The Galaxy Nexus dethrones the Nexus S from the title of 'Google's latest flagship'. It's meant to be the 'beast' of all Android devices but the question is, does it really come with the right features to make it worthy of being titled as the best of the best?
Like most geeks, I was so eager to see this phone when it got delivered to our office a week ago (actually I shredded the packaging apart). Here's what came with the Galaxy Nexus:
- Galaxy Nexus
- 1750 mAh battery
- Head phones
- USB cable
- Wall charger adapter
- Manuals
The style of packaging is pretty standard and is what you would see from almost all high end smartphones. As you can see, it comes with the bare minimum. What ever happened to the days where manufacturers used to add extra goodies like pouches, car mounts, desktop cradles etc.
The screen on the Galaxy Nexus is by far the best I have seen (yes it's even better than retina). It has a large 4.65 inch Super AMOLED screen with a whopping 720x1280 resolution. Most phones with a screen that's bigger than 4.3 inches starts to become uncomfortable and awkward to hold (i.e. Razr, Galaxy S2), however the Galaxy Nexus is just fine. The lack of physical keys allow for the front to have a larger display without making the phone too big.
Moving along to the back rear of the phone, where the 5MP camera sticks out. Now for a flagship device, one would expect to the phone to come with a higher resolution camera, maybe Google and Samsung have their own reasons? But for now, it baffles me as to why they only stuck a 5MP shooter. It's not all bad in the video department, at least the camera is capable of shooting 1080p videos at 30 frames per second. Here are some sample shots and a video sample:
Despite the resolution only being 5MP, the Galaxy Nexus doesn't fail to deliver desired results. Basically, during day time the phone is capable of capturing images in stunning quality. We tried nit picking at the images to find any fault with the quality and there was nothing, I'm sure you can see that for yourself.
While images captured under sunlight are great, the indoor shots illuminated by the LED flash aren't so impressive. It's not the worst but it's not the best either, judge for yourself:
As you can see in the above photograph, the sunlight legibility of the display isn't all that impressing. It's not bad but it could be a lot better.
Moving along to the back rear of the phone, where the 5MP camera sticks out. Now for a flagship device, one would expect to the phone to come with a higher resolution camera, maybe Google and Samsung have their own reasons? But for now, it baffles me as to why they only stuck a 5MP shooter. It's not all bad in the video department, at least the camera is capable of shooting 1080p videos at 30 frames per second. Here are some sample shots and a video sample:
While images captured under sunlight are great, the indoor shots illuminated by the LED flash aren't so impressive. It's not the worst but it's not the best either, judge for yourself:
Moving on from camera quality, we come to the sound reproduction part of the review. The loudspeaker of the Galaxy Nexus could be louder than it is but the volume produced through headphones is just fine. The sound reproduction could be considered great for the average joe and even for some of you audiophiles out there (depending on the type of headphones you use of course).
So there you have it, a quick and easy review of the Galaxy Nexus. We've covered basically what most people are curious about in a phone - What comes in the package? How good is the camera? Is it good for music? Here's a list of why you should or shouldn't purchase this phone and hopefully it will help.
Why you should buy it
+ Top of the range Super AMOLED screen with a 720x1280 resolution
+ Dual core 1.2gHZ processor with 1GB RAM
+ Android 4.0 ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich)
+ Great day time shots
+ 1080p video recording
+ NFC capability
+ Excellent audio quality
+ Super slim profile at only 8.9mm
Why you may consider a different device
- Lack of expandable memory
- Camera is capable of capturing only 5MP photos
- Ice Cream Sandwich is still very young, therefore not all the apps will work properly yet
- No FM radio
- Battery life is below average
We hope you enjoyed reading this review as much as we enjoyed playing with the phone. Here are some pictures for you to look at:
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