, the 1080p videos from the Galaxy Nexus are a bit jerky, suggesting
that the dual-core processor isn’t able to keep up with the video and has to
skip frames from time to time (especially when panning). At 720p the videos look
much smoother, and again almost identical to 720p videos shot with the Captivate
(though to be fair, the Captivate sometimes skips frames, which is no doubt a
result of having only a single-core processor).
To its credit however, the video app uses the entire sensor in all resolutions. It is common to use only the center pixels of the image sensor, which produces a less clean image, but requires less processing power. The Galaxy S II LTE uses the entire sensor as well, but not for 1080p videos.
RF Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
RF testing was performed primarily against my S2 LTE in HSPA mode. Both phones were tested
on the Rogers network in the same locations. Like the camera, it seems that the
RF components in the Galaxy Nexus are more-or-less identical to those in other
high-end Samsung phones. Subsequently the overall performance is virtually the same.
The L2 LTE is hardly a superior example of an HSPA radio, and neither is the
Nexus. As Howard Chui said in his review, the RF performance is average.
However, don’t confuse this with BAD. The performance is certainly acceptable,
but for a top-of-the-line smartphone, it is a bit disappointing.
Perhaps the biggest advantage to the Galaxy Nexus in
this department is its penta-band HSPA radio. In Canada that means the same
phone will work on Bell, Telus, Rogers, Wind Mobile, and Mobilicity. In
the US it means the phone will work on AT&T and T-Mobile.
Audio Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, an how to interpret it.
Yet again, we find that the overall audio quality is
suspiciously similar to that of the S2 LTE and the Captivate, suggesting that the same audio
components are being used. The earpiece is a bit quieter than the S2 LTE, but
a bit louder than the Captivate, but overall the sound
is so close that you won’t really be able to tell the
difference. Subsequently I’m going to borrow (for the most part word for word)
from my original review of the Captivate.
Tonal Balance: Compared to the
Nokia N95 (my phone prior to the Captivate)
some voices sound a little bit harsh, but others sound positively astounding,
and so this one is a bit difficult to call. The N95 sounded good, but if you
read my original review of it you’ll see that I was a bit leery of giving its
tonal balance unreserved praise. The same can be said of the Nexus,
but for slightly different reasons. I’ve been impressed with the tonal balance
of the Captivate (and hence the Nexus) far more often than I’ve been
disappointed, but I wish it had a bit more low-end.
Sound Reproduction: While the tonal balance was a
tough call, the sound reproduction was not. The Nexus is exceptional in this respect, beginning with its startlingly
natural reproduction of all nuances of speech. However, here is where the Nexus
definitely differs from the Captivate and S2 LTE, and not in a good way. While the
Captivate and S2 LTE have an eerie, almost total absence of background hiss and noise during a call,
the Nexus suffers from a fairly annoying dose of it. When I ran a call through
the stereo in my car the background noise was really noticeable.
Outgoing Audio: To test
outgoing audio I had Howard Chu (that’s HC – No “i”, and not the Howard Chui
who’d lent me the phone and runs HowardForums) call me from the Galaxy Nexus
and then from his Galaxy S II. I took both of the calls on my Nokia N95 so that
those calls were recorded (the call recorder in the N95 makes very high-quality
recordings).
We both felt that the outgoing sound on the Galaxy Nexus was slightly tinnier
than it was from the S II, but after I’d played back those recordings numerous
times (through my stereo) I decided that the difference was slight, at best. In the end, the Nexus
is pretty much the same as the other Galaxy phones offered by Samsung.
Loudspeaker: The single
speaker on the Nexus doesn’t match the quality and volume of the
stereo speakers on the N95, but very few phones can say that. The maximum volume
isn’t high enough to use this feature in much more than a moderately noisy room.
Fortunately the speaker works quite well in multimedia situations and it’s quite
acceptable for watching videos. I’ve even listened to music quite comfortably
using this speaker. Just the same, it could do with sounding a tad less tinny.
Support Features
Ice Cream Sandwich: The big feature of the Galaxy
Nexus (at launch at any rate) is that it’s the only phone that comes with Android 4.0 operating system. However, this exclusivity won’t last for
long and there may even be other Ice Cream Sandwich phones on the market by the
time you read this. For that reason I can’t really include any of the features
available in the new O/S as being reasons to choose the Nexus over anything
else.
Since my original review quite a few popular apps have been updated to work with
ICS, and so my original misgivings about the incompatibility of numerous apps is
no longer a concern. There are still a few things that don't work quite right,
but I suspect they'll be corrected in short order.
One aspect of Ice Cream Sandwich
(as implemented in the Nexus) that might disappoint some people is that WiFi
Direct isn't quite what they were expecting. While ICS is the first version
of Android to natively support an API for WiFi Direct, Google has not
actually implemented the API in any of the apps that come with the O/S. This is
in stark contrast to what Samsung does in their Galaxy S II line, in which
WiFi Direct is fully functional in their version of Gingerbread. A Galaxy S
II
provides mechanisms to share files over WiFi Direct, whereas the Nexus
does not.
As a pure Google phone however, the Nexus runs a completely unmodified version of Android, which
means rapid release of new versions and no manufacturer-added overlays (like
Samsung’s Touch Wiz interface). Depending upon your point of view
however, the latter point may not necessarily be a good thing. Witness the full
implementation of WiFi Direct on the Gingerbread in the Galaxy S II line, as
well as the above-average camera app also provided in those phones.
Data Speeds: Sadly the Galaxy Nexus you'll buy to use in Canada is not an LTE phone. There is an LTE model out there, but at present it supports only LTE and CDMA and will only work on Verizon in the United States. Given that there is presently no voice-over-LTE, you'd need to fall back to a different network technology to make voice calls. The LTE/CDMA model won't work with a UMTS network.
