Nexus S and Android 2.3 Review: Gingerbread for the Holidays
by Brian Klug on December 14, 2010 4:08 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Nexus S
- Gingerbread
- Android 2.3
- Mobile
Performance
We’ve already seen that Hummingbird is a competent performer in the Galaxy S line of devices, but haven’t gotten to see how that performance changes with the updated Dalvik VM that 2.2 (and thus 2.3) brings. Android 2.3 doesn’t bring as big of a performance boost, and it’s hard to tell in the first place given the lack of any other Hummingbird devices running Android 2.2.
Regardless, performance overall is around where it should be. I’ve included numbers from the myTouch 4G which I’ve begun testing, and Vivek’s G2 as these show performance of the new 45 nm Snapdragons which is also competent. Adreno 205 comes close to but falls short of PowerVR SGX 540 in every case. Note that Neocore is now clamped by vsync across both the new Snapdragons and Hummingbird - those numbers literally are the cap.
We also continue to see the strong lead in Linpack from Qualcomm Snapdragon’s much faster FPU which neither of the A8s can catch. That said, Hummingbird does see a jump over the numbers it posts running Android 2.1.
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Alexstarfire - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - link
I've never heard of that despite owning a Captivate and spending quite a bit of time over in the Captivate forums on the XDA site.samven786 - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Alexstarfire how long have you owned a captivate?http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=7...
Segnaro - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Only time my phone randomly shut down was when I was using a 3rd party kernel.Murst - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - link
The samsung focus on the chart comparing the phones.... it also has a super amoled...Brian Klug - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - link
Fixed! Thanks!-Brian
GTO_GUY05 - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - link
Just curious as to why the Droid X included in the benchmarks is still running Andorid 2.1? Is there anyway to get some updated benchmarks with the Droid X running 2.2?SoulShadow - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - link
Great article but this part is bothering me..I use Swype on my Droid 1 and it has directional keys on a secondary keyboard, swyping from the the Swype key to the Sym key will bring up a directional pad with delete, backspace, backspace whole word and a bunch of other features, just thought i'd add that in :)
Yomi - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
I'm likely to finally join the smartphone crowd with a Nexus S, so I've been following the news. This is by FAR the best review. Well done.On the topic of the phone, sure the Nexus S isn't cutting edge hardware, but for someone who owns a dumb phone it doesn't look like a bad choice at all. No HSPA+ where I live and unlikely to come soon. Already with T-Mobile, but haven't been on a contract for years. Going to go no contract with this I think.
sabrewulf - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
Glad to help. I found it useful for the exact same reason you mentioned (connectbot)Starcub - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
The spec sheets say that the Nexus S has an FM radio but no RDS support for it. Were you able to test it? Is FM radio support still missing in Gingerbread, if so, would it be possible to download a third party app for it w/o having to hack the kernel or ROM?I don't know how AMOLED screens work, but in the world of LCD's blacks are not any less power hungry than whites. Moreover the animations would require processing power, so they're shooting themselves in the foot with those, especially with that wallpaper where the animation appears to serve no useful function.