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
Baseband and Cellular
On the far left side of the Nexus S is another region with the indicative flex/tape appearance that belies an antenna. From experimentation, this region is for WiFi and Bluetooth. The active region for the cellular region is at the very bottom of the Nexus S, as it is with the overwhelming majority of other phones.
We ran our normal suite of attenuation tests on the Nexus S and compared to the rest. The Nexus One had a mini antennagate of its own back when it came out, no doubt Google and Samsung both wanted to avoid a similar situation with the Nexus S. The table says it all - attenuation from holding the device is in line with the 15 dBm or so we’re used to seeing. There aren’t any attenuation issues with the Nexus S.
| Signal Attenuation Comparison in dB—Lower is Better | |||||||
| Cupping Tightly | Holding Naturally | On an Open Palm | |||||
| Nexus S | 13.3 | 6.1 | 4.3 | ||||
| Samsung Fascinate | 10.0 | 5.0 | 0.0 | ||||
| Droid 2 | 11.5 | 5.1 | 4.5 | ||||
| BlackBerry Torch | 15.9 | 7.1 | 3.7 | ||||
| Dell Streak | 14.0 | 8.7 | 4.0 | ||||
| Droid X | 15.0 | 5.1 | 4.5 | ||||
| iPhone 4 | 24.6 | 19.8 | 9.2 | ||||
| iPhone 3GS | 14.3 | 1.9 | 0.2 | ||||
| Nexus One | 17.7 | 10.7 | 6.7 | ||||
I did notice however that the Nexus S likes falling back to EDGE from UMTS and HSPA a whole lot. I’ve only had a limited time to play with T-Mobile’s 3G turned 4G network, so I’m not crying foul, but I did notice that voice calls often migrate over to EDGE if you’re in marginal (but not awful) UMTS coverage, and data does the same from time to time. During my battery life call tests, I had to re-initiate the call three times due to the Nexus S falling from UMTS (3G) voice to GSM and not wanting to pollute data. Signal in my office is admittedly on the lower end at -91 dBm, but still within an acceptable range. The phone will automatically hand back on to UMTS, then to HSPA after a while, but the fallback to EDGE seems much more aggressive than I’ve ever remembered any device being.
I’ve run over 100 speedtests in the short three or so days I’ve had the Nexus S in my HSPA+ enabled T-Mobile market. I saw maximum throughput of 5.1 megabits/s down, 0.64 megabits/s up and average speeds of 2.55 megabits/s down, 0.51 megabits/s up over that time using the Speedtest.net application to a sever in the same city.
The Nexus S is a tri-band HSPA device and quad-band GSM device as shown in the table above. Just like the launch-day Nexus One, the Nexus S won’t work on any 3G in the USA except T-Mobile. You’ll get EDGE if you stick an AT&T SIM inside.
| Nexus S - Network Support | |||||
| Tri-Band HSPA | 900 / 1700 / 2100 MHz | ||||
| Quad-Band GSM/EDGE | 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz | ||||
| HSDPA/HSUPA | 7.2Mbps / 5.76Mbps | ||||
When the Nexus One came out - before I signed on with AnandTech in this capacity - I wrote that the problem with the Nexus One concept was that the hardware didn’t have a pentaband UMTS radio. The promise was completely carrier-agnostic phone shopping, yet the only choice you could get with 3G UMTS/HSPA support was T-Mobile. Of course, an AT&T version came later, but the problem remained - hardware wasn’t carrier agnostic, so how could the promise ever be a reality? I’m disappointed that the same thing applies to the Nexus S, although this time around there’s no guarantee we’ll get an AT&T version at all. There are obvious engineering challenges to building pentaband UMTS/HSPA hardware, but if Nokia can do it with the N8 and a select few other phones can pull it off, it can’t be that hard.
The other thing on everyone’s mind is how much HSPA+ 21.1 differs from HSDPA 7.2 or 14.4 in practice. Well, I’ve been sitting on a myTouch 4G for a while waiting for some T-Mobile service to test with, and in comes a Nexus S with a T-Mobile SIM card. Naturally, I carried the two with me and ran tests at almost the same places. The results are pretty interesting. On the myTouch 4G, I saw maximum throughput of 7.18 megabits/s down, and 0.66 megabits/s up, with an average of 2.75 megabits/s down, and 0.56 megabits/s up.
The subtle difference in most cases actually makes sense. The difference between HSDPA 14.4 and HSPA+ 21.1 is just a change in modulation from 16-QAM to 64-QAM. The symbol rates for those two are the same, they just differ in the modulation scheme by a factor of 4 more decision points. Since 64-QAM requires better SNR over 16-QAM, we really only see that modulation scheme when we’re close to the tower. When that’s the case and SNR is really good, HSPA+ of the 21.1 sort does pay off, and you get impressive speeds such as that 7.18 megabit/s speedtest. However, when you’re even just half way out of the cell radius, SNR is most likely no longer good enough for 64-QAM to maintain an acceptable frame error rate, and you’ll fall back to 16-QAM just the same. In reality, HSPA+ only becomes super interesting when MIMO is added into the picture, and even moreso when dual-carrier links are added. MIMO lets us multiplex the signal spatially, and multi-carrier effectively aggregates carriers together for a faster link.
