I have a Bionic with the recent update applied, which I generally like. I spent some time looking at the Nexus today, thinking about burning an upgrade on it. Just some thoughts about the Nexus based on my short time with it.
The store had one Nexus on display, however it was not activated yet due to "demo activation problems". It was connected to wifi. The store had sold out of the Nexus earlier that morning.
I wasn't blown away by the Nexus screen. The screen is nice, the white color temperature is not bad even at low brightness levels like some AMOLED screens. However the Bionic screen is much brighter. Color saturation was subdued compared to other AMOLED screens I've seen.
The ICS buttons take room at the bottom of the screen so you don't always get the benefit of the full 4.65" screen size. I really missed the pre-ICS dedicated buttons, I found the on-screen ones confusing - always disappearing and re-appearing, or turning into little dots but you can't remember what each dot does. Probably I would get used to this.
The "Last App" button brings up a list of recent apps used, but you can only see about 4 or 5 apps at once without scrolling. I'm not sure that the way that Moto does it on the Bionic isn't better, where you can see up to 16 apps at once. It is nice to be able to swipe an app to unload it from memory on the Nexus.
Unfortunately there is no equivalent on the Nexus to Moto's "Battery Mode" setting which I use to customize when data is on and off. I save a lot of battery during the day with this because I have it set to turn off data 15 minutes after the screen turns off. I don't have to see every email as soon as it comes in though.
The camera was fast, and the pictures seemed decent to me.
Web browsing was a nice experience, and text on zoomed out web sites seemed a bit larger and clearer than the Bionic.
There were several guys crowded around looking at the Nexus so I didn't get to play as much as I'd like. But I left the store thinking that I didn't have to have one, at least for now.