Uhoh, Tom, the Android hater is starting a Galaxy Nexus thread, run!

I did want to see who here is getting one or has one already, because I am interested in the impressions others have of it. After reading and watching The Verge review, it does really seem like Google has made a big leap forward with this phone. Joshua Topolsky is someone I trust to be in line with my kind of thinking regarding tech gadgets.

I'm now curious to see one in person, mostly for the screen. The Pentile displays on my Samsung Captivate and Focus annoyed me quite a bit. It looks like the Nexus has a much improved version.

I know the Google ecosystem is mostly not for me, but I like seeing it improve anyhow. Competition in the market is a good thing. I've also been critical in the past here when other companies copy ideas. And to clarify a bit on that, I don't personally mind the copying too much as a way to spread innovations around, as long as it's done the right way. Blindly copying someone else, without understanding why leads to a bad copy. Multitiouch performance, and other iPhone like features on my Captivate was so frustrating because it tried to blindly copy Apple without getting it right. The people doing the copying didn't understand the importance of why the iPhone worked the way it did and performed the way it did, so it felt like a shoddy knockoff.

Looking at the pure Google experience on 4.0, Google seems to be copying some aspects from other ecosystems with the understanding of why those other systems worked the way they do. The Multitasking interface sudo clone from the WebOS side is fantastic. The touch response finally looks to be to the level I've grown accustom to since mid 2007.

Based on his comments in the Q&A, and parts of the review, it still seems iOS and potentially Windows Phone 7 have the edge on ease of use from a consumer point of view, but 4.0 does close the gap greatly. Now hopefully the 3rd party Android program makers, and the OEMs also follow suit and raise their own quality bars to the level Google appears to be aiming for.

I'll also be interested in seeing 4.0 on a tablet to see if it also gains similar improvements. Honeycomb fits into my "shoddy knockoff" category, and I've had direct experience with every 3.x revision on multiple devices.

Oh, it's a bit disappointing to see Verizon end up with the only US version of the Nexus. Hopefully that won't last long, as I'd be very tempted to take one on a proper month long trial of the Google vision for smartphones. The Captivate and general Android experience was horrible for me when I tried in 2010, it's impressive to see the amount of iteration and improvement in just 1.5 years time.