WiFi range on the Nexus S is what I’m used to seeing for smartphones. I make it to the same place right at the curb with the Nexus S as I do other devices. The Nexus S has 802.11 n/b/g support, and I saw it connect at 72 megabits/s on my 802.11n network. In testing, the Nexus S downloaded our local 100 MB PDF over at 15 megabits/s over WiFi.
Rounding out this section is a note that the Nexus S suffers from none of the GPS issues that plague the Galaxy S. I tested thoroughly - fixes are fast and accurate over GPS and work like they should using Google location services with WiFi trilateration.
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Zingam - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
I agree I have a nokia and the phone jack is on the top side. I have wished many times that it is on the bottomcece74 - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
I also miss the trackball on my Galaxy S.But I now use Swiftkey , a pretty good keyboard, and it also have arrow keys (press "123" then symbols : {&= key) to see it.
JimmiG - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Basically a Galaxy S (which was basically a Nexus One with a better screen and faster GPU), with a few extra features, unlike the Nexus One which was pretty revolutionary for its time.Of course, the Nexus One isn't even a year old, which isn't such a long time.. but sometimes it feels like the N1 was released in another decade considering how fast things have moved. I hope the Nexus 3 or whatever at least as a dual-core out-of-order CPU and other improvements.
blueF - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Well I purchased my Nexus S, and am very pleased with the phone. Scrolling is not as smooth as I was lead to believe, but still glad I purchased one.bobshute - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Brian, are you sure on the 3G radio.The T-mobile Samsung Vibrant radio, although not advertised, is at least Quad band
It has the 1900 radio on by default for 3G on AT&T.
You can also turn on the 850 band in the service menu although it's not confirmed to work in 850 mhz only areas of AT&T coverage.
Voldenuit - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
>Don't you usually have your phone in your pocket upside down anyway?Not if it's in the shirt pocket. Or jacket inner pocket. Or on a belt holster.
I'm a lot more likely to use a headphone with the phone in these places rather than in my pants pockets, where walking, sitting or standing up is more liable to crush/damage the headphone jack.
Inuit - Saturday, December 18, 2010 - link
A new on-screen keyboard for Android from Keypurr has directional keys, and it is in the main screen (no need to flip to another screen). I am using Keypurr on my Galaxy S - and love it!In addition, it has large keys (almost twice as large as the standard keyboard) and very clever and up-to-date dictionary. I can type on it as fast as hardware keyboard, or type one handed. It also comes in black or white skins, has function keys, and more. I think Keypurr has some good short videos on their site: www.keypurr.com
keypurrtech - Sunday, December 19, 2010 - link
Keypurr is a new Android keyboard that uses a full QWERTY layout with keys that are are almost twice the size of other onscreen QWERTY keyboards. It also has a dictionary that includes abbreviations, acronyms, and words borrowed from other languages. Best of all for Nexus S users (and anyone who's phone doesn't have a trackpad) it includes customizable function keys that can be used as directional controls.Keypurr allows users to type with greater speed, confidence, and ease, than any Android keyboard! Check out our website: www.keypurr.com or our youtube channel: www.youtube.com/keypurrtech to learn more.
teohhanhui - Monday, December 20, 2010 - link
"... people want carriers to provide first-party support for devices, and people want to play with devices in stores before making the jump ..."I wouldn't consider a carrier as the first party when it comes to providing support for phones (there is no doubt that they are the first party when it comes to network issues). As it stands, carriers are only worsening the experience by slapping on unwanted customizations and hindering roll-outs of OS updates.
What is stopping you from "playing with devices" in a retail store (either by manufacturer/OS vendor/authorized reseller)?
IMO the real reason for the prevalence of "carrier subsidies" seems to be consumers preferring to pay by installment, or simply unaware of the fact that they end up paying more in the end.
ravenfq - Tuesday, December 21, 2010 - link
I'm always disappointed to find that no reviewers mention the fact that Android doesn't support WiFi proxy 'out of the box' - any suggested solutions to this lack of functionality require that the user 'root' their device, which is not necessarily acceptable to everyone (for all sorts of reasons).This lack of functionality precludes student usage on campus, and crucially (in my opinion) any corporate in-house 'managed' usage, where any WiFI authentication is a pre-requisite.
As a CIO, I'm forced to eliminate Android-based devices from consideration as a corporate standard, and constrain my options to Apple, Microsoft and (hopefully) any upcoming HP WebOS-based devices.
This is deeply disappointing to me personally, as I applaud any attempt to separate the OS from the hardware, liberating hardware manufacturers to compete and innovate, and thus giving us, the end users, ever expanding and increasing capabilities in a portable device. I had high hopes for the relatively open Android environment in this regard.
I would also refer you to this (somewhat emotive) link that outlines the issue in more detail:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=...
Thank you, Anandtech, for what is otherwise superb technical journalism.