I have the Galaxy Nexus. I'm going to keep this short because I have a lot of playing to do

I can say, however, that this phone is phenomenal. The screen is gorgeous, and I think the hardware is great. No, it doesn't feel as well built as the iPhone, but I also don't think it feels as cheap/"plasticy" as the Galaxy S series of phones. I think it feels just right, with just the right amount of heft and solidity (if I can describe it that way).

Despite the extremely soft launch of the phone, there were 8 people at my local Verizon store waiting to get in, and I'd say that by the time I left the store an hour later (after I got the phone I geeked out with a couple other Galaxy Nexus owners), at least 20 people had gotten their phone and there were 20 more waiting. Considering it's also being sold at Best Buy, Radio Shack, and even Costco, I think we could see big sales numbers for the phone. Clearly not iPhone numbers, but big numbers still.

Okay, have to go now. This phone is nuts. I'm loving it already. Oh wait, here's a couple quick impressions:

Face unlock - gimmicky, but a gimmick that works surprisingly well when it does. I'm able to unlock faster than doing a pattern. However, I can't wear sunglasses most of the time and I have to be pretty straight-on. No matter, I can still use a pattern if it fails. It's clearly not a great security tool, because a photo of you can fool it, but it's something.

Camera - SUPER FAST! As some reviewers have said, it's actually a little TOO fast sometimes, and you end up with some blurry photos. I think that will take some adjusting but eventually I'll get it down.

Beam - as I said, I geeked out with another guy there who was just as excited and over the moon about the phone as I was. We tried the beam feature and it's pretty damn great. You simply hold the phones up to each other, tap your screen, and the other person has what you sent. We tried it with a map and then with apps, and both worked beautifully. It's really cool, and I can't wait for more NFC ICS phones to get out there.

That's all I can think about at the moment... gotta go play... for real this time... SUPER EXCITED!

I got mine this morning as well, and pretty much the same story as you. It's a great phone. I'll need to do a proper write-up later, but right now I'm facing a vexing problem. The phone won't charge!

It charged fine in my car, but when I plug it into my computer's USB port, it doesn't charge. The computer doesn't see it at all. Likewise, when I plug it into a USB wall wart charger, nothing. No charge. When I plug other micro USB gadgets into those ports, everything charges just fine.

EDIT: the solution turned out to be getting a different USB cable. Apparently, not all micro USB cables are created equal. Lovely.

Excellent commercial. Did you notice that the girl at :45 is eating... an ice cream sandwich? Cute!

tanstaafl.

In case anyone missed it in all the GN excitement, Engadget posted a video of TouchWiz running on ICS. After seeing this, I am even more happy to have the pure Google UI on my Galaxy Nexus. Also, all the common elements of ICS like the settings app look too big on the SGS2 compared to the high-res Galaxy Nexus screen.

OK: How is it as a phone? Good clarity on both ends? Does it hold calls?

I'm up for a renewal on vzw, and am sorely tempted. I've been on BBs for years, mostly happily, but am getting tired of waiting for them to update.

The battery addons for iphones still bug me. I want to be able to carry a spare battery or two when I get into areas with flaky signals and no charger.

thanks,

-jk

So far, so good, but it's early to speak meaningfully about sound quality. I can say that the ringer and vibration buzzer aren't particularly loud / noticeable.

Has anyone seen anything about the accessories for the GN? I can understand Verizon holding back the phone, but I don't really see why Samsung would be so delayed with the accessories, which they can sell themselves at a big markup/profit. If I could, I'd go out and buy a car dock, two desktop docks, and probably an HDMI dock.

So far, all I've seen is a desktop dock, but absolutely not the kind I want. It positions the GN horizontally, which is fine, but it charges by sliding the phone to the right into a micro USB plug. It looks awful, and I'm surprised it's made by Samsung! What the heck happened to the dock they showed when they announced the phone?

