We already gave our take of the Galaxy Nexus after 24 hours, which seemed to be thumbs up across the board. Has either of our minds changed after 48 hours? Lets see:
New devices always feel great after 24 hours, but as you get into the second day, the annoyances you found in the first day either start bugging you more or you forget about them altogether. There is also the possibility that new ones crop up. For me, the negative on this device is the hardware. As I mentioned in the 24 hour post, thankfully Samsung put a textured back on the Nexus or I don’t know that I could keep it. but the more I spend time with it, those little things come to light. For example, when using the speakerphone yesterday, I found myself missing the great Motorola hardware. These are things that don’t bother a lot of people, but to me, it keeps this phone from being what it could be. Combine Motorola hardware with this stock Ice Cream experience, and you might have the “Mother of all phones.” Maybe next year. Does this mean I’m ready to return it? Absolutely not. The bottomline is this is a pure stock Android phone, which to me, makes it the phone to have. Is it the phone to have for mainstream consumers? I will save that for my full review, but I will say that if the Galaxy Nexus came with Gingerbread, I’m not sure I would’ve ran out an bought it opening day. I continue to enjoy the newer features of Ice Cream Sandwich, but still find myself wanting to hit a different button at times. For example, I keep long pressing the home screen to install a widget. These are all minor issues and is expected. I’m also feeling the software is not as smooth as it should be. For example, when using the Twitter app, scrolling is very choppy. Again, this will be fixed and is minor, but is disappointing that these little things weren’t already worked out. Lastly, battery life continues to disappoint, but that’s what it is with LTE so we have to live with it. Sure, you can spend $25 on extended battery, which is a great deal, but that kind of stuff pisses me off. I don’t like spending $299 and being told if I want to make it “right” I need to spend an extra $25. Being a technology nerd, you learn to live with these types of annoyances to have the latest and greatest, and that’s what I will do. All in all, if you’re in the market for a new phone, this is the one to buy.
So after owning the Galaxy nexus for 48 hours, I was finally able to spend a bit more one-on-one time with the device and I still feel like this is the best Android phone to date with the Galaxy S II a close second. I have no real hardware complaints other than the fact that the buttons seem to stick out a little bit too much and are very easy to press. When holding the device in your hand it is very easy to accidentally hit the volume buttons and putting the phone in your pocket usually does the same. I am hoping that a case manufacturer will come out with a case that has a stiffer rubber over the buttons and makes them harder to press. As far as software and ICS goes, I was easily able to unlock and root the device and it took only a short amount of time and know-how. However, just to be safe, I enlisted the expertise of NASA Jim Farmer (below), another TA author, to oversee the process to be sure I was doing everything correctly. I am really loving the new Gmail app and widget, I use Gmail all day long and with the Galaxy Nexus it is purely an awesome experience. The new constant voice-to-text feature is simply off the charts. I love being able to dictate a message without all the annoying pauses, and the personalized speech recognition rarely makes a mistake. The new layout of Android 4.0 is one that many will have to get used to, but I have found that navigating the UI is fairly painless and some features are more user friendly than before. If you’re still on the fence about this phone, I suggest you go to a store and play with one for yourself. Another Talk Android author was seriously contemplating buying the phone at full retail price, but after testing it out for a while he wasn’t as hyped as he thought he would be. This phone will most definitely not be everyone’s cup of tea, but since it’s in its early stages I can only imagine the experience to get better over time and with new updates. Over all I am really pleased that I made the leap to the Galaxy Nexus and I have no qualms with recommending others to do so as well.
Now that I have had some time to tinker with this phone I have to say, it’s still the most amazing phone I have ever owned. I did a side-by-side comparison at my local Best Buy with the DROID RAZR SAMOLED screen vs the Nexus’ and I have to say that while the RAZR had a brighter screen, text looked fuzzy. I am still getting used to menu placements and various settings but I really like Ice Cream Sandwich. I rooted the device today and I have to say it’s quite easy to do. I am a little saddened by the 3G download speeds I have when downloading apps but I am sure we will see that fixed in a future update. I would recommend this phone to anyone in the market for a new one regardless.
So, 48 hours later and I think I’ve experienced much of what having a Nexus is all about. Currently my phone is unlocked, rooted, has wireless tethering (over bluetooth), and I have the full suite of Google apps, including Wallet. I’ve also climbed to 177 apps installed and still I haven’t seen any lag. Although, that isn’t completely true…my first attempts at flashing Wallet and changing permissions, xml, etc. trashed my phone enough that I decided I should restore it from a Nandroid backup. It’s lock screen had become unresponsive and Wallet was force closing even when I wasn’t trying to load it and the boot time had become dismal. Rather than using my Nandroid backup, however, I opted to try out another Nexus feature: flashing from the stock images Google provides. It was a really easy process and within minutes my phone was just as new as the morning I got it. A few more minutes and I was rooted again with clockwork mod. As much as I loved to toy with my older phones. I feel this phone was simply made for me. The device has continued to run in tip top shape. I’m not experiencing any signal issues, or stutter of the UI. So as I said in my 24 hour response, having found nothing essentially wrong with the device, I can only point out things I miss or would like to see. First of all I still sincerely miss the vertical 4D app tray which I could traverse from top to bottom in one quick swype. I have 177 apps on this thing remember. I also miss the menu button on the home screen, but only for the quick access to settings. Having it in the notifications pull down is probably no slower, but I’m not used to it. I also wish they had gone ahead and put some toggles in the notification tray for features like WiFI or GPS. I don’t like having to use a widget for those trivial actions. So something I would like to see. First and foremost, an update to the camera via lockscreen. It was a great idea to quickly reach your camera from the lockscreen, but in practice, its just stupidly slow. It has to go to your homescreen first before opening the camera. Hopefully we’ll see that fixed. I’m also hoping to see app developers quickly get on the bandwagon. I’ve had some of my favorite apps not even start, which is perfectly understandable, but I can’t help but hope I get them back soon, and while they’re at it hopefully they increase the resolution of their icons because apps like camera, people, & phone make surrounding app icons simply look blurry. As you can see I’m going so far as criticizing app icons just to find some flaws on this device. That being said, it still receives my top recommendation to anyone who asks about getting a new phone, especially if they are at all tech inclined. There are some other phones on the shelf right now that I sincerely like the look and feel of, though I like that of the Nexus as well, but those phones just don’t have the software kicks to match and likely they never will. Android 4.0 was made for this device and I doubt any other phone is ever going to match its performance as a whole as a result. My final statement: This is the best Android phone on the market today, hands down.