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
Speakerphone, Voice, Battery
So I mentioned earlier that the Nexus S speakerphone is a bit quiet when calling with SIP VoIP. I think that’s an understatement - it’s extremely quiet when making a SIP call. Again these tests are the same way we’ve run all our other speakerphone tests - 6” above the device with our USB datalogger.
The Nexus S is louder than the Nexus One for normal calls, however. Speakerphone at maximum volume has a bit of distortion, but one volume notch down it goes away entirely. I thought speakerphone voice quality was very good. Earphone volume is acceptable if a tad on the quiet side, but then again I think the same thing for nearly every other handset. Voice quality on the earphone is exactly what I’m used to for UMTS voice. There’s software noise cancellation for video, but I can’t locate a second microphone on the Nexus S for noise cancellation in calls. Having that second microphone was a big deal for the Nexus One, so I’m surprised it’s absent in the Nexus S - if it’s there, I at least couldn’t find it.
Battery life on the Nexus S is actually shockingly close to the Nexus One. So much so that it’s honestly scary in the case of 3G and WiFi browsing time. 3G Talk time on the Nexus S is far better than the Nexus One. We of course ran our normal suite of tests for 3G and WiFi browsing time, loading through a couple dozen pages with the screen at 50% brightness, extraneous processes killed using a task killer, and the display on. For the talk time test, we play music at both ends, allow displays to sleep, and take the total talk time. I noted that the Nexus S fell back to GSM voice three times, each time I reinitialized the call after the Nexus S reacquired UMTS. I’m going to run this test again and update if necessary - just know that’s what happened if these numbers change.
The Nexus S includes a slightly bigger battery than the Nexus One (5.55 Whr versus 5.2 Whr). I’m a bit surprised battery life didn’t improve just a bit more between the two.
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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.