Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus Review

BY THE GOOGLE CHIC It’s now been a week since I got the Samsung Galaxy Nexus which I LOVE!  Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly. Overall it’s a solid device, and the best part of the phone is Android 4.0; Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).  I love the face unlock feature which is a new feature in ICS. It’s really cool but it’s more of a show feature. After about two days, I got sick of looking at myself every time I had to unlock the phone and eventually reverted back to the old school slide unlock. The other thing that I really like a lot is the speed of the speech to text feature. With the improved speech to text feature it’s pretty much real time and you’re able to indicate punctuation and emoticons 🙂 Google has also improved the camera, pictures now snap instantly. In fact it was so fast, I took the same picture a couple of times thinking that it wasn’t working! As for the hardware, the phone feels solid. I LOVE love LOVE the 4.65 screen size. At first I was very worried that it would be too big, but when you hold it in your hand it feels comfortable. The extra real estate is much appreciated when I’m surfing and watching TV on my phone (yes I use my phone as my primary device). Also, it doesn’t feel clunky when you’re actually talking on the phone. Now for the bad. As many people have complained and Verizon has acknowledge, the signal strength on the phone is not awesome. Considering that I moved from T-mobile because I had issues with dropped calls, I wasn’t too thrilled when I found this out. Although, the signal is weak I haven’t had any dropped calls yet (knock on wood) and voice quality is good. Verizon has pledge to fix this issue with a software update so I guess I can live with it for now and shack it up as the price to pay to be an early adapter. As for the ugly, the battery life on the phone is HORRENDOUS and I’m extremely disappointed from this aspect. Although, I have to say it’s improved over the week. Earlier this week I managed to get 3.5 hours of battery life out of the phone, I was on LTE and was heavily using my phone. So here are some tips and tricks to help improve your batter life on your Galaxy Nexus. Turn off haptic feedback- I heavily use GTalk on my phone so I found this really helped. To turn this off go to Settings-> Keyboard ->Android Keyboard settings (or the keyboard of your choice) -> uncheck vibrate on keypress. Additionally, you can turn off the haptic feedback on the menu buttons by going to Settings-> Sounds-> uncheck the vibrate on touch  Turn off WiFi- Turn off WiFi when it’s not needed. I installed Llama which is a location profile app and have set it to turn off WiFi when I’m not at home.  Set WiFi to never sleep when your phone is in the away mode (Settings -> WiFi->Advance->Keep WiFi on during sleep (always)) Use auto brightness on your phone I know that the reason that the battery life is so poor is mainly due to the fact that I’m using LTE. You can always opt to not use LTE but one of the reasons why I got the phone is for the improved data speeds so that wasn’t an option for me. Also, Google is soon releasing an update which should help battery life. With the small improvements I managed to get 10h 8 mins today with 14% left. Also, I didn’t use my phone quite as often today but I’m much more happier that I was able to go a full day without charging it. With that said, if you’re not willing to live with the minor issues then hold off on getting the phone. Otherwise, I would jump on it right away 🙂

Verizon, AT&T, Sprint iPhone 4S speed comparison

BY THE APPLE GIRL If you have been waiting on news of the best network speeds to help you decide which operator to switch to, iDownload Blog has done the work for you, although your geographical location needs to be considered too. Amongst the three, Sprint seems to be disappointing its users, while AT&T and Verizon are doing much better.

Verizon iPhone Ad!

BY THE APPLE GIRL  Check out the Verizon iPhone ad! After a long wait Verizon customers can finally get their hands on the Apple iPhone starting February 20, 2011. Any thoughts on Verizon iPhone subscriptions squashing Verizon Android sales? 😀

BY THE GOOGLE CHIC   Looks like Apple released its own ad stating that two is better than one. I like the features vary by  carrier disclaimer 🙂 Don’t hold your breathe AppleGirl, the iPhone 4 doesn’t support the Verizon’s LTE network. However, there are quite a number of Android phones like the HTC ThunderBolt and the Motorola Bionic which will take advantage of it. With phones like those, I think Android will be squashing the iPhone sales 🙂 Update: Looks like there’s already a spoof out there. It’s hilarious, check it out!

Verizon iPhone vs. AT&T iPhone

BY THE APPLE GIRL  Today Apple and Verizon announced the release of the CDMA version of the iPhone 4. Highlights The Verizon iPhone will be available for purchase early next month (Current subscribers can pre order starting February 3. Available to all at Verizon and Apple stores starting February 10) Pricing is $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB. Data prices not announced. Rumored unlimited data plan for $30 a month. Support for tethering upto 5 devices. Hot spot prices not yet announced. The Good Tethering – The Verizon iPhone 4 can share the 3G connection with up to 5 Wi-Fi enabled devices. GoogleChic, that means Android just lost some bragging rights 🙂 Choice of network – Prospective iPhone 4 customers can now choose between AT&T and Verizon network. AT&T iPhone exclusivity was propelling Android phones on Verizon. With the  Verizon iPhone release, we can look forward to Android’s downhill trajectory 😉 No crappy pre-installed Verizon Apps – Shouldn’t we thank Apple for keeping these operators like Verizon on a tight leash? The Bad No LTE support – The Verizon iPhone 4 supports CDMA (3G) only and  is not LTE (4G) capable. So you cannot avail the super fast 4G LTE network data rates on the iPhone. No simultaneous voice and data calls – Ouch this one is gonna hurt Verizon! Verizon’s CDMA network can’t handle data and voice both at the same time and AT&T can! (You should expect to see AT&T dissing Verizon over this in the future) CDMA technology – If you are one of those world trotters, you won’t be able to use the Verizon iPhone in most countries where CDMA is not supported. No Facetime over Verizon network – Just as AT&T, Verizon will not allow FaceTime over its 3G network. With an expected 9 – 10 million units sales by end of this year, Verizon seems to be reluctant to give away its 3G network for FaceTime calls. GoogleChic, do you think Verizon expects more video calling with iPhones than with Androids? 😉 All in all, if you think AT&T network really sucks and you are one of those tethering freaks who doesn’t mind the few drawbacks then the Verizon iPhone is a good fit for you.

BY THE GOOGLE CHIC  Finally! After the long grueling wait(years in fact) the iPhone is now available on big red. However, as AppleGirl has mentioned there are quite a number of drawbacks that you will need to evaluate before switching to big red if you wish. Yes, tethering is supported on the Verizon’s version, but is that more important than being able to surf and talk at the same time? I agree with AppleGirl on this one, it’s a big ouch! As for bragging rights, I’m actually tired of bragging about being able to tether. This is old news for us Android users, we’ll move onto bragging about dual core phones and fingerprint scanners on our phone (more to come on this, I’m referring to the Motorola Atrix 4G). Not to mention, Verizon is coming out with their LTE network, but thanks to Steve Jobs, iPhone users are going to be left behind since Apple doesn’t like to adapt to “newer” (not proven according to Jobs) technologies. Again, think about a dual core processor phone utilizing the 4G speed, this is the future, taking the power of smartphones to a new level. Hmm, AppleGirl sounds like the Android trajectory will just go uphill 😉 In fact, I’m really happy that the iPhone is going to Verizon. Now that AT&T is no longer the exclusive carrier it looks like they’re finally improving their Android line. In fact the Motorola Atrix 4G is heading to them! For all you die hard Apple fans, check out the chart below from Engadget. It’s food for thought before you lock yourself down one way or another.