Best smartphone I've ever owned October 16, 2012

Reviewer:  Chris Barker  (San Lorenzo, CA USA) -

Although this phone is large, it fits well in my hands. People with smaller hands might not like it so much, but I love the size. The screen is big and beautiful, and movies look superb. The camera is good; the everything else (and there is a lot of that) just works, and works well. Only one nit to pick: Verizon should STOP BLOCKING GOOGLE WALLET.

Love it. September 24, 2012

Reviewer:  Timothy Wilkinson "Tim Wilkinson"  (Evanston, IL) -

Solid phone. Just casting my vote. Hundreds of other people have listed pros and cons, so why rehash what they've written?

good software, bad hardware September 24, 2012

Reviewer:  keeley991 

Stock android is the best experience on any phone. ICS is the best (And 4.1 is even better) but the big let down about this phone is the hardware. 95% of the time when i made a call or someone called me id drop the call. I went to 4 different verizon stores and they all said it was samsung's radios ( on verizon motorola has the best radios). So in the end i got rid of the nexus and picked up a droid razr maxx. Yes it sucks having a locked down phone but at least now i can make calls.

4 Stars July 21, 2012

Reviewer:  Bad Vlad 

Switched from HTC EVO for Sprint. First thing I noticed is that sound is not as clear as it was with the Evo on Sprint. My friends couldn't tell the difference that I have a new provider and phone. I've tried it, with and without Bluetooth ear peace, but there was no diference. Is it the phone, or the Verizon, I don't know. Internet is insane fast. Twice as faster then my home cable. I drive semi truck and I need a good internet connection, because after every delivered load, I need to go online and find another one. Sprint drooped the ball couple times and that is the why I switched to Verizon. I hope their better coverage is for real.
Phone is very fast, don't freeze at all. Its light, the screen is very good, the battery is average. The 1 penny price is what make's it, THE BEST DEAL.
I'll give him 4 stars, because of the sound quality. If that is a Verizon issue, then the phone deserve 5 stars.

Unsafe HOT Battery July 15, 2012

Reviewer:  Candie_k 

The sound is poor not loud at all!. Battery gets very hot quickly with average use. To the point when you hold it up to your ear it could burn you. I have researched other reviews by owners of this phone that also state the battery gets very hot. I was told by Verizon that this is UNSAFE and indicates that something could "pop in the phone". These were the exact words of a Verizon rep. The display even when set to the brightest possible, is still kind of dim. The camera is bad too. Pictures are not CLEAR. If you've ever had a cell with an 8.0 mp camera, you WILL notice the vast difference. The phone also does not have a timer, which was something that was important for me as a user. Returned for a Motorola Razr Maxx, much better phone.

[[ASIN:B0061R2A1S Samsung Galaxy Nexus 4G Android Phone (Verizon Wireless)]]

This is a lot of phone! (Apple has a good reason to be afraid!) July 7, 2012

Reviewer:  From Detroit  (Michigan, USA) -

I broke my Samsung Stratosphere by dropping it while walking, and thus had to get a new phone. Well, I decided to spring a few extra bucks for this guy. I'm really glad I did! I thought that getting used to a pure touch-screen interface would take a while (I bought the Stratosphere because of the slide-out keyboard,) but it didn't. I would say I had pretty much adapted within an hour or two!

This phone came with Ice Cream Sandwich, which is a tremendous upgrade over the Gingerbread OS that I was used to. Things seem much more refined. It looks like us Nexus users will be getting Jelly Bean in a week or so, which I'm looking forward to checking out.

Now onto some thoughts about the phone itself Even though it has a huge screen, it's pretty light weight and feels very balanced in your hand. The slightly concave screen makes for easier interaction with the touch screen. The AMOLED display is AMAZING! I have a much easier time reading smaller text on this than I do on my friends iPhone. The battery life leaves some to be desired. I could make it through most of the day, so long as I put it on the car charger to-and-from work. Picking up an extended battery is recommended for those who don't like charging their phone during the day.

As far as storage, this guy comes with 32GB of non-expandable internal storage. Since it's such a large amount, the non-expandable part ends up not mattering much to me. I've put plenty of music on this device, and I still have plenty more space!

