While making a phone selection recently, I received such great information here and on other blogs that I wanted to give back by sharing my experience. I'm hopeful that these comments will be helpful to others, and received in the positive spirit in which I post them.
BTW, I have 30 years in a high tech career and I'm a product guy at heart. But I'm not an early adopter, I'm more of an early mainstream sort of guy.
I bought an iPhone 3 in November of 2008. It was a stunningly well thought out product. After my contract was up, I started looking for the "right" Android phone. I wanted something different, and with LTE coming out I wanted 4G.
While on vacation in Maui in March of 2011, the HTC Thunderbolt was released, so I bought one. No matter what I did via settings, it chewed through battery with minimal use. So I returned it, and very reluctantly went back to my old tired and now very slow iPhone.
Then I spied the Galaxy S 2 and couldn't wait til it was released on Verizon- the only carrier that works at my house. But alas disappointment was mine in August of 2011 when it was clear that the GS2 wasn't coming to Verizon.
And then the wait for "the one" began- the (eventually named) Galaxy Nexus. I bought mine on the release day, and was initially quite impressed.
Gorgeous and huge screen, and FAST. Wow, 3G network browsing wasn't just usable, it was enjoyable. I loved the navigation, the Google Voice search, the turn-by-turn navigation, etc. Also loved the keyboard it comes with- that shows capital letters when you shift to upper case, so you always know what you're typing, even for passwords.
I wear a men's large glove, so while my hands aren't huge they aren't tiny either. Certain one hand operations are simply not possible. I can't get my thumb to the far corner of the screen. There were times when I wondered if this was a phone or a micro-tablet. But a liveable limitation in exchange for the big beautiful screen!
I decided to get some radio apps- Slacker and Tune-in to start. I dug out the provided ear buds and plugged in. I was shocked at how tinny the audio was. I'm a musician, and pretty much all tones below C3 were missing. It was overly bright, and almost painful to listen to. I quickly unplugged the ear buds to see how it sounded through the speaker and it was dreadful. Hhhmmm, big disappointment.
I also noticed that the audio quality on phone calls was disappointing. The other party could hear me just fine, but their voice was distorted. In a quiet setting you could understand pretty easily- it was just unpleasant to listen to. But in a noisier setting such as in a car, it quickly became unintelligible. On a few calls at my house, it was so annoying that I called the other person back on the landline, and the audio was fine. This became a pretty central issue, because despite all the other goodies, I still use my phone for (gasp!) PHONE CALLS! So between the music and the phone audio, it sure seems like there's a problem in the GNex in this area.
One day at the office, I received a call with someone in my office and decided to put the call on speakerphone and set the phone on my desk. The catch is, the "speaker" is inexplicably on the back side of the phone, so it was "talking" into the surface of my desk. You could barely hear it. If I picked the phone up you could hear much better. But what I quickly discovered is that the way I would typically hold the phone would also obscure the speaker making it hard to hear. And this phone is big enough that there aren't all that many ways to hold it.
Many have noted, and I agree, that the placement of the on/off button opposite the volume controls is most unfortunate. It is essentially impossible to turn the phone of ("soft off") without also pressing the volume up or down control. Not a killer but an obvious oversight.
Unfortunately, even on 3G network the battery life was only so-so, and I'm not a heavy user at all. I could get through the day, but that was with maybe 15 minutes of browsing, a few phone calls, etc. However, it was manageable. But one day when booting the baby up, it froze. And nothing I could do would unfreeze it. And nothing the Verizon rep could do would unfreeze it either. So I got a replacement.
Then I needed to travel to Austin via Phoenix and got my first LTE experience (it's not yet available where I live). WOW WOW and WOW. Sitting in the Phoenix airport I completed a number of banking transactions on line between two banks, just as easily as if I were sitting at a desktop computer. This, my friends, is the future of mobile computing and what an exciting future it is!
So all this time, I'm worried about my January 15th deadline to keep the GNex or swap for something else at VZ. And I find that I'm loving it's strong points more and more, but also feeling like it's a bit buggy and not handling some basics (audio quality) very well. I repeated the tests with my second phone to make sure they weren't an artifact of the first. One influence is that 4G hasn't arrived in my city yet, although it is rumored to be coming. I didn't want to tie myself up in a two year contract with (say) an iPhone 4S and then be off of 4G for half of that time.
So it all came to a head this morning. I ran a 3G speedtest from my house using speedtest.net. Download was 300K (!) and upload was less than 100K!! Ping was nearly 500 mS. This, of course, is with wifi turned off. Yet my radio stations were streaming at either 64K or 128 K, so I don't think the data rate affected the sound quality. But it's pretty slow browsing out here.
