Samsung Galaxy Nexus review

The Galaxy Nexus is the first smartphone to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which is Google’s attempt to unify the smartphone and tablet operating systems; instead of having separate versions, as happened with Android 2.3 Gingerbread for smartphones and 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets, Ice Cream Sandwich is designed for both types of portable devices. The new operating system also has a raft of new features, such as face unlock, app folders, browser sync, and a host of small improvements.

The interface is designed to be used without hardware buttons at all. The new Favourites bar, the software buttons for Back, Home and Recent Apps and the merging of the Apps and Widgets collections into one interface are the most obvious changes – you can now scroll through trays of Widgets to preview how they’ll look on your home screens.

Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0, is finally with us

Many of the more notable changes are behind the scenes and are aimed at developers rather than end users. Desktop scaling has been improved, so that the Android desktop and apps will display consistently across different screen sizes. A new system-wide font has been introduced as well as new screen furniture – for example, application menus are now found in the top-right or top-left hand corners of the application, and are denoted by a vertical broken line.

The Nexus is also an impressive piece of hardware, with a 4.7in 1,280×720 resolution screen and 1.2GHz dual-core processor. While it’s positively bristling with new technology, it looks rather plain, the texture on the back of the case providing the only distraction from otherwise smooth plastic and glass. Samsung claims the phone is 9mm thick, but like Motorola’s RAZR it tapers at one end into an 11mm bulge, and viewed from the side you notice the screen is slightly concave.

It’s a slender handset with a slight bulge towards the bottom

The Nexus is incredibly light for its size thanks to all that plastic, and is comfortable to hold; its curved shape makes it particularly easy to slip it into a pocket. There’s now a new way to unlock the phone’s screen – it will recognise your face and unlock for its owner. This is remarkably clever, distinguishing between members of the Shopper team quite convincingly, and even at odd angles it works instantly.

The screen’s large resolution means that, even on the 4.7in display, you won’t ever see a pixel – even the smallest text is pin-sharp. It’s not particularly bright, however, even at the highest setting, and we had to turn off automatic brightness which made everything too dark. At full brightness colours are vibrant and contrast is superb. The buttons for back, menu and home are now rendered in software, which takes up screen space, but the Nexus’ display is so large this never really bothered us.

Android 4.0 is very smooth on the Nexus, and this is one of the few phones that feels as slick to use as the iPhone – no doubt due to its dual-core processor, although each new Android version brings speed improvements too. A score of 2038ms in the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark means web browsing performance is impressive, but were expecting a better score; there’s often a speed jump in Sunspider with new Android versions, so we were surprised not to see a change here.

The new browser is fast and comes with some neat extra features

When using the OS the only time we were left waiting was when data was loading from the internet, and even previously-ponderous apps like Google Maps opened in record time. Games were amazingly smooth, when we could get them to run – unfortunately, not all are able to cope with the Nexus’ massive resolution, although no doubt most will be updated in the next few weeks. The Nexus’ battery life in our video playback test was just shy of seven hours, which is average for an Android smartphone.

The 5-megapixel camera produced photos that were sharp and colourful, with very little noise. There’s no image stabilisation, so you’ll need to use the LED flash for low-light shots, but even these weren’t particularly noisy. The phone also has a fun panoramic photo mode.

Videos can be shot in Full HD 1080p, and there’s even a video editor built in that lets you stitch shots together and add a soundtrack. Videos weren’t as crisp as they should have been, and panning was quite juddery, but colours and contrast were excellent, and once again there was little noise, except when we zoomed in. Performance in dark areas was exemplary, even without the LED flash turned on, with much less noise and smearing than we’re used to seeing. Our only complaint would be that you’re not able to operate the LED manually while shooting video to act as a recording light.

Most Android phones include a memory card slot, giving them an advantage over the iPhone, so it’s a shame the Nexus doesn’t have one – although 16GB storage is still a fair amount. The option to attach the Nexus to your PC in mass storage mode is also gone – instead, you get a choice of MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) or PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol), both of which mount the phone as a device in Windows Explorer, but with the added annoyance that when you transfer a file you often get a warning that the file won’t play on your device.

The ultra-minimal design doesn’t allow for a memory card slot

The fact that the Nexus is a Google phone means that it only ships with the standard Android apps, which means you get a decent set of core apps that can handle all the tasks you’re likely to need – browser, email, messaging, maps, calendar, music and social networking are included, although Google has missed a trick by not yet integrating its Google Docs product into this list.

You also don’t get a load of pre-installed apps chosen for you by a network operator or phone maker which you can’t uninstall – Android 4.0 adds the ability to remove these apps in any case. It’ll be interesting to see what software is bundled on future non-Google phones running Android 4.0 – HTC’s Sense and Motorola’s Motoblur add refinements such as automatic contact matching, for example. On the Nexus, you have to edit a contact and then choose the Join option to find duplicate contacts.

The camera is decent and you can access it directly from the lock screen

We liked the little touches that showed more of an awareness of user behaviour, like the fact that the clock stays on the screen once it’s locked, so that if you just want to check the time you don’t have to unlock the phone – you just have to press a button to turn the screen on. You can also unlock the phone straight into camera mode. The ability to drag apps onto each other to create folders will unclutter most Android home screens dramatically, and browser sync between the phone and Google Chrome on the desktop means you can take saved passwords and bookmarks with you.

The Galaxy Nexus is a superb and desirable handset, and Ice Cream Sandwich brings definite improvements. It’s the slickest Android experience yet, and only the slightly plasticky construction and fairly dim screen hold it back. If you’re after the best Android handset currently available, this is it, but you may want to see what the competition comes up with before you buy; the superb Motorola RAZR, for example, is rumoured to be getting the Android 4.0 upgrade early next year.