Here comes the Nexus
MANILA, Philippines - The Tour also served as the Southeast Asian launch of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which will be made available in early 2012. The Galaxy Nexus is the first smartphone to feature Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Samsung seems keen on conquering the Android cell phone market. The Korean manufacturer has shown that its line of Android cell phones, particularly its recent offering of the Galaxy S II phones, Nexus and the Nexus S, Samsung means business in the world of Androids.
“Samsung and Google have closely collaborated to push the mobile experience forward,” J.K. Shin, head of Samsung’s mobile business, said in a statement.
The Galaxy Nexus boasts a 1.2-gigahertz dual-core processor, a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD screen with a resolution of 1280x720 pixels, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a pronounced curved shape that is intended to cradle the face. There’s a five megapixel camera, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chats, and support for 1080p HD video capture and playback.
A few units of the Nexus were available at the showroom.
I liked the Nexus immediately because when I held it, it was so light. I got the impression that there was nothing inside it — yes, it was that light. Although, I did not have lots of time to play with the Nexus as there were lots of hands waiting to hold it.
So the few minutes I had were only enough for me to see that the Galaxy Nexus runs on pretty much the same interface as the other Galaxy cell phones. Which made it easy to maneuver around.
I did notice that the curved screen is quite “suave” such that I do not immediately notice its curved shape until I held the Nexus. I guess the curve shape gave me a better grip of the Nexus and the rubber back casing added more security to my grip.
Time for Ice Cream Sandwich
The Samsung Nexus is the first product to run on the Ice Cream Sandwich, which is designed for use with both cell phones and tablets. It was a few months back that Samsung and Google introduced the Galaxy Nexus cell phone and offered a preview of the Android 4.0 operating system, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich.
The Ice Cream Sandwich uses a new font called Roboto, which Google said will be easier to read and was designed specifically for clarity and beauty on smartphone and tablet displays.
The Galaxy Nexus falls into Google’s Nexus program, which means the new phone will run a pure, unaltered version of Ice Cream Sandwich with no preinstalled apps from carriers and no user-interface changes from Samsung.
The new version of the Android features a rotating list of recent apps that allows for easy switching between apps and works.
Another useful feature that I read about on the brochure of the Nexus is that added to the Ice Cream Sandwich is the software’s ability to save large amounts of recent e-mails for offline search.
The time has come for the Samsung Nexus loaded with the Ice Cream Sandwich OS. In this arena, the consumers win — as this is only the start of sweeter cell phone market offerings.