*edit*

Even worse is this product, which is merely a stand that charges a second battery. There is no port to charge the phone. Instead, you're expected to use the included two-prong micro USB charger to connect to the back of the stand (for the battery) and to the bottom of the phone on its side (at least, that's what the one they had at Verizon contained, it looks like the Amazon one leaves you to find your own charger for the phone).

This concerns me greatly, because it seems my earlier fears of not knowing how to deal with the different form factors of the phone might be valid. The two models of Galaxy Nexus might just be a mm different, but that's going to make it difficult for making accessories...

The Verizon Galaxy Nexus car dock apparently is coming to market without support for the side contacts. Docking in the car will be a two-step process. Slide phone into plastic dock, connect to microUSB cable for power.

Very strange if you ask me.

My Moto Droid X's car mount was a hybrid. It had a micro USB connector on the back, which the bracket then passed through to the phone, but you still had to plug the audio jack in directly to the phone. The Verizon Galaxy Nexus bracket is only marginally worse. I'd have one already, but I have a $100 BestBuy gift card burning a hole in my pocket, so I want to buy the car mount (and in-home HDMI adapting stand) with that gift card, but BestBuy has none of them in stock. They're not even on their web site.

Sigh.

The only thing that was really beneficial from the Moto solution was that the phone, when mounted in the bracket, automatically launched the "car dock" application, which turned the screen into six huge buttons that you can easily press from far away. Of course, none of them did anything useful, so you ended up killing the car dock UI to go back to the regular interface. My most common mode of using this was to flip back and forth between the nav system and Pandora.

This is what's most annoying to me. While I agree that the car dock mode isn't very good, I love that when I put the Nexus One in its desktop dock, it automatically brought up the clock.

But because these "docks" merely charge the phone through a micro USB cable, there's nothing to tell the phone what it's plugged into. I guess the desktop dock I linked to in my last post could have something in it that identified it as a dock, but I doubt they went to that effort considering what they did for the car dock.

I guess I understand the theory that Verizon is trying to appease their phone manufacturers, mainly Motorola, but don't they realize that it's very likely that Motorola will be Google-owned in a little while? Why piss off Google so much?

And as for Samsung, why did they bother even putting those contacts on the Verizon phone if they weren't going to use them? Was it just cheaper to keep them that it was to design a completely different accessory line?

I wonder how long it will be before someone tries putting the Verizon GN in one of the docks with the contacts. I wonder if it would work...

I'd be happy if they had a dock that merely shorted together some of those pins as a way for the phone to know that it's docked and behave differently.

I'm interested in hearing some opinions of the Galaxy Nexus from empeggers. The LTE version in particular. From what I've read on the XDA forums, The LTE version is getting a lot of crap. Most of the complaints seem to be either battery life, screen quality variances, OS speed, and (of course) the camera.

As far as my GSM Nexus goes, I still think it's the best phone I've handled. My father has an iPhone 4S now, so I've been able to play with that device more intimately since getting the Nexus. My opinion really hasn't changed with relation to the 4S. Yes, the camera on the iPhone 4S is better, but once you get a handle of the Galaxy Nexus camera, I think it's at least as good as the iPhone 4. To put it simply, I don't find the Galaxy Nexus camera to be detrimental to my overall opinion of the device.

I have an update regarding my switch to prepaid T-Mobile USA from my long-standing postpaid AT&T service. After spending more time with the T-Mobile service, I concluded that it's not for me... even at the extreme discount. The coverage of 3G service is far worse than AT&T. I haven't seen AT&T fall back on EDGE service in over a year. However, T-Mobile still has a ton of areas around here without 3G. Even my house is in an EDGE zone, and I live right on top of the New York State Thruway. My opinion is that it's more important to have slower 3G service in more areas than blistering HSPA+ service in very few. To make matters worse, a tower near my house was down for a few days over the Christmas holiday. This caused me to experience absolutely no voice service at home. It was the final straw. Luckily, I still had my AT&T account active. I simply swapped my SIM into the Nexus and went on my way from there. The petaband radio in the Nexus saved the day.

