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Galaxy Nexus Review

theverge.com

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Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#31

Post by matheusalmeida »

eavc wrote: post #11
matheusalmeida wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who thinks that a 10/10 is... let's say, hard to believe ? What does that mean? In terms of software, it doesn't have bugs, it's completeley optimized and you have days of battery life and tons of available memory ? Is the integration of all functionalities perfect ? You don't need task managers to kill faulty apps ? Anyhow, we are in a free world where everyone can make reviews and I'm glad we are…

You're not the only one hung up on it, no. But I don't see anything strange about a 10/10 score. It doesn't imply perfection, only relative excellence. This is how it's always been with game reviews, for instance. A video game released in 1996 gets a 10/10 because it's better than other games yet seen. The same game released today would get panned. It doesn't imply any claim to absolute perfection.

You're right about relative excellence. The thing is that a 10/10 implies that it must have a better UI/UX than an Iphone and better looks compared to a Windows Phone 7 (Mango) and better security/encription compared to a Blackberry. I find hard to believe that it will be at least as good as the competitors in a generic term like software.

I'm a happy owner of an Android phone that will probably receive an update to ICS so I'm looking forward to it.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#32

Post by ugh »

glimcat wrote: post #15

Complains about the camera's sensor, blames the lens. Wait, what? And what is objectively wrong with it? The big red text complains about "color reproduction" - does this guy know anything about photography? Neither camera is color-calibrated, that's what Lightroom is for.

I think he means white balance. And since both cameras don’t output raw files Lightroom won’t help you (much) with that. Besides: Consumer cameras should generally have a good automatic white balance since the vast majority of people will never bother to manually tweak.

That whole sensor/lens mixup is probably an honest mistake. He was talking about software vs hardware and not really going so much into detail as that making a distinction between sensor and lens would matter. He was talking about the whole sensor and lens package as a whole.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#33

Post by polshaw »

I can't believe how much everything is still framed around the iphone. I think its crazy to call this phone just 'competetive' with the iphone 4S; especially the screen-- it is clearly a significant step up IMO. ICS is surely at a point where it can, currently, safely be considered to be ahead of iOS- especially in its unadulterated 'nexus' form. And whilst pentile isn't perfect, its 720p FFS. If that wasn't enough OLED gives it vastly better blacks, contrast, and potentially power consumption too, not to mention the fact that it's bigger. Unless you happen to have an irrational love for iOS the iphones camera is the single area where the 4S beats out the nexus (perhaps some app availability, but that works both ways). Oh the curse of being one of the 100 phones vs 1.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#34

Post by joebadmo »

ugh wrote: post #19
juliano_q wrote: post #2

Quite impressive. 10 for performance and software (iPhone 4S received 8 and 9). The device seems to be very good, but ICS is the star here. I am eagerly waiting to receive the update at my Nexus S.

Talking purely about looks: The look is a massive improvement over Honeycomb with its terrible 1980s future look (and quite obviously so much better than anything Android offered before). I still prefer iOS on tablets (I like the changes Apple made for the iPad and I also think that for some strange reason iOS visually works better on tablets than phones) but on smartphones there are now two OS – WP7, too – that look…

Completely agree that it's a massive improvement over Tron-inspired Honeycomb.

Also agree that the UX looks massively improved as well. It always felt like features and ugly shininess took precedence over UX before, but it seems like Duarte is having a good influence here.

On crapware, one of the announced features for ICS is that you can disable (meaning stop from running and hide from app drawers and home screens) any app from system settings.

The sort of obvious thing (to me) for them to do going forward is to platformize Android better, so that manufacturers/vendors can differentiate by adding UI components, etc. in a modular way that's easy to turn off, and easy to update around. I.e. there should be a big VANILLA ANDROID button in the settings, and they should push updates more aggressively.

But ICS definitely looks like a step in the right direction.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#35

Post by joebadmo »

polshaw wrote: post #33

I can't believe how much everything is still framed around the iphone. I think its crazy to call this phone just 'competetive' with the iphone 4S; especially the screen-- it is clearly a significant step up IMO. ICS is surely at a point where it can, currently, safely be considered to be ahead of iOS- especially in its unadulterated 'nexus' form. And whilst pentile isn't perfect, its 720p FFS. If that wasn't enough O…

That's debatable. I'm an Android fanboy, but the retina display is a year old and is still debatably the best screen out there. 720p is awesome, but pixel density is still not as high as the retina display, and the sub-pixel density is definitely not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to figuring out a way to convince myself it's worth paying full price for this phone, and I love a huge screen (Droid X owner). But AMOLED is a mixed bag. I find it to be a bit over-saturated, and the power savings is only for blacks, and overall, I think AMOLED has been shown to consume more power, not less. But the pentile subpixel arrangement is the biggest thing I'm worried about, being one of those people who wants to vomit when looking at a screen like the EVO 4G's.

