Samsung Galaxy Nexus & Ice Cream Sandwich Review
by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on January 18, 2012 1:34 PM ESTThe standard Email app in ICS is an evolutionary improvement over what we saw in Gingerbread. The white text on a black background is now inverted to a much more modern looking black text on white background theme:
The UI and performance improvements give the email app a nice update, but there are some feature enhancements as well.
You can still select several emails at a time for starring, marking, moving or deleting. ICS no longer requires you to hit a menu button to bring up additional options or even to do something as simple as composing an email. All of the most commonly used functions are displayed at the bottom of the screen.
Deleting emails is still not as instantaneous as I'd like it. If you're deleting a small number of emails they'll all go at once after a bit of a delay, otherwise for long lists you'll see the emails slowly disappear.
In message view mode you can quickly reply to any message by tapping the reply arrow key, however to reply to all or forward a message you'll need to first hit the contextual menu button at the top of the screen (this is configurable, you can make reply to all the default action).
Quoted text in a reply is still neatly placed in a separate text box, which keeps your composition text box nice and clean. ICS adds support for quick replies, which are canned responses to emails that you define manually and can quickly insert.
Server side searching is finally supported, however it's fairly slow (slower than iOS at least). String matching in your search query also seems to be fairly strict so you'll have to make sure that the word(s) you're searching for are not immediately preceded/followed by other characters. You also can't specify where in the email (subject, address field, message text, etc...) you want to search, you just get a general search box.
Gmail
Among the other first-party applications that are new in Android 4.0 is Gmail, which receives an overhaul that closely matches the client from 3.x. The update includes a dramatic makeover that minimizes use of the menu button for interaction. Instead, there’s a row of icons along the bottom for refreshing, composing, searching, and tagging Gmail conversations. If you make selections this row of buttons changes appropriately to mark read/unread and archive/trash items as well. At the very top is a drop down pane for selecting the current label or other inboxes.
On a smartphone sized device, Gmail now looks and feels a lot like the client from Android 3.x, except with menu and organizing befitting a smartphone. The improvement is dramatic and manages to leave the 2.x client feeling old and unintuitive. The only unfortunate thing is that in the message view, Gmail still lacks pinch to zoom functionality, making looking at emails composed with lots of HTML difficult. This is something that people have been vocal about since the Gmail in Android 2.x which surprisingly still is present.
Minor gripes aside, the Android Gmail application in 4.x yet again sets the bar for the best native Gmail implementation. I can’t go back to the 2.x client, and in comparison the iOS Gmail client seems like a cheap facsimile.
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thecraw - Saturday, January 21, 2012 - link
couldn't stop laughing at that statement, sure no one is forcing you to use itunes, its your own problem if you want to backup your iproduct or upgrade your iOS etc.. yes no one is forcing you right...steven75 - Friday, February 10, 2012 - link
Have you never heard of iCloud? I mean are we in bizarro world here or is everyone really THAT clues on iOS 5?augustofretes - Monday, January 23, 2012 - link
I found comments like yours absolutely hilarious, because I don't own an iPhone, nor I'm interested on buying one, I'm perfectly happy with my Samsung Galaxy S II running CM9 ;-)You're not being objective, unless, of course, you only see your homescreen and never open any application.
The iPhone 4S is not perfect, I completely agree, but the interface is more fluid, this is fact, pinch-to-zoom is not a smooth, even on a GNex, as it on the 4S, but it's pretty smooth now.
Sorry mindless fanboy.
kebab77 - Sunday, February 5, 2012 - link
Serious performance boost for phones currently on Android 2.3.x:http://www.bestsmartphone.com/2012/02/05/android-4...
... Samsung Galaxy S2 still top of the pile!
macs - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link
My only suggestion is that there are some device that need a sort of priority for a review. Galaxy Nexus and ICS should be on this list like the Apple products (you already do that) and maybe a flagship WP 7 device like Lumia 800/900.We can wait a bit more for device like Razr, Lumia 710, various HTC, various Samsung,...
In 1 H 2012 my priority list will be Galaxy S 3, first device with Krait and Ipad 3.
Back at reading, I know this will be a good read!
Thank you
roedtogsvart - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link
Anand, just thought I'd throw this in there:For something like $25 (Verizon) you can buy an extended battery and gain an additional 250 mAh (1850 vs 2100) that adds basically no perceptible thickness to the device, though I did not precisely measure. Have you tested with the extended battery? I feel like it makes an already amazing phone even better.
Brian Klug - Thursday, January 19, 2012 - link
I managed to snag an extended battery for the RAZR review, but didn't get the chance to do the same with the CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus. I've seen that battery however, and it is a novel design - the back doesn't get thicker, just flatter (the whole phone is as thick as the bulge).We've seen pretty linear scalings before, so you can assume that extra 250 mAh will scale linearly as well.
-Brian
3DoubleD - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link
The task switcher is blazing fast on the Transformer Prime, so I'd say it's a Galaxy Nexus limitation and not an ICS limitation.Lucian Armasu - Thursday, January 19, 2012 - link
Anand didn't say it's an ICS issue either. He said it's a GPU issue, because older GPU's still can't handle HD resolutions very well, just like Tegra 2 GPU barely could, too.But I'm sure on lower-end ICS phones with lower resolutions, it should work faster, so it's not like every ICS phone will need a Tegra 3 GPU-level from now on.
GnillGnoll - Thursday, January 19, 2012 - link
He said it _could_ be a GPU issue. Something which I strongly doubt, it's not like the task switcher adds that much graphics load over rendering the normal UI.