One interesting/unfortunate thing is how AT&T provisions accounts for HSPA+ access. When the Motorola Atrix 4G came to AT&T, it came configured with a different APN than every other device even going back to the Cingular days. The thought around the web is that this APN is only for HSPA+ "4G" phones provisioned with a "4G" data plan. Likewise, there is also a new APN usable by only LTE devices like the Galaxy S II Skyrocket. Since my AT&T SIM is from an iPhone 4 which is merely an HSDPA 7.2 Mbps device, I might not have been able to make full use of the HSPA+ speeds of the Nexus.

To remedy this, I did the only logical thing. I bought a cheap second-hand Atrix for $200, put my iPhone 4 microSIM in it, called AT&T from it, and told them I had an Atrix now. The agent promptly switched my dataplan from the iPhone 3G plan to the "4G" HSPA+ unlimited plan without any fuss. Now that my curiosity about AT&T dataplan provisioning is satiated, I have a pretty nice Atrix to unload. I have the option of returning it to the seller within 30 days, but maybe someone here might want it.

That's right! not only am I giving you a riveting story about AT&T's silly data policies, but I'm also gifting you the opportunity to pick up a sweet Atrix for a nice price. The Atrix is used, but it's in very good condition. There is some lint buildup in the earpiece grille and some marks showing where a case once was, but it's in really nice condition. The battery seems to hold a charge without any issue. The software is at 2.3.4 which I assume is current. The device is locked to AT&T, but $20 could probably take care of that. Software is stock, but I have the motoblur bypass code which I will provide free of charge! The phone does not include a charger or the dongle for the little HDMI port on the side of the phone. The backlight for the capacitive buttons along the bottom is uneven, but the screen itself is flawless. I have $200 into this thing and that's what I want. If interested, PM me. If nobody wants it, it will be returned on Monday.

At this point my number one complaint is the accessory support. It's weird to say that I feel betrayed by a manufacturer/carrier, and when I think that I also have to remember that there's worse things in the world

But still, I've followed this phone from rumors to announcement. Through speculation and rumors to standing outside a Verizon store on release day. To have Samsung and Verizon screw this phone up so much is infuriating. I really want to find someone at Samsung and ask them why the LTE version of the phone has those contacts on it. Was it just too much money to change the manufacturing line?

Or rather, isn't this something that journalists are supposed to do? I've been waiting for someone from Engadget or the Verge to hold Samsung/Verizon's feet to the fire, but I don't think that's going to happen. It's too minor a story in the grand scheme of consumer electronics. But I'm not sure they'd know how to do it even if they were interested...

Anyway, that's my major complaint. I still don't have a dock and that's frustrating for my daily routine. Other than that I've not had problems with the screen (I thought I did at first, but I for some reason it's not bothering me now), the battery life is sufficient for my needs, and the reception is what I'd hoped for. The speeds on 4G are still insane, too.

While it wasn't about accessories, The Verge did criticize Samsung recently, and the pressure along with customer demand did seem to shift things a little.

If Samsung doesn't care about customers, how can it hope to keep them?

Samsung said to be reviewing Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab ICS upgrades in response to demand.

My ten cents, having switched to a Galaxy Nexus on Verizon on the morning it came out:

- The camera is fine, sometimes brilliant. The ninnies who complain of inadequate megapixel counts should go get a real camera. My iPhone 3G's paltry two (?) megapixel camera took brilliant images. My Droid X's 8 megapixel camera was total crap. My Galaxy Nexus's 5 megapixel camera is actually pretty good. The built-in camera app is also pretty nice, including a panorama auto-stitching feature (which *almost* works) and a time-lapse feature. It also shoots stupid fast. The responsiveness is more like a pro D-SLR than anything else.

