Samsung Galaxy Nexus & Ice Cream Sandwich Review
by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on January 18, 2012 1:34 PM ESTThe Galaxy Nexus - Hardware and Aesthetics
The evolution of Google’s Nexus line is an interesting one. Each year, Google choses both a silicon partner and an OEM to make a unique hardware archetype which it caters a specific build of Android to. We’ve now seen three Nexus handset designs from two OEMs and three silicon vendors - the Nexus One (HTC and Qualcomm’s QSD8x50), Nexus S (Samsung and Samsung’s S5PC110 ‘Hummingbird’), and today the Galaxy Nexus (Samsung and TI’s OMAP4460).
Looking at the hardware of those three handsets gives a great survey of the course the Android ecosystem has taken over the last couple of years. The Nexus One started things out with a 3.7” LCD, capacitive buttons, and hardware trackball. Nexus S then removed the trackball, added a curved 4.0” display, and ditched the microSD card slot. The Galaxy Nexus continues in that direction, increasing display size to 4.65” and resolution to 1280x720, and finally removing the capacitive buttons all together. Instead, the Galaxy Nexus uses a 96 x 720 region at the bottom of the display to visualize the navigational buttons, a move that has the consequence of also keeping the display interaction area aspect ratio close to that of WVGA.
It’s interesting to see how many of the design motifs set by the original Nexus One still have been thoughtfully preserved on the Galaxy Nexus. The notched chrome ring around the camera aperture has continued as a thread for three generations, as has the overall lightly rounded shape. The Galaxy Nexus also retains the chin from Nexus S backside where the speakerphone port and primary cellular antennas are located. In addition, the volume rocker, power/lock button, headphone jack, and primary microphone position from the Nexus S is unchanged.
The Galaxy Nexus’ backside is no longer the extremely slippery and scratch prone plastic that the Nexus S (and original Galaxy S) adorned, instead it’s a textured, lightly soft touch material. I’m always surprised by how much of a difference changing the backside texture makes on the overall in-hand feel impressions I come away with, and in this case it’s a major positive change. It’s clear that this is an evolution of Nexus more than a huge departure from what’s come before - if anything the Galaxy Nexus is like a larger, thinner, more refined Nexus S.
We’ve taken a look at both the CDMA/LTE (codename mysid/toro) and the GSM/UMTS (codename yakju/maguro) Galaxy Nexus variants.
The two differ beyond just the air interfaces they support slightly in the physical department as well, though the two share all the same other features (SoC, display, camera, etc.). The CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus is ever so slightly thicker than the GSM/UMTS Galaxy Nexus, though the difference is enough to be perceptible.
In addition, the two have the same exterior “titanium silver” color, no doubt the differences we saw earlier can be attributed to the difference between renders and the real deal. The other small detail is that the two use very different, non-interchangeable batteries - the GSM/UMTS variant uses a 6.48 Whr battery, the CDMA/LTE version gets a slightly larger 6.85 Whr battery. Both of these include the NFC antenna patterned the outside surface of the battery, just under the sticker.
Other than those subtle differences, Samsung has done a good job masking the challenges which underlie having two superficially similar phones with different cellular architectures. The two variants do feel different in the hand, but the difference isn't dramatic.
| Physical Comparison | ||||
| Apple iPhone 4S | Samsung Galaxy S 2 | Samsung Galaxy Nexus (CDMA/LTE) | Samsung Galaxy Nexus (GSM/UMTS) | |
| Height | 115.2 mm (4.5") | 125.3 mm (4.93") | 135.5 mm (5.33") | 135.5 mm (5.33") |
| Width | 58.6 mm (2.31") | 66.1 mm (2.60") | 67.94 mm (2.67) | 67.94 mm (2.67) |
| Depth | 9.3 mm ( 0.37") | 8.49 mm (0.33") | 9.47 mm (0.37") | 8.94 mm (0.35") |
| Weight | 140 g (4.9 oz) | 115 g (4.06 oz) | 150 g (5.3 oz) | 135 g (4.8 oz) |
| CPU | Apple A5 @ ~800MHz Dual Core Cortex A9 | 1.2 GHz Exynos 4210 Dual Core Cortex A9 | 1.2 GHz Dual Core Cortex-A9 OMAP 4460 | 1.2 GHz Dual Core Cortex-A9 OMAP 4460 |
| GPU | PowerVR SGX 543MP2 | ARM Mali-400 | PowerVR SGX 540 | PowerVR SGX 540 |
| RAM | 512MB LPDDR2-800 | 1 GB LPDDR2 | 1 GB LPDDR2 | 1 GB LPDDR2 |
| NAND | 16GB, 32GB or 64GB integrated | 16 GB NAND with up to 32 GB microSD | 32 GB NAND | 16/32 GB NAND |
| Camera | 8 MP with LED Flash + Front Facing Camera | 8 MP AF/LED flash, 2 MP front facing | 5 MP with AF/LED Flash, 1080p30 video recording, 1.3 MP front facing | 5 MP with AF/LED Flash, 1080p30 video recording, 1.3 MP front facing |
| Screen | 3.5" 640 x 960 LED backlit LCD | 4.27" 800 x 480 SAMOLED+ | 4.65" 1280x720 SAMOLED HD | 4.65" 1280x720 SAMOLED HD |
| Battery | Internal 5.3 Whr | Removable 6.11 Whr | Removable 6.85 Whr | Removable 6.48 Whr |
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CoryS - Thursday, January 19, 2012 - link
Guys, this is a NEXUS it is a dev device. That primary reason I got it was because of this...better hardware will be right around the corner...but we won't see another Nexus..especially on Verizon for some time.It is refreshing to have a community to fix issues OEMS ignore (yes even Apple) for a change. This is my first unlocked device, and i can't see myself ever going back to anything else.