I'm not saying the retina display is unequivocally better, mind you, I just disagree with you that the NG's screen is "clearly a significant step up."

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#36

Post by esrauch »

dman wrote: post #29
bryanlarsen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, it was dman's post that was in poor taste. Hacker news is and should be about people showing off their hacks. Additionally his post adds no content -- a simple click on the downvote button provides all the information and feedback required.

I only kept my post brief to be polite. While I agree that Hacker News is the place to show off hacks hijacking threads is not the way to do it. If parent poster has a hack that is worth showing on HN he should submit it as a news item and if there is intrinsic merit the post will attract an audience. Posting self promotional information on threads that are tangentially related is in poor taste in my opinion. Its a s…

If he was pushing a random android app on an article that was about a random android phone then you would have a good point. In this case it is more than just tangentially related, the vast majority (read: pretty much all) android phones don't have barometers, this is pretty much the only phone that can even run it. And it also answers the question of "what would I ever do with a barometer on my phone?".

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#37

Post by joebadmo »

nextparadigms wrote: post #12
alexholehouse wrote: post #4

Disappointed by the camera though - 5 MPs is fine if the sensors are up to scratch, but the 4S's camera is just so outstanding ( and 8 MPs) that a so-so camera might actually swing it for me.

I don't think most people will make their decision between an iPhone 4S and a Galaxy Nexus because of a slightly better camera. Sure, it might be even a lot better, but at the end of the day, they are both far from point and shoot quality. I think most people would rather choose between them because of each one's software or even hardware. Company allegiances/principles/beliefs will go a long way in making the decisi…

I agree. Personally, I don't expect great photos from my phone, but I am really excited about how fast the camera is. (This was one of the things that made me really envious of the iPhone 4S.) Because if I want to take really nice photos, I'll bring my DSLR. But the phone camera is for situations when you want to capture a moment, and speed is more important in that situation than quality, at least for me.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#38

Post by ugh »

polshaw wrote: post #33

I can't believe how much everything is still framed around the iphone. I think its crazy to call this phone just 'competetive' with the iphone 4S; especially the screen-- it is clearly a significant step up IMO. ICS is surely at a point where it can, currently, safely be considered to be ahead of iOS- especially in its unadulterated 'nexus' form. And whilst pentile isn't perfect, its 720p FFS. If that wasn't enough O…

I don’t know. The screens seem a wash to me and whether one is better than the other depends more on taste than specs.

I personally don’t like how those OLED screens look (I like their contrast and blacks, don’t like their colors) and I also dislike PenTile immensely. The screen being larger is actually a negative point for me. I guess it would still be alright for me but only just.

On the whole I get better contrast and blacks and higher resolution with the Nexus but also lower pixel density, worse colors and larger size. Whether one or the other is better for you personally can’t be determined from that.

For me those screens seem about equal with different upsides and downsides. If you like larger screens you might clearly prefer the Nexus.

A clear verdict about the screen doesn’t seem possible, neither one is clearly inferior.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#39

Post by icarus_drowning »

Is it just me, or is anyone else incredibly impressed with The Verge? Their reviews are incredibly detailed, and yet they still manage to make extremely interesting, short, and informative video reviews for many products. Add to that the fact that the site, at least to me, is absolutely gorgeous, and I think I've found my new favorite gadget site.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#40

Post by justinph »

icarus_drowning wrote: post #39

Is it just me, or is anyone else incredibly impressed with The Verge? Their reviews are incredibly detailed, and yet they still manage to make extremely interesting, short, and informative video reviews for many products. Add to that the fact that the site, at least to me, is absolutely gorgeous, and I think I've found my new favorite gadget site.

I'm really digging it as well. The layout is pretty great. Whatever the CMS is, they're getting a ton of flexibility out of it. It feels like a more integrated media experience -- typography, video, photography, infographics, user comments, all pretty nicely wound.
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