While I'm not one to purchase a phone FOR the camera, having a nice one is certainly a nice perk. The camera here is 5 megapixels, and it's wicked fast! It'll snap off shots nearly as fast as you can tap! The picture quality seems to be great, if you're in ideal lighting situations, and just OK in non-ideal settings (I'd be upset if this were only a camera, but it's so much more!)

When it comes to the actual phone part, I have absolutely no complaints! Only praise! Call quality is great. I haven't had any problems with getting signal in places I'd expect to get signal. Since the 4G in my area is strong, I haven't had any issues with internet connectivity.

Ultimately, I highly recommend this for anyone looking for an Android device through Verizon!

**************************************************************************************************************
Personally Recommended Accessories:
Diztronic TPU case - adds minimal bulk/weight to the phone; good protection; Revision 3 took care of the issues with the cutouts for the buttons.
Samsung Extended Battery (2100 mAh) - Adds minimal bulk/weight to the phone. Allows one to go all day with medium to medium-heavy use without charging.
ArmorSuit Screen Protector - A wet-apply screen protector. ArmorSuit makes a high quality/high performance screen protector (I even use them on my PS Vita!)
**************************************************************************************************************

I love my phone! July 7, 2012

Reviewer:  Amanda 

Everything about it is wonderful.

The call quality is Crystal clear. Coming from my thunderbolt, I've several people make comments about how clear calls are, and I have noticed that wind noise is never a problem, as I often talk on my phone outside.

The pure ice cream sandwich os is really wonderful. It's uncluttered and intuitive to use. I know lots of phones on the market right now have this os, and I haven't spent any time with the s3, but the interface is relaxing and beautiful.

As far as connectivity issues, I haven't had a single problem. However, I am on WiFi almost all day.

My one regret is buying this phone on Verizon. The dock difficulties and the delayed jelly bean are both sort of disappointing, but clinging to my unlimited data plan and Verizon's great coverage lead me to stay.

Signal Issues for Nexus July 2, 2012

Reviewer:  Professional Tourist 

I drive a tractor & trailer for a living. My run is typically between centeral Virginia and Atlanta, GA. I use the Interstate 85 corridor. The phone would average dropping 10-12 calls on a one way trip. I hav Verizion to replace it 2 times, and the 3rd time i asked for and received a Motorola Razr. I loved the features related to phone, but signal is very important to me. FYI. Razr dropped 1call for same trip. Great phone if you are in a city or well covered urban area.

Great Phone July 1, 2012

Reviewer:  M.E. 

Some say this isn't the latest technology. Some say it's not the latest and greatest. I've had various smartphones and iPhones and to me, it's not about the "latest and greatest". It's about how it performs and the upgradeability to Android's latest offering. This phone performs exceptionally well, has Android's latest version of OS (4.0.4 or Ice Cream Sandwich), and WILL be getting the newest Android version, 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, sometime in July 2012.

If your looking for a solid phone that can perform well and will have it's OS updated, look no further - it's a winner!

Best Verizon Phone, regardless June 25, 2012

Reviewer:  J. Sembower "JS"  (Seattle, WA) -

I stood in line to get my wife's Galaxy Nexus at the Verizon store. As resident-in-house geek, I set it up for her, got her the case, needed accessories.

After three weeks of playing with the phone, I decided to get another for myself from a third party vendor (used, but off contract). Six months later, I still love the phone.

I'd give it a full five stars, but have to give it one minus for the problems that the phone has. Whether they are VZW's or Samsung issues, I cannot tell. However, the flaws are there for all to see.

1) Updates. It's a Nexus. Or Nexii. Whatever it may be, it's a developer's phone. The updates are supposed to roll out on time. 4.0.4 was delayed what, six months? The GSM phone got it before we did, but I wasn't willing to give up my LTE speed for sake of an update.

2) NFC support. So...I got this awesome phone with Wallet capability in New York...yet I can't use it. Wait, what? Please fix this. It's one of the reasons the battery is more costly than others, and it's a great capability of the phone. Fix.

3) Accessories. I'm not one for a lot of accessories, but a nice stand at a reasonable price would be nice. I'm fairly certain that the Samsung stand was already discontinued, and it was originally about $90. Which makes no sense, unless you came from money.