I researched the prominent Android competitors (Rezound and Razr) and ultimately came to the following conclusion- I really just want "an appliance" that works. I don't really want a hobby where my phone is concerned. And I don't really want to live with something that (to me) is "Beta" quality.
As soon as I said those words to myself, I realized that was my overall feeling about the Galaxy Nexus. It's mostly a great design, and in most ways pretty well executed. I won't repeat the niggles that you can read elsewhere. I like the features, like the navigation, was able to customize and organize it the way I wanted. But I have had enough issues across two phones, that it feels like Beta or Rev 1.0, and fails at a couple of fundamentals (audio quality for music and for phone calls). I ultimately decided I couldn't live with these blemishes in the hope that a future software release would correct them.
I'm guessing that issues like these were responsible for the multiple delays in the release. and I'm thinking they should have waited another couple of months.
So this morning, with deep disappointment and grudging resignment, I went back to VZ and for a mere $35 swapped it for an iPhone 4S. The screen felt small. It doesn't look like something new and cool. But the gosh darn thing just works.
Wouldn't you know, instead of one bar of signal strength at my house, I have 3. So I decided to run speedtest on the Apple 4S just now, from my home. The ping was 259 mS, and the download speed was 550K. Still slow, of course, but I live in a rural area. But usable (on the download side anyway). The audio is terrific, running Pandora or playing downloaded music. The ear buds provide full spectrum sound (within the obvious limitations of their size). No comparison to either of the GNex phones I had.
Siri is kind of cool, but I'd rather have the Google voice search widget. Maybe I can get one for the iPhone, I haven't investigated that. The screen seems really small now, after nearly a month with the GNex. But while I only have half a day of heavier than usual use, the battery seems to be holding up quite a bit better than the Gnex (with LTE turned off). I do think the iPhone's camera is quite a bit better.
So while there are religious arguments as to why one is better than the other, for me it ultimately came down to the audio quality issues. And these don't seem to be universal to the device, but they were common to both of the units I had. I think I could have lived with the other bugs and quirks I came across. But I need a solid and reliable phone.
I'm not happy with the outcome- I WANTED the GNex to be THE ONE. I WANTED it to work so I could enjoy a non-Apple. I investigated the others and came to the same conclusion. If mobile devices are a hobby, any of these new LTE devices will work perfectly well for you. But I wanted an appliance even more than that, so I (snif-snif) ended up going back to the (closed, arrogant, but still leading in quality) Apple. :-\
If you can live with a few "early to market" quirks and inconveniences, the GNex is a great phone and you'll love it. If you need a perfect appliance, maybe not.
BTW, I have 30 years in a high tech career and I'm a product guy at heart. But I'm not an early adopter, I'm more of an early mainstream sort of guy.
I bought an iPhone 3 in November of 2008. It was a stunningly well thought out product. After my contract was up, I started looking for the "right" Android phone. I wanted something different, and with LTE coming out I wanted 4G.
While on vacation in Maui in March of 2011, the HTC Thunderbolt was released, so I bought one. No matter what I did via settings, it chewed through battery with minimal use. So I returned it, and very reluctantly went back to my old tired and now very slow iPhone.
Then I spied the Galaxy S 2 and couldn't wait til it was released on Verizon- the only carrier that works at my house. But alas disappointment was mine in August of 2011 when it was clear that the GS2 wasn't coming to Verizon.
And then the wait for "the one" began- the (eventually named) Galaxy Nexus. I bought mine on the release day, and was initially quite impressed.
Gorgeous and huge screen, and FAST. Wow, 3G network browsing wasn't just usable, it was enjoyable. I loved the navigation, the Google Voice search, the turn-by-turn navigation, etc. Also loved the keyboard it comes with- that shows capital letters when you shift to upper case, so you always know what you're typing, even for passwords.I wear a men's large glove, so while my hands aren't huge they aren't tiny either. Certain one hand operations are simply not possible. I can't get my thumb to the far corner of the screen. There were times when I wondered if this was a phone or a micro-tablet. But a liveable limitation in exchange for the big beautiful screen!
I decided to get some radio apps- Slacker and Tune-in to start. I dug out the provided ear buds and plugged in. I was shocked at how tinny the audio was. I'm a musician, and pretty much all tones below C3 were missing. It was overly bright, and almost painful to listen to. I quickly unplugged the ear buds to see how it sounded through the speaker and it was dreadful. Hhhmmm, big disappointment.
I also noticed that the audio quality on phone calls was disappointing. The other party could hear me just fine, but their voice was distorted. In a quiet setting you could understand pretty easily- it was just unpleasant to listen to. But in a noisier setting such as in a car, it quickly became unintelligible. On a few calls at my house, it was so annoying that I called the other person back on the landline, and the audio was fine. This became a pretty central issue, because despite all the other goodies, I still use my phone for (gasp!) PHONE CALLS! So between the music and the phone audio, it sure seems like there's a problem in the GNex in this area.
