Samsung Galaxy Nexus & Ice Cream Sandwich Review
by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on January 18, 2012 1:34 PM ESTThe Keyboard
The stock Gingerbread keyboard was a significant step forward, but the ICS keyboard is really good. I don't know that there's much that's truly groundbreaking about the ICS keyboard, but it's at the point where short of Swype for those users who care about it, I would be very disappointed to see any third party keyboard replacements from HTC, Motorola or Samsung.
The basic layout hasn't changed from Gingerbread, although there are a few subtle differences. You get the same standard four row keyboard with two alternate modes (numerics and symbols). Where the Gingerbread/ICS keyboards differed from the standard iOS or Windows Phone keyboard is there's a fifth row of punctuation keys by default above the rest of the keyboard. This fifth (or first, depending on how you look at it) row actively changes into a list of predicted words. The word in the center is what the autocorrect engine believes you're typing, while the words on the left/right are alternates. While Gingerbread allowed you to scroll horizontally on this row, the items are fixed in ICS. As a consolation, you can bring up additional autocorrect suggestions by tapping and holding on a word in the prediction row. Accented characters are available by pressing and holding on keys that can be accented. Popup menus also exist for punctuation and the smiley key.
Keypresses are still accompanied by a magnified duplicate of the key itself. Unlike in Gingerbread where the magnified key hovered unconnected, the ICS keyboard connects the magnified key to the key itself. In my opinion this makes the keyboard look less chaotic when you're typing very quickly. Rather than giving the impression of random letters flying around everywhere, the animation serves its intended purpose better: letting you know what you just hit.
There's also a hidden Android Keyboard debug settings pane with some different themes that can be selected.
| Gingerbread vs. Ice Cream Sandwich - Keyboard & Autocorrect | ||||
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Quick Punctuation |
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| Autocorrect |
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| Autocorrect |
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Facial Recognition
Android has historically offered multiple options to secure your phone or tablet. Ice Cream Sandwich continues the trend. You can choose a basic PIN with a minimum of four numbers and a maximum of 17. There's an alphanumeric password option, simple slide to unlock and no security at all. ICS adds a new option to the list: Face Unlock.
The feature is exactly what it sounds like. ICS can store a photo of your face and use it as authentication for unlocking your device. While you only need a single picture to start, Google recommends taking multiple photos in different lighting conditions, with/without glasses and with a clean vs. unshaven face if applicable. As a backup you have to provide ICS with a PIN in case it can't recognize your face (either due to lighting conditions or because of a recent tumble down some stairs).
Google warns that someone who looks like you would be able to unlock your device, making Face Unlock less secure than a long PIN, pattern or password. Admittedly a thief would have to either be really lucky or know what you look like to fool the technology, but it is a valid point.
The feature actually works surprisingly well in practice. With Face Unlock enabled the lock screen has a front facing camera live view window that you're supposed to use to center your face. With the exception of really bright (with the light shining into the camera) or really dim scenarios, Face Unlock worked for me almost every time. When it works perfectly using your face to unlock the phone is extremely quick. In the right conditions I've seen ICS unlock itself a split second after I even saw my face on the screen. On average though the process is slower than typing in a PIN or using any of the other unlock methods. Furthermore, if you use your phone a lot at night (especially in cars) you have to hit the power/lock button then tap the lock icon to circumvent Face Unlock and go directly to your PIN/password/pattern. Finally, don't try to use Face Unlock to unlock your phone while driving - that's a recipe for bad, or worse, death.
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sjankis630 - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - link
I can comment that my Galaxy Nexus' black is as black as midnight to a blind man.The only time I see some grey type tones is when the website is colored that way.
walkman - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
That was a shocking detailed and informative review -- It's the sort of article that makes Anandtech my first choice for tech reviews.- The article mentioned new processors just around the corner. Was this referring to any processors other than Krait? I haven't heard any news about Krait since November PR -- Are we looking at April or June? And do we think anyone besides HTC will use Krait?
Omid.M - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
Processors around the corner:Krait
Tegra3
OMAP5
Exynos 5250
It's going to be a bloodbath for the next 12-18 months.
If iPhone 5 uses the MDM9160 (?) modem with LTE, I'm jumping on that. Tired of tweaking battery life on my Thunderbolt. Not sure I want to do the same with a Galaxy Nexus LTE.
And what's this I'm reading about connection issues / dropped calls on the VZW Nexus? Ridiculous.