So those are the minuses. Quick rundown of the pluses:
1) Screen is big, colorful.
2) Responsive touch...something that was missing to "most" android phones, in my opinion (as a previous owner of 5 x Droid Xs and one interesting but laggy Thunderbolt).
3) Integration of 90% (or more) of everything I use day to day (calendar, email, social networking)
4) My wife and I use the video chat on Google Talk. I really dig it. Works well. A lot of people make a big todo about FaceTime...this phone does the same thing, but with a wider customer base. Not bashing AAPL (as a former owner of a 3G iPhone and a current owner of an iPad), but it's all there.
5) Nike+ just came to Android! Used it for my run last evening! I like it more than Google MyTracks, but they both work fantastic!

Long story short, if you can get this phone cheap, you'll be surprised how much it does...and does well. If you are concerned, or even upset that you may not be the first to get updates, I'd still recommend getting it (and working with the CM9 development team). YMMV, but for my phone, this one is hard to beat. Especially while streaming baseball games on the road from the MLB app!

Expected better June 20, 2012

Reviewer:  Dennis J  (Hillsdale, NJ) -

This phone has a lot of really good features. The screen is brilliant, the phone itself is sleek, and Ice Cream Sandwich is a definite improvement. However, it fails in the most basic ways. Signal strength is unpredictable. I've been a Verizon customer for almost ten years, and I've never had a phone drop service so often as this one does. The data connection is even less reliable. Often times, it's impossible to check anything quickly on this phone because it takes so long to establish a 3G or 4G connection. Sound quality is mediocre at best. Battery life is abysmal, even when 4G is turned off - I realize that's to be expected from a smartphone, but this phone takes it to a new level. According to Verizon, the signal issues were supposed to be addressed with the last software update, but that did nothing. Knowing what I know now, I would never recommend this phone to anyone.

Ice Cream Sandwich June 13, 2012

Reviewer:  Nadir 

The galaxy nexus is by far the best android device I have used to date. Ice cream sandwich 4.0 runs so smooth on this device which makes for easy multitasking and functionality.

great phone, good performance June 4, 2012

Reviewer:  irv 

Its a great phone. The size is great. If u want a true nexus experience with this device you have to root. Only way you will get updates often. Carriers tend to take over. When a new version of android comes out this phone will get it. Some newer phones will take way longer to update

Very pleased!! June 1, 2012

Reviewer:  sistren christina  (lemon grove, ca USA) -

I upgraded from an early Android phone and was being pretty selective replacing a 3yr old phone that I loved. A review on msn intrigued me about this phone as a best "top ten phones to consider". Now after 2 weeks..I can say...I have ZERO regrets whatsoever! Buy this and be Wowed!! Battery issues: maybe 10% less than my previous phone..no big deal. I use this in business allot and find it very fast with all the document readers preloaded..a plus. Already had a system update, and went flawless

Awesome phone May 10, 2012

Reviewer:  coug 

I had iphone 4S for 5 days and I hated it.
Battery life was awful and everything, as are other Apple products, was "controlled".

This phone is my first android and I absolutely love it.
I bought 2 more batteries so I can change them when I need to.
If I don't use the phone much, it'll last me a day. But I usually listen to online music and youtube videos, so it takes its toll.
Any smartphone will drain battery a lot faster than non-smart phones.
Simply put, you nor anyone in the world can do anything about it right now about the battery life.
At this point, I love this phone.
I unlocked the phone and started customizing. Frankly, it is very addicting.
I doubt you can do that with iphones.

Best phone I've had so far May 3, 2012

Reviewer:  Courtyard Utah 

This phone is a great improvement upon the Motorola Droid I had previously.

The WiFi and 4G are super fast. All the apps load quickly and the screen is excellent quality. The new Android OS is fantastic! They've taken everything the iPhone has that we Android users could want and kept all the benefits of the previous Android OS. The running app manager, folders, 2 cameras, and ability to take screenshots are all great upgrades. Again, the speed of this phone is my favorite part. It's quite thin and has a large screen, but doesn't feel to big when I'm talking on it. Call quality is great.

