Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Galaxy Nexus Review

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 113 posts

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#91

Post by CountSessine »

joebadmo wrote: post #16
jbredeche wrote: post #14

I might missed an announcement here - but will Verizon load their bloatware onto ICS, or has Google managed to get them to ship a clean Android installation on these phones?

Generally these Google flagship devices have little to no bloatware (depending on what you consider bloatware), and one of the more interesting parts of the ICS announcement was that you can easily disable apps (which stops from running and removes them from home/app screens but not from the device) pretty easily from system settings.

And with access to the source, why couldn't the carriers/handset makers just hack the OS to disable the app disabling of their particular bloatware? Unless there's a license agreement that might prevent this...

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#92

Post by jeffdavis »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #49
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…

Grade inflation is rampant in reviews. The dynamic range is really effectively about 6.5/7 to 10. So a 10 actually means something more like 3 stars out of 3.

It might not necessarily be inflation.

Those who write extended reviews are likely to have fairly good intuition about which phones are good enough to write about. Nobody is going to spend days writing a review for a phone that someone would only get because it's "free" with a contract.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#93

Post by petedoyle »

moe wrote: post #74

Yay, a notification LED! This tiny feature alone makes it a serious contender for me. However, I'll definitely wait for the first real-world reviews to learn whether ICS finally does away with the infuriating stalls and input lags that have plagued all of my previous android devices (up to the SGS).

> However, I'll definitely wait for the first real-world reviews to learn whether ICS finally does away with the infuriating stalls and input lags that have plagued all of my previous android devices ...

I'm really hoping the new hardware acceleration stuff will help a lot. I think I read somewhere they also tweaked MotionEvent handling to decrease input latency (though I can't find the link for the life of me).

From the review:

"As far as phone performance is concerned, however, the Galaxy Nexus feels blazingly, stupidly fast to me. Touch response is excellent on the phone — everything reacts quickly to your movements. Homescreen scrolling was snappy, moving into and out of apps was instantaneous, swiping through long lists was stutter free, and web browsing (even on heavy pages like ours) was super speedy."

and...

"I want to note that moving around all of these screens is buttery smooth. There's no lag, no stutter. Animations are fluid, and everything feels cohesive and solid."

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#94

Post by gurkendoktor »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #43
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 think it's just very practical (regardless of the light it casts, and FWIW, the Nexus got a perfect score). Comparing form factors with the iPhone works because the iPhones have always been around the same size. Comparing displays to the retina display works because it's the most common smartphone display. If they said "it's good" or "it's as good as the ObscurePhone X4", it would be harder for me (and probably oth…

(I realized that the perfect score was software, not display, right when noprocrast locked me out, I stand by the rest re: framing everything by the current iPhone.)

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#95

Post by canes123456 »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #65
canes123456 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the video the phone looked like there is still some lag compared to an iPhone.

Where? Given the nature of past Android I'm inclined to believe it's possible, but I didn't see even a flinch in that video...

The browser looked worse. I suspect that really slow dragging is still an issue in some places. It still is head and shoulders better than old versions and I confused the lack of bouncy scrolling with lag in menus.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#97

Post by nodata »

andyl wrote: post #63
bgarbiak wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, although I have to add it has some terrible performance issues. The site, especially the front page, is hardly usable on slower PCs (netbooks, for example). I guess all these custom fonts are at fault here.

Agreed - horrible performance on a full-blown laptop. Could barely scroll the page.

WFM with Ghostery.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#98

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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…

Pentile is great engineering. Given the choice I'd have a pentile display with the same number of sub-pixels over the alternative any day. If it was the same number of pixels, I'd maybe swing the other way but generally pentile has been a victim of the fanboy wars because (so far at least) Apple hasn't used it.

Though I believe it was rumoured (and frankly would have made engineering sense) for them to use it when they quadrupled the resolution in the iPhone 4 but Samsung couldn't guarantee enough production to fulfil Apple's expected demand. I can easily imagine another world where Apple makes some slick videos explaining the benefits of Pentile and anyone who doesn't have it is mocked, similar to how the iPhone's Retina Display, which they admit in the very name goes beyond the point of visibility in normal use is considered the minimum benchmark for a good screen.

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#99

Post by joe_fishfish »

sssparkkk wrote: post #96

No USB Mass Storage support on the Galaxy Nexus. Well, for us Linux (and Mac) users that's some bad news.

There's Android File Transfer for Mac users, which supports MTP. Not sure there's anything at all for Linux users.

This issue has turned the phone from must-have to never-want for me - it's unbelievably handy to essentially have a 32GB USB hard disk in my pocket wherever I go. Are there any actual advantages to MTP or PTP for end users?

Re: Galaxy Nexus Review

#100

Post by Synaesthesia »

barrkel wrote: post #89
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 must dissent on gorgeous: to me, it's a triumph of style over practicality. It looks like a magazine page (perhaps one you'd see advertising architecture, or furniture) made flesh in the browser: the pictures are too big, the headlines are too big, the text column wanders from the left side of the page to the right, and it does all of this with highly excessive CPU consumption. On Firefox it's particularly painful…

That's funny, I have no performance issues browsing with an iPad, an iPad 1 at that too.
Post reply on HN