I have larger than average everything, and the iPhone is the perfect size. 4" is pushing it, anything bigger is TOO big.
First, from your comments, it's clear that you've never even used a Galaxy Nexus, so your preconceived notions on what constitutes "too big" may not be accurate - the GNex is significantly more narrow than most phones with displays of that size. Two, this is completely subjective - my hands are by no means large, but I can quite comfortably hold and use the Galaxy Nexus.
I read about all these specs and power ... so where's the performance gain? It seemed slow, clunky and the OS unintuitive to me.
Specs and power are actually (somewhat) what it's
lacking. Many of us have lamented Samsung/Google's choices for internals in this thing, as the CPU, GPU, RAM capacity, and many other components are anything but state of the art.
I have never understood the "unintuitive" claims that Android usually evokes from iOS users. Personally, I chalk this one up to simply using a completely different OS architecture after knowing iOS like the back of your hand for years. Of
course it's going to seem unintuitive, everything is done differently. Personally, after using Android for some time, going to iOS felt "unintuitive" (read: foreign) for quite a while. Even now that I'm very comfortable with both, I feel that each has it's failings. To me, the employment of a "back" button is the most natural thing in the world - much more so than a button that simply takes me back to my home screen no matter where I press it. The lack of a back button and the fact that I need to go through three layers of settings screens (only after first going to my home screen and entering general settings) to get an app I'm using to behave differently is the furthest thing from "intuitive". Yet Android is usually the one faulted.
I feel it should also be recognized that in a OS that simply gives you more options (on the whole), there will naturally be more settings and commands commensurate to said options.
Not saying Android doesn't have it's faults (it does!), and iOS
is generally simple to use, but I still argue that it's
not more intuitive. After using her ipad for about 9 months (at least 1-2 hours daily), my wife had no clue she could press the home button twice and get the taskbar to come up. And stuff like this is intuitive?
Personally I'd disagree there with you. I've been using Androids for a while now and I find most apps are much better made on iOS, especially in terms of fit&finish. Android apps generally feel somewhat more crude and overall I feel it's just more pleasant to use iOS apps than Android ones in general.
On the whole, I agree. iOS apps generally seem to have more polish and in my experience, and they're less prone to crash and cause faults (though this is somewhat the fault of the OS fragmentation more so than the apps themselves).
On a somewhat related note, at the store I was again amazed by how responsive and fresh the Windows Phone devices felt, and how little attention they were getting by both the customers and by the clerks. After all the hoopla about ICS getting more polish and smoothness, I can almost (but not quite) feel for Microsoft's frustration for not getting traction with WP7. On the other hand, I just somehow don't feel the regular consumers will ever like Metro UI that much for whatever reason.
Windows 7 mobile does feel fresh and very slick, but the reasons I haven't considered it a serious contender yet are twofold: it seems even more "locked down" than iOS, and the apps REALLY aren't there yet. Plus, a serious lack of multitasking capability. Even faux-multitasking like iOS does it would be welcome
Hi Neon, thanks for the detailed write up and amazing video comparison. Was wondering if you could help me out with some questions regarding the Galaxy Nexus.
1. How does the speaker volume compare to the iPhone 4S for music and video playback.
2. Any noticeable difference in terms of audio quailty with IEMs.
3. How does the battery life hold out compared to the iPhone 4S. My usual day, consist of mostly web surfing on wifi when available, 3G otherwise. Reading of ebooks. Some music playback as well as checking and replying to emails. On a busy day my usage is about 6 to 7hrs with about 20 to 25% battery left. Will the Galaxy Nexus last me a whole day?
4. Is the Galaxy Nexus prone to crashing out and rebooting? If it is how often does it happen.
Thanks for the help.
My pleasure.
1. Sadly, the speaker (as in, the one used with the speakerphone, not the handset speaker) is very underwhelming on the Galaxy Nexus. Even at full volume it struggles to put out enough sound to be heard by a small group of people if there is any normal ambient noise. I understand there are work arounds with apps, but it's very disappointing. The iphone is definitely much louder.
2. I haven't tried IEMs, but all accounts seem to indicate the internal amp is slightly better on the iphone. After using the headphone out jack as an input to my car's aux input, I can say that it's definitely overdriven at anything above about 70-80% volume. I wish I could give an comparable data point for the iphone, but I cannot get the iphone to work in the same configuration on account of a very strange high pitched whine. I noted the problem in the troubleshooting forum here, but have found no solution. It's really annoying, and the only thing I can think that would be causing it is the metal construction of the iphone. I realize this doesn't answer your question 100%
3. If you're talking about 6-7 hours of screen time usage (which is how I interpreted it), then no, it's very doubtful the Galaxy Nexus will last the full day. I do a lot of ebook reading on mine too, and it's quite tolerant of that (especially if you use night mode), probably only taking 8-10% battery per hour, but emails, web surfing, and other such activities that use a bit more CPU/GPU on top of the screen drain the battery quite quickly. The GNex is very very good in pure standby, but I would estimate with a balanced mix of the activities that you describe, the internal battery would give out altogether after about 4-4.5 hours of use.
4. Definitely not. I've only had this happen once, and I think it was the app that did it (GrooveIP). Even so, I'm cutting it a little slack since ICS is so new. Apps need a chance to be updated. To be completely honest, I've had my iphone crash on me quite a few times. Once it froze up so badly (black screen, unresponsive to any button presses or even long button presses) that I thought I was going to have to send it for repair. Luckily my guess of "press all buttons and hold them for at least 20 seconds" seemed to do the trick and it rebooted.
