Performance Review Samsung Galaxy Nexus, The New Flavors

The presence of the Nexus Galaxy greatly awaited by enthusiasts. This is because these products are already running the latest Android, Ice Cream Sandwich. The operating system promises a new experience on Google’s operating system.

Range smartphone “owned” Google, Nexus, really interesting be observed. At first, Google partnered with HTC as its maker’s first smartphone, Google Nexus. Later, along with the launch of the Android 2.3 version, Google chose Samsung as the next Nexus producing and called Nexus S. After a time, Google back in cooperation with Samsung and Galaxy Nexus was born.

Evolution occurs from Nexus S to the Galaxy Nexus not too much. The most visible is the overall physical size enlargement. While from design, they look almost the same. Still with a unique design namely a curved body, in ergonomics terms, Galaxy Nexus includes good with a thickened design on the bottom. You will only find Power/Sleep and Volume on the left and right smartphones.

The front is dominated by screen size 4.7 inches (exactly 4.67 inches), with no buttons at all. If you remember, usually at below the screen there is a capacitive touch button like home, back, and others. But in Galaxy Nexus, nothing at all. All navigation buttons are already part of the system and only in the “inside” screen. We’ll explain more in the system operation review section.

Still about its screen, the screen has a resolution of 1280×720 or HD resolutions. This screen HD Super AMOLED type which is technically similar to that used in Galaxy Note. However, screen Galaxy Nexus has a higher density than Galaxy Note so that it looks sharper. Unfortunately, this screen is not protected by the famous Gorilla Glass. The front of Galaxy Nexus uses only composite material glass that is strong enough, though not as strong as Gorilla Glass.

As the main component, Galaxy Nexus rely on SoC from Texas Instruments, OMAP 4460. TI OMAP 4460 has two cores running at 1.2 GHz and equipped with a GPU PowerVR SGX540. Quite unfortunately that this is not the best combination. Indeed, good performance and its CPU equivalent to SoC such as Exynos or Apple A5. But was considered old GPU especially considering Nexus Galaxy screen resolution include high.

The capacity of main memory (RAM) owned smartphones is set at 1 GB. Also available storage capacity 12 GB (16 GB variant) for users. The bad news, Galaxy Nexus does not provide a MicroSD slot so you should be satisfied with existing capacity. When plugged into PC, storage is accessed via MTP mode (Media Transfer Protocol) instead of Mass Storage. From the information we get, Android 4.0 actually supports Mass Storage but is not available in the Galaxy Nexus.

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Galaxy Nexus is equipped with a 5 megapixel (rear) and a 1.3 Megapixel (front). Including a good quality camera. Only, compared to other Samsung smartphones, the Galaxy Nexus camera is still lacking. Fairly standard camera application. This smartphone considering using an OS that still innocent. Interestingly, there is panorama mode where shot using a sweep method which easier.

While for the video, Galaxy Nexus able to record 1080p video with low bitrate for Full-HD size (9.5 Mbps) video. This produces a 70 MB file per one-minute recording. It’s audio-only one channel aka mono. Interestingly, there is a wide range of filter effects to manipulate video results. However, because its effect is done in realtime, video resolution just dropped to 480p because of limited processor capabilities.

The advantage big screen-owned Galaxy Nexus feels when watching a video. In addition, it has a 16:9 aspect ratio wide-screen video to make a variety of full-featured with no residual (black bar) at the top and bottom video. Only, this smartphone does not support file with .mkv extension so you have to first convert into mp4 format. Full-HD video high-bitrate can be rotated smoothly.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

Android includes an operating system with fairly rapid growth. Since Honeycomb launched, Android strengthen its position, especially for mobile computing segments. But if Honeycomb just limited to tablet computers, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) comes as a more universal operating system. This is because these operating systems can run either on your computer in a tablet and smartphone. And with the release of the 4.0 version of this OS, the smartphone manufacturer also brings in droves new devices plus updates. So what makes ICS different from previous versions?