Rictorhell - Monday, January 23, 2012 - link
I am a big fan of this site and I read the reviews and articles all of the time and I find them very informative and useful, but, I have a request.When a review is written, particularly about a certain smartphone or tablet, it is mentioned whether the device has an SD card slot and you always tend to differentiate between whether it is a “full-sized” SD slot or a “micro”SD slot. That is useful to know, but there are several actual types of SD cards available, each with a different maximum storage capacity, and you don't specify in your reviews which types of SD cards are actually supported by the device being reviewed and I think that is a bit of an oversight.
To the best of my knowledge, standard SD cards only have a maximum capacity of up to 2gb, while SDHC cards can go up to as high as 32gb, and SDXC cards, while only available right now in sizes up to 128gb, are supposed to theoretically be able to be manufactured in sizes up to 2tb.
There is a huge difference in size between 2gb, 32gb, and 128gb. Given that smartphones and tablets have substantial built in limits as far as storage capacity, I think it would be very helpful to know which type of SD card is supported by which device, if that is possible.
If I read two reviews about two different Android tablets and both reviews mention that both cards have a full-size SD card slot, as a user with a lot of media files, I'm going to be interested to know if one of those tablets can support SDXC cards while the other one cannot.
I consider that to be a major feature, to me, just as important as battery life. If you do reviews of tablets and smartphones, or even ultrabooks, and neglect to specify how much storage potential these devices have or do not have, you are making it very easy for the hardware manufacturers to simply put in second rate storage and format support, knowing that it will not be covered in reviews by sites like Anandech. Not only is this going to stunt the evolution of these devices but it's also going to mean less options for consumers.
Anyway, thank you for your time.
peevee - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - link
Anand, please include OS version number (and carrier when applies) in the charts for performance and battery life tests. They make huge difference, as browser speeds improve, they consume less CPU time and less energy when browsing.For example, the discrepancy between iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S looks outsized and probably is the result of testing iPhone 4 with iOS much older than the current version, probably not even 4.3, and 4S with iOS 5.
skinien - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - link
What a review!!! I'm not in the market for a new hone right now, but when the time comes, I'll be looking here for a review on prospective phones. GREAT WRITE UP!sonicmerlin - Thursday, January 26, 2012 - link
I'm sorry, but you're ignoring the fact that ICS STILL lags. If you load up a heavy site like theverge, try scrolling around while the site is loading. Your entire page stutters and freezes until everything is done loading. ICS also lags more as you load more apps onto your phone, just like all previous versions of Android. Also notice how all UI elements are flattened when pages are rendered. Try zooming in or out. The new page info appears all at once, rather than pop up individually as in iOS and WP7. This can result in lag on heavy sites.For whatever reason tech "nerds" don't seem to notice the very obvious fluidity issues. Yes once you've loaded up a site it's easy to pan around, but people don't sit there patiently waiting for websites to load. Nor do they appreciate the frequent microstutters due to garbage collection issues, or the massive standby battery drain issues that tons of Android phones experience. And even the basic phone UI itself still lags behind your finger, demonstrating an irritating rubberband affect.
It's stupid. Android will never stop lagging until Google rewrites the OS to give the UI thread priority, instead of putting it at the same level as app priority.
rupert3k - Friday, January 27, 2012 - link
Learned loads from reading this, really impressed with how far Android has come.The stuttering when scrolling, zooming or browsing always annoyed me, stoked to learn ICS is fully accelerated.
One wonders if we'll see any Motorola Nexus style devices once Google settles into their new ownership. Be nice to see a Motorola this nice!
Hope we see high dot pitch Android devices to combat Retina, not happy with AMOLED at present it seems a bit yellowy & over saturated to me, surely LG or Samsung can also spec Retina style IPS or at least offer the choice between AMOLED & IPS 330dpi.
Bring on the Quad high DPI Android & iOS tablets!!
bruce3777a - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
Hi,Please bear with me:)
If a phone was upgraded from Gingerbread to ICS and It appears to be able to still work with the apps from many banks
It seems like these apps were not compatable with tablets running honeycomb so it was necessary to just use the browser.
If a tablet is upgraded from Honeycomb to ICS, or if a new tablet is purchased that has ICS would/should that automatically make it compatable, or is there still something that the banks would need to do to make it universal to both phones and tablets that use ICS. Thanks in advance for any insight.
Lucian Armasu - Monday, January 30, 2012 - link
I think I figured it out. I just saw this:http://score.nena.se/nenamark/view?version=2&d...
And I remembered it's not the only time I see 1196x720 pixels being rendered in a benchmark. Anand, if you're reading this, could it be because the buttons are NOT rendered by the GPU, and instead are rendered by those Cortex-M3 2D cores? They would have to render much fewer pixels, but they are also much slower than the GPU, and also pretty old tech I think.