One day at the office, I received a call with someone in my office and decided to put the call on speakerphone and set the phone on my desk. The catch is, the "speaker" is inexplicably on the back side of the phone, so it was "talking" into the surface of my desk. You could barely hear it. If I picked the phone up you could hear much better. But what I quickly discovered is that the way I would typically hold the phone would also obscure the speaker making it hard to hear. And this phone is big enough that there aren't all that many ways to hold it.
Many have noted, and I agree, that the placement of the on/off button opposite the volume controls is most unfortunate. It is essentially impossible to turn the phone of ("soft off") without also pressing the volume up or down control. Not a killer but an obvious oversight.
Unfortunately, even on 3G network the battery life was only so-so, and I'm not a heavy user at all. I could get through the day, but that was with maybe 15 minutes of browsing, a few phone calls, etc. However, it was manageable. But one day when booting the baby up, it froze. And nothing I could do would unfreeze it. And nothing the Verizon rep could do would unfreeze it either. So I got a replacement.
Then I needed to travel to Austin via Phoenix and got my first LTE experience (it's not yet available where I live). WOW WOW and WOW. Sitting in the Phoenix airport I completed a number of banking transactions on line between two banks, just as easily as if I were sitting at a desktop computer. This, my friends, is the future of mobile computing and what an exciting future it is!
So all this time, I'm worried about my January 15th deadline to keep the GNex or swap for something else at VZ. And I find that I'm loving it's strong points more and more, but also feeling like it's a bit buggy and not handling some basics (audio quality) very well. I repeated the tests with my second phone to make sure they weren't an artifact of the first. One influence is that 4G hasn't arrived in my city yet, although it is rumored to be coming. I didn't want to tie myself up in a two year contract with (say) an iPhone 4S and then be off of 4G for half of that time.
So it all came to a head this morning. I ran a 3G speedtest from my house using speedtest.net. Download was 300K (!) and upload was less than 100K!! Ping was nearly 500 mS. This, of course, is with wifi turned off. Yet my radio stations were streaming at either 64K or 128 K, so I don't think the data rate affected the sound quality. But it's pretty slow browsing out here.
I researched the prominent Android competitors (Rezound and Razr) and ultimately came to the following conclusion- I really just want "an appliance" that works. I don't really want a hobby where my phone is concerned. And I don't really want to live with something that (to me) is "Beta" quality.
As soon as I said those words to myself, I realized that was my overall feeling about the Galaxy Nexus. It's mostly a great design, and in most ways pretty well executed. I won't repeat the niggles that you can read elsewhere. I like the features, like the navigation, was able to customize and organize it the way I wanted. But I have had enough issues across two phones, that it feels like Beta or Rev 1.0, and fails at a couple of fundamentals (audio quality for music and for phone calls). I ultimately decided I couldn't live with these blemishes in the hope that a future software release would correct them.
I'm guessing that issues like these were responsible for the multiple delays in the release. and I'm thinking they should have waited another couple of months.
So this morning, with deep disappointment and grudging resignment, I went back to VZ and for a mere $35 swapped it for an iPhone 4S. The screen felt small. It doesn't look like something new and cool. But the gosh darn thing just works.
Wouldn't you know, instead of one bar of signal strength at my house, I have 3. So I decided to run speedtest on the Apple 4S just now, from my home. The ping was 259 mS, and the download speed was 550K. Still slow, of course, but I live in a rural area. But usable (on the download side anyway). The audio is terrific, running Pandora or playing downloaded music. The ear buds provide full spectrum sound (within the obvious limitations of their size). No comparison to either of the GNex phones I had.
Siri is kind of cool, but I'd rather have the Google voice search widget. Maybe I can get one for the iPhone, I haven't investigated that. The screen seems really small now, after nearly a month with the GNex. But while I only have half a day of heavier than usual use, the battery seems to be holding up quite a bit better than the Gnex (with LTE turned off). I do think the iPhone's camera is quite a bit better.
So while there are religious arguments as to why one is better than the other, for me it ultimately came down to the audio quality issues. And these don't seem to be universal to the device, but they were common to both of the units I had. I think I could have lived with the other bugs and quirks I came across. But I need a solid and reliable phone.
I'm not happy with the outcome- I WANTED the GNex to be THE ONE. I WANTED it to work so I could enjoy a non-Apple. I investigated the others and came to the same conclusion. If mobile devices are a hobby, any of these new LTE devices will work perfectly well for you. But I wanted an appliance even more than that, so I (snif-snif) ended up going back to the (closed, arrogant, but still leading in quality) Apple. :-\
If you can live with a few "early to market" quirks and inconveniences, the GNex is a great phone and you'll love it. If you need a perfect appliance, maybe not.
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