The most change and the most visible is the interface. ICS display more or less inherited from Honeycomb. With this change, Model controls also changed. Now you will only be given “button” Back, Home, and Recent App that displays the last row of running applications. As we said earlier, the touch buttons are usually located in the body device (smartphone) be eliminated because this button became part of systems. Thus, the display screen with high resolution 1280 pixels actually available lacks from that because it already reduced by control buttons place.

The overall menu structure also changed. Now, widgets are placed inside along with all applications. So if you remove the menu on the home screen (press and hold a blank area on the screen), there is no longer an option “Add Widgets” in there like the Gingerbread 2.3.

Changes also occur in the Settings menu. This menu setting is now grouped by category. If you set off from Gingerbread, it will initially be confused because there are some parts of settings that moved. But when you’re used to, this ICS Settings menu will feel more intuitive.

In the Settings > Security menu, you will find something new on the Screen Lock. ICS provides a new method to unlock a smartphone that is the face recognition method called the face to unlock. So you no longer need to sliding ring unlock. Instead, the system will activate the front camera to recognize your face. If it fails, the backup method is to enter a PIN or a pattern (pattern unlock).

In terms of applications, ICS brings an update on a number of standard Android applications such as browsers, e-mail clients, as well as Gmail. Existing browsers on ICS are a new version offered by Android complete with the latest WebKit engine. Changes that occur from the default browser Gingerbread with the ICS browser is felt not only in terms of interface and performance but also the experience gained by users. It is also offered by e-mail client and its Gmail application. So far, the best Gmail application according to us found on ICS.

For photography enthusiasts, good news comes via the Gallery application. Now you can directly edit an image from Gallery. The settings are even provided complete enough to create a variety of filter effects.

All existing improvements and updates to ICS were not complete without changes that happened behind the scenes. Starting from this 4.0 version, Google designed in order all related to graphical performed by GPU (GPU Accelerated). This is one reason why the graphical effects like transitions menu, shift items and also rendering a website on a browser running so smoothly. The bad news, not all applications support this protocol, especially older applications. When we try to force it all done by GPU to turn on the “Force GPU Rendering” option, there are some applications that crash when executed.

In addition to the option, at Developer Options provided in the Settings menu you can also choose other options such as “Show CPU Usage”. This option will display the process of what is being processing by the processor. All these options are useful for developers for debugging purposes.

Of course, no ivory that isn’t cracked. During our testing, we found some bugs, such as animated menu transitions sometimes “stuck” in-between each other. It takes a few seconds to return to normal. We also often experience application crashes, including when to use its browser to run Flash-based content. When we try with another browser, strangely with the same content, no problem.

Overall, the Ice Cream Sandwich offers a new and different experience with previous OS versions. Switching from Gingerbread to ICS is a big change. We liked the variety of his new features while for existing features, repairs, and improvement we think quite significantly occurred in the ICS.

With all its advantages and disadvantages, Galaxy Nexus is an exciting smartphone. Besides being a pioneering smartphone Android 4.0, Galaxy Nexus is also the only Android smartphone the “original” Google formulated.

Testing Results

Using the same SoC architecture, Galaxy Nexus won over Prada Phone for extra speed 200 Mhz which is owned by OMAP 4460. But the test of SGX 540 graphics look pretty overwhelmed when screen resolution increases. Its performance was down significantly.

Specifications

	Camera  Image results and video from a 5-megapixel camera is pretty good.
	SIM slot  There is only a SIM slot behind the battery cover and no microSD slot.
	Design  The unique design Galaxy Nexus is contoured slightly curved.

Conclusion

Plus: good performance, the Android 4.0 system, good screen quality.

Minus: The camera quality could be better, with no external memory facility.

Score Assessment
 - Performance: 4
 - Facilities: 4
 - Ease: 4
 - Price: 3.5
 - Total Score: 3.87