medi01 - Friday, January 20, 2012 - link
Wake up, Smartphone market (worldwide):1. Samsung 24%
2. Apple 18%
Android vs Apple = 3 vs 1 and gap is raising.
Most people turn to apple due to FUD, like this article. Google "steppit out of the shade of its competitor" having three times Apple's market share and much more usable interface (try to quickly access settings like wlan/bluetooth/gps on ios)
steven75 - Friday, February 10, 2012 - link
LOL dont you get it? You don't *need* to fiddle with those settings on iOS necause the battery life is so dramatically better.Also, funny reading this comment after Apple's Q4 report where they dominated.
Omid.M - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link
I hope Samsung puts out this phone based on GN aesthetics but Exynos 5250 (plus MDM9xxx multi-mode/LTE modem) and blows away the competition.@moids
Chumster - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link
Could someone clarify on what GPU/CPU he was talking about coming in Q2 devices? Cray? Crate? It was hard to pick up on my headphones.mmp121 - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link
KraitRead below:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4170/qualcomms-annou...
Enjoy!
Conficio - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link
Really, Google can't survive once Walled Garden platforms like iOS gain traction.While it is nice to control the OS (Chrome OS) on PC like devices and nice to stick it to Microsoft, it is essential in the world of smart phones. Google clearly saw that Apple did the unthinkable, wrestle control of the phone's apps away from the networks. That is an existential thread for Google. If there is a billion PC users world wide, there is a multitude of smart phone users, sooner or later.
If a hardware manufacturer and OS provider like Apple (or Microsoft) controls the apps that can be provided to the phone and features, move from browser to apps on phones, then this is the end of (a profitable) google sooner or later.
From anther point of view, Google is a huge data center that provides you with data services on their computing power (and you pay for it with advertisement somehow). Apple is a hardware manufacturer that sees it necessary to control the software to deliver a good user experience. Sure, two different approaches to a smart phone OS.
hackbod - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - link
"Google clearly saw that Apple did the unthinkable, wrestle control of the phone's apps away from the networks."There is this weird thing I see expressed a lot, as if Android is a reaction to the iPhone.
It is not.
In this particular case, it is obvious: Android's SDK was made available a few months after the original iPhone was on sale, well before there was *any* native SDK for the iPhone. At that time Apple's very clear official policy was that web-based apps was the One True Way to create applications for their phone. There was no concept of an App Store, no phone apps except what Apple shipped built in to the iPhone, nothing wrestled away from the networks in that department.
If Android was a reaction to anything, it was to the current situation on desktop PCs, with one company controlling that platform, and being able to quite strongly dictate and control its ecosystem and thus large parts of the computer industry.
One of the goals of Android was to try to keep that from happening in the upcoming mobile industry, by creating an open platform so that everybody in the industry can compete as equally as possible.
(And an aside -- this also makes it funny to see the recent stuff going around about Google "losing control" of Android. Android was very much set up so that no one company, not even Google, could have anything like the control that Microsoft does over Windows. This should be pretty obvious to anyone who wants to actually write thoughtful articles on the topic and not just link bait.)
bjacobson - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link
Can you talk more about this? From Diane Hackborne's post here (https://plus.google.com/u/0/105051985738280261832/... it sounds like the "limitation" is memory bandwidth in that hardwares that are "laggy" are laggy because they can't render to the entire screen 2 and 3x per frame for all the overlays. Which wouldn't seem like so much of a Tegra2 limitation in my opinion considering it has the power to play games like Quake 3 at 1600x1200 @ 60fps (I think...right?). What are your thoughts?hackbod - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - link
I don't know about the performance of Tegra 2 playing Quake, but you need to be very careful when comparing the traditional 3d workload that GPUs are highly optimized to support (as exemplified by Quake) vs. the performance rendering 2d graphics.Traditional 3d games tend to rely, for example, on triangle rendering as much if not more than raw pixel fill rate, and GPUs are designed to be able to do that fast. When drawing 2d scenes, there are very few triangles but those triangles cover very large parts of the screen and are rendered as overlapping layers.
On all of the hardware I have seen, for 2d rendering raw memory bandwidth (determining the number of times every pixel can be touched per frame) is the #1 impact on performance.
Look back at that post -- for a typical scroll of all apps in launcher, without using overlay tricks (which aren't available on Tegra when the screen is rotated), you are looking at touching every pixels about 4 times to render all the layers and composite them to the screen. This is just not a typical 3D game workload.