- The high-resolution screen is brilliant. My only complaint is that the "ahh, it's dark, so I'll dim the screen" sensor isn't very smart, and the screen only seems to have two modes: wonderfully bright (and heat generating) and insufficiently bright (regardless of ambient lighting).

- Migrating from the Droid X to the Galaxy Nexus was remarkably painless overall. Most old apps just work.

- Verizon's 4G LTE network is the bomb. It's just staggeringly fast. I've seen 22 megabits down and with better latency than my DSL connection. I sometimes seriously question whether I'd rather hook to somebody's WiFi or just use Verizon instead.

- Battery life ain't pretty. Charging times also seem a bit prolonged. By having a charger on my office desk, in my car, etc., I'm able to make this work fine. I always leave the office with a full charge.

- Unlike my Droid X, the GPS support seems to be stable. The Bluetooth support seems to have some bugginess about it.

- I really do want the proper car mount kit. I'll wait. A bit. Grumble.

- Android 4's new interface is very attractive, smooth, and polished. About the only thing I find myself wondering about is that they did away with the traditional menu button. Now, for old apps, a menu button still appears on the bottom while for new apps, the menu button could be pretty much anywhere. You don't just know to look for it in the same old place. This was clearly done with deliberation. I'm just not sure I agree with the result.

Dan, do you know how to make the panorama mode take higher resolution photos? It seems like the end result is horribly low res, so I've not been using it...

I've attached a sample (a bad one), and it's only 449px tall!

I don't really understand how the software works. I ended up with 2021×934 pixels doing a roughly 180-degree panorama, and that with the phone rubber-banded to a tripod head to keep it absolutely level. I imagine the vertical resolution has something to do with how extremely they need to crop it to get a rectangular result.

They just did away with the menu button on the phone, not in ICS, right? I hope I still have menu button functionality on my NS4G when it gets ICS.

I have a Dell Streak 7 which originally shipped with Froyo, but now has official support for Honeycomb. If Gingerbread to ICS is similar, the device's menu button still works, but you will also have another menu button inside native ICS apps.

I think the lack of a menu button on the Galaxy Nexus is a little odd. There's plenty of real estate along the bottom of the screen. It could easily be present and actually is when you're running an non-ICS app.

I agree. I really disagree with this one design aspect of ICS. I think they've completely failed with the new button layout. There have been several times already where within the same app, the menu dots will move from the top of the app to the bottom, or in an email you'll have two menu buttons.

From what I've heard, the Android team didn't like that developers just threw everything that didn't fit into the menu button. My reaction to that is: so? I liked that! I liked that I could assume that if I couldn't figure out how to do something, I could just hit the menu button and usually what I was looking for was there. My thought is that it's better than either cluttering up the interface or making things hard to find. The problem is, whether they agree with me or not, developers are STILL going to hide options in the menu button, but now that menu button moves all over the place, and that's an awful idea.

I'm still upset about the search button. I keep wanting to use it in my apps to perform a search, and I especially keep wanting to hold it down to do a voice command. That part drives me nuts.

And all of this is so they could have a dedicated app switcher button? I'd be amazed if the average user wanted that button or used it. I like the new app switcher, but I really wish it was still mapped to the home button hold.

Ah well, I really should stop ranting about this dumb issue

Since virtually every phone has gone with buttons that don't articulate, it makes sense for ICS (and Honeycomb before it) to make the next step and do the buttons purely in software.

But do they need to crop out THAT much? I'm seeing 1536px horizontal on regular photos, and most of my panoramas are ending up with less than 600? I can only theorize that it's because the phone doesn't have enough memory or processing power to deal with larger panoramas...

Yeah, I get that -- I just didn't know if ICS on the older hardware with dedicated menu buttons would ignore the menu buttons in newer apps -- i.e. if they'd just disappear the whole concept of the menu button. If that's not the case, then I'm okay with it -- thinking I'll be skipping the Galaxy Nexus anyway.