The Nexus does however support 21 megabit HSPA+, but as I noted in my review of the Galaxy S II, this isn't really a big deal, because to get HSPA+ speeds you need to be quite close to a site. If you aren't, the data speeds and ping times you'll see are virtually identical to a standard 7.2-megabit HSPA device. The highest speed I ever saw on the Nexus was just over 11 Mbps. On average, the speeds were in the range of 3 to 6 Mbps with ping times of around 100 to 140 milliseconds (which was no different than on my old Captivate).
Browser: The browser in ICS is supposed to be the best ever, but after comparing it to the one in the S2 LTE (which runs Android 2.3.5) I have my doubts about that. For starters, I discovered a rather worrisome problem with the browser and ping times. I ran side-by-side comparisons of the Nexus and the S2 LTE, both connected to my home WiFi. On the computer, tests reveal consistent ping times of 10 to 15 milliseconds. When I ran the Speedtest.com app on the phones I got approximately 20 to 25 milliseconds of latency on each. However, when I ran web-based speed tests (specially I used the one at speedtest.primus.ca) I found that the S2 LTE retained the 20 to 25 millisecond performance, while the Nexus turned in disappointing results of around 50 milliseconds. The test was repeated countless times to ensure it wasn't a fluke.
I was curious whether this increased latency would occur on an HSPA connection (where ping times are markedly poorer to begin with). I found that on average the Nexus browser added 25 to 30 milliseconds of latency to a connection compared to the S2 LTE, which is consistent with the results I got when making the tests over WiFi.
I'm not sure what it is in the browser that adds the increased latency, but the result is noticeably slower loading times of complex web pages on the Nexus vs the S2 LTE (when they are both connected through the same WiFi connection). It's unclear if the browser on the S2 LTE is stock Android or a modified version provided by Samsung. Regardless, the S2 LTE has superior browser performance to the Nexus, even though it runs an older version of Android.
For some reason the browser in the Nexus (and perhaps ICS in general) doesn't come with native support of Flash. If you're like me, you probably thought that meant you were out of luck. However, I installed the Flash Player from the Android Market and it worked just fine. Flash content that wasn't working before suddenly worked without a hitch. Go figure.
WiFi Performance: While I was performing the browser tests I noted above I discovered something troublesome about the WiFi. When I ran speed tests when I was quite close to the router both the Nexus and S2 LTE could turn in similar transfer rates. However, as the signal got weaker the S2 LTE could provide transfer rates that were up to 1.5 to 2 times faster.
This strongly suggests that the RF performance of the WiFi chipset in the Nexus, or the design of its WiFi antenna, is inferior to that of the S2 LTE. This is quite disappointing, because I suspect most use of the Nexus in WiFi mode will take place in a different room from the wireless router.
Storage
Space: Like the Nexus S before it, the Galaxy Nexus does not include a
MicroSD slot. This means you'll have to make do with the storage space that
comes with the phone, which in all likelihood will be 16 GB. There is reportedly
a 32 GB model, but that MIGHT be just the LTE/CDMA model sold by Verizon. If you buy a Nexus
then, you should be prepared to live with the approximately 13 GB that are free
for your use. Without the external card slot, you can't go beyond that.
Battery Life: I found the battery life on the Nexus
to be a bit of a mixed bag. In pure standby, with the screen off, the phone used
far less power than my S2 LTE, but that might merely have been because I didn't
have anywhere near the number of background apps running on the Nexus. When the
phone is actively used however, I found that it burned through battery power
a little quicker than the S2 LTE, even when that phone operated on the LTE network
(which is reportedly a battery killer).
In addition, the back of the
Nexus gets quite warm during prolonged used, while the S2 LTE doesn't seem to
get very warm at all. This might simply be due to the Nexus being thinner at the
top where the process appears to be located.
Audio Chipset: In previous iterations of this
review I'd stated that the Nexus, like the S2 LTE and the standard S
II
(and probably the Nexus S as well),
uses a Yamaha audio chipset for multimedia audio. However, I have since
discovered that the Nexus uses an audio chipset manufactured by Texas
Instruments.
This chipset produces
excellent audio when played through an amplifier and speakers, but it suffers
from slight (though certainly noticeable) ticking and popping sounds as you do
things with the phone while the chip is idle. This doesn’t seem to apply when
you are actually listening to music, but if you have earbuds on, or have the
phone connected to an amplifier while you aren’t playing music, you’ll hear
these sounds constantly as you do things with the phone. The Wolfson
Microelectronics chipset used in the Captivate doesn’t produce these noises at
all.
Conclusions
The problem with the Galaxy Nexus is that once you take Ice Cream Sandwich off
the table (because plenty of other phones will have this version of
Android in the near future) you’re left with just the hardware, and with the
exception of the high-resolution screen there really isn’t anything in the Nexus
that isn’t available, or is implemented better, other models. The 1.2 GHz dual-core processor is matched
by numerous other phones and there are models with even faster CPUs. The RF,
audio, and camera components appear to be identical to those used in the older
Captivate, and 1 GB of RAM is pretty much standard on high-end phones these days.
So throughout my extensive testing I went from wanting a Nexus to being glad I
opted for the S II LTE instead. I don’t blame Samsung or Google for this
state-of-affairs, but rather the rumor mill that turned this phone into
something it isn’t, long before it hit the market. This phone is NOT the
greatest thing since sliced bread. It is NOT the second coming of Christ. It is
just a very capable smartphone that is a natural progression from the model it
replaces. If seen in that light, the place it holds in the grand scheme of things becomes much
clearer, as should your head.
