Samsung Galaxy Nexus revealed

newstech

19 Oct

It was leaked by the Hong Kong press and the Samsung website; but Google took to the stage to officially reveal the Samsung Galaxy Nexus: the planet's first smartphone carrying Android 4.0 'Ice Cream Sandwich.'

Take a Google Nexus S and combine it with a Galaxy S II; but with a much softly curved structure and you get the general jist of what this phone looks and feels like. The deep integration and optimisation between the hardware and software makes the phone feel even faster than the aforementioned, and the on-screen buttons (rather than capacitive icons) means that the 4.65 inch 720p Super AMOLED curved display doesn't feel so gargantuan. The camera is a surprisingly nominal 5 megapixels; but with a sustained amount of software integration to uplift each image with clarity and colour. It's not going to replace your point and shoot (as Google have never really focussed on the camera in their Nexus line); but this is a definite upgrade over the predecessor.

Working over to the software end, this is Google's interpretation of "one Android for all." Taking plenty of inspiration from Honeycomb to refine the OS into something that you could interpret on both smartphone and tablet. Multi-tasking works and looks more productively, the Face unlock is a gimmick but hey it's pretty cool, the enhanced control of your data is a godsend in these depressing times of data tiers. Simply put, it's all the functionality of Android with the well machined execution and solidarity of an iOS platform, the flair being the one item that they'd been missing all this time.

Phone will be available in 16 or 32gb flavours on (or around) November 10th in UK. Get excited, this one sounds a doozy.

Full spec list:

Android 4.0 Ice Cream
4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED Screen with 720p resolution
1.2GHz dual-core processor
Redsigned UI in Android 4.0
Improved multi-tasking, notifications, Wi-Fi hotspot, NF support, full web browsing
Android 4.0 features Software Navigation buttons – brand new
People App with Google+ Integration among other features
Redesigned camera with panorama mode, 1080p video, zero-shutter lag, silly faces and background replacement features
Face Unlock: Facial recognition to unlock your phone! BOOM that just happened.
Android Beam uses NFC to easily share content with other Android users with the bump of phones
PURE GOOGLE EXPERIENCE
All the Google Apps you love from Android Market and GMail to Movie Studio and redesigned Google+ app
8.94mm thick, 4.29mm bezel
LTE and HSPA+ connectivity
Available in USA, Europe, and Asia beginning in November and then rolled out globally