I think the idea was that they wanted applications to own the menu button themselves rather than forcing it to be a dedicated button. Apps that are built against older API versions will have a real menu button on the bottom. Newer apps have the option to not have it.

Like it or not, this is the future for every Android phone.

Don't want to be a damper here. But... I just returned our two Galaxy Nexes my wife and I got January 19 from Verizon. The phones were absolutely horrible. Virtually every call would break up and/or disconnect on both phones, so much so I was forced to buy a Net10 form at Target to use while I was contacting Verizon. The Voicemails on both phones would not accept our passwords. We complained about this daily. The problem was with the the OS. Apparently, if you had the volume turned up over halfway the tones would somehow put in ghost characters and make the voicemail not accept passwords. Verizon said Samsung was aware of the problem and working on a fix. The other thing was the battery. If you ran the phone on its 4g you would have to charge it twice a day. Anyway, we finally had enough and Verizon exchanged the phones for two RAZRS. These phones work great and are simple to use. The original Nexus I paid 300 and 250 for (before tax). Verizon sent me reconditioned RAZRS which now go for 200 without any SD card. So between that, the new cases and the extended batteries I bought for the Nexi and THEN the RAZRS, plus the SD cards I bought for the Razrs, I'm out over 350 bucks. I will not deal with Verizon again once the contract expires. Sprint is due for bankruptcy soon, so I don't know who'll I'll switch to. Anyway, I talked to Samsung again and told them what happened. We pretty much buy Samsung everything, so I was surprised by the Nexus defaults. The guy at Samsung said they are aware of the Nexus problems and they are working with Google to develop a new operating system. I'm glad that many here have had no trouble with their Galaxy Nexuses. I had mega problems. I bought the phone because my daughter's Galaxy Epic (sprint) worked so well. Anyway, live and learn.

So, ranger6, who do you work for? This being your first post and only one here, it reeks of a spammy astroturf account.

That being said, I picked up an unlocked GSM version since I'm on T-Mobile, and have liked it much more than my previous phone.

I'm still adjusting to the new was of things in ICS, and I agree that the ... menus bouncing between the top and bottom is starting to get on my nerves as well.

I tossed some strings from ranger6's post into Google, and the precise only hit seems to be here. Hitting on some of the points in the post:

- After living with the phone myself, I've had zero voicemail problems, but then I don't use VZ voicemail. I use Google Voice.

- Indeed battery life is crud, but I've now populated my home, desk, and cars with chargers. When I leave work, I've got a fully charged phone and it lasts until I get home, no matter how much I pound on it.

- Sound quality is fine, although I wish the ringer was louder. Some third-party people have come up with hacks to fix this.

- The menu thing isn't as bad once you recognize that it's intended to be location-context relevant, as in, "ahh, we had more things that we might have wanted to put here as buttons, but we ran out of room, so here they are on a menu instead." Still, if all you want to do is get to the damn configuration settings, there's no longer any standard way to get there. (Not that there really was in the old days.)

I really don't see how any of this could be a problem with the phone across the board. There would be so many reports about this it would be all over the place.

I also only use Google Voice (because why would you use the provider's voicemail these days anyway?), so I haven't had any problems like these, but I still don't think every GN has this issue.

Battery life is an issue with every phone with a 4G radio. We haven't made enough advancements in the realm of battery technology to get around that yet, though advancements are being made in the power efficiency of mobile tech. In the meantime, like Dan I've outfitted myself with chargers at home and in my car, and I don't have any problems if I use them.

I'm retired, except for doing taxes and managing investments. I used to be Regional Fashion Controller for a now vanishing retailer.

I am no expert on cell phones and the Galaxy Nexus was my first Smartphone. Yes, some of the problems may have resided with Verizon, particularly the voicemail one. Still, I can't believe all the problems were solely due to Verizon. Could I have experienced a better phone operation with a different carrier? Sure...but I stayed with the poison I know rather than the one I don't.