Samsung Galaxy Nexus Malaysia Review

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We've had the good fortune of spending several days with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (previously and erroneously known as the Samsung Nexus Prime), and we've had a chance to get intimate with both the hardware, which is the work of Samsung, and version 4.0 of Android, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Display

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is big. It has a 4.7-inch Super AMOLED display, which is perfectly readable in bright sunlight, and is running at 1280x720-pixel resolution. It's clear and bright, and reproduces colours well.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Design & Build

The physical design of the phone is remarkably similar to its predecessor, the Nexus S -- especially from the front. In fact, if it weren't for the size of the handset and a slightly redesigned backplate, you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart at all.

It has the same slightly curved glass screen, the same oddly-placed headphone socket, the same power button on the side and the same featureless front. The aforementioned backplate feels good in the hand. It's textured with a diagonal checkerboard pattern that offers up some grip and is easily peeled back to reveal the (user-replacable) battery and the SIM card slot.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Processor

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is driven by a Texas Instruments 1.2GHz dual-core OMAP4460 processor, which is high-end but doesn't quite hit the heady heights that HTC does with the 1.5GHz dual-core Sensation XE. That doesn't really matter, though, because in our testing the Galaxy Nexus was happy to chew through most processing tasks that we threw at it without a problem.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Storage

Again, like the Nexus S, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus doesn't come with SD card support. Instead, there's 32GB of onboard storage that'll happily suck up the majority of the music, movies and apps that you want to load onto it. The on-board video player still isn't enormously capable in terms of file formats, but there's plenty of free alternatives in the Android app market that'll do the job nicely.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Apps

As a slight aside, when it comes to apps, once upon a time Android trailed the iPhone in terms of catalogue. Happily that's no longer true, and the few exclusives that iOS still retains are more than compensated for by the tendency for Android apps to be free and ad-supported, rather than costing money. There are even a few Android exclusives to be had now, most notably the mobile phone edition of Minecraft.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Camera

Back to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, however, we weren't blown away by the camera. It's not especially bad, just unremarkable, and with the significant improvements in that department between the iPhone 4 and the 4S, it's a little disappointing to see so little progress having been made in Google's newest flagship handset. Happily, you'll be distracted from the quality of the images by a sweep panorama feature that's new in Ice Cream Sandwich.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Battery

Then there's the battery life. Typically, when you review a phone, the battery life is about as good as it's going to get, because it's new. If that's the case with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus then purchasers will want to keep a microUSB cable close, because the big screen, and connectivity options sip a lot of juice. You'll get a full day's use out of it, just about, but woe betide you if you need to make a long phone call that day and you didn't bring your charger with you.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: Connectivity

Finally, it'd be unfair to not at least mention the other bonus goodies that you get with most Android phones but which aren't new in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The ability to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot is brilliant, as are the homescreen widgets, the free turn-by-turn navigation, the voice functions (which are almost the equal of iOS 5's Siri), the near-field communications support and the deep integration with Google's suite of web apps.

Conclusion:

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus isn't the most powerful Android phone around. It's not the most capable, either. But if you're after a "pure" Android experience, unsullied by the likes of Samsung's TouchWiz or HTC's Sense interfaces, then the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a solid choice.

Its massive display looks fantastic, but you pay the price in battery life, so don't expect to take it to a festival and have it last all weekend. Sure, you can turn off features like NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and synching to gain a few extra hours, but when other phones can take that in their stride and still last all day, it's a shame to see the Samsung Galaxy Nexus fall at that hurdle.

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