DOWNSIDES: The battery life is AWFUL! I definitely have to charge my phone every night and if I'm using a lot of apps, I find myself needing to charge it in the middle of the day! If the battery life were better, I would give this phone 5 stars. I also had a problem with the camera app freezing a few times, so I had to reboot the phone to get it to work again. I think this is something they'll get a software fix for eventually.

I would definitely recommend this phone--especially because of the new Android Ice Cream Sandwich. It's great!

A very nice phone April 30, 2012

Reviewer:  Sundown  (Georgia, USA) -

I've only had this phone for a few days, but the Galaxy Nexus (GN) has been performing very well. I'm coming from a Blackberry Bold (BB) and this is my first experience with an Android phone. It's also my first touchscreen (the latter held me back for a while, because before the BB I had a Treo and didn't think I could ever be happy with a non-physical keyboard). I looked at some Android phones with physical keyboards, but this one looked better overall.

Regarding the issues a lot of people have written about:

1) Stability: The phone has crashed a couple of times for no apparent reason and done a restart. The BB does this on rare occasion, too.

2) Cheapness of the phone's construction in general and the battery cover in particular: The back is flimsy and flexible. Saying "it will probably break" isn't the same as saying "it has broken," however. The reason it's like that is because there's an apparent demand for paper-thin phones. I'm not sure it's all that vulnerable. At any rate, it probably won't have to be pulled off very often, and if it breaks you can just switch to one of the extended batteries (see below). There are also some reports of replacement covers out there for the stock battery. Reviews are mixed.

3) Battery life: It lasts a day or so, and the main drain according to my battery meter is the screen (this without doing much voice calling and moderate Web surfing). It has a 1280x720 LED screen (vs. my BB's 480x360 LCD display). I don't think the two screen types can be compared 1:1, but the GN has 5x as many pixels and the battery seems to last about 50-60% as long as my BB's battery (that only has 80% of the capacity of the GN's cell). Basically, in my limited experience the battery of the GN gets drained quickly when the phone's screen is on, but holds its own otherwise. I won't say I like the short life, because I don't. I'm going to get an extended battery; I got one for the BB as well. As cheap as this phone is going for on Amazon right now, you can spend an extra $70 or so on an extended battery and still not have spent much on the phone/battery package.

4) Signal issues: I don't have another 4G phone for comparison. While I get a good 4G signal at my office, I live in an area that Verizon's coverage map identifies as 3G only. My 3G signal strength is usually around -100 to -80 dBm at home (if I switch the phone to CDMA only at work, I get fairly bad 3G service, which I suspect might be due to more congestion on the 3G than 4G bands, but I might be wrong). It doesn't look I can get signal strength information on my BB (which is with another provider, anyway--however, it sometimes chokes at the office, too, either sending incoming calls straight to voice mail, failing to open Web pages, or both. This is probably also due to network congestion). So I have nothing to compare it to and don't know if that's good or bad, but reception on the GN seems to be adequate. With more time, I will be able to tell if there's a problem with dropped calls. I also get 3G coverage (same strength) in one area Verizon's coverage map says 3G coverage is unavailable--so I can't complain about any problems. I haven't had to switch into/out of airplane mode or any of the other things people have written about; I'm just happy I have no concerns.

5) Voice cut-out during a call: This happened to me once when I was trying to leave a VM message and it later turned out there was nothing on the line. I haven't been able to replicate it and don't know if I hit the mute button or not. It's a possibility.

6) Bad call quality and poor noise suppression: The calls aren't the greatest. Music via the headphone jack is fine, but voice calls sound a bit off... only a bit. Other phones (like my BB) are better. I can live with this, though, and nobody I've called has complained. On a 1-10 scale, If the BB is a 9, the GN is a 7. Noise suppression seems to be pretty lame, as some of the more thorough reviews have noted.

7) Low maximum volume on the speakerphone. I haven't had problems with this--volume is loud enough--but I haven't tried a voice call in a noisy environment. It might be problematic there, but my BB is, too.

As far as speed goes, 4G is fast, but so is 3G. I tried loading a page this morning from home on the GN and BB using 3G. The GN was at least three times faster (and sometimes much more; I did several trials, clearing the cache every time). There's more to network speed than just the 3G/4G connection; the phone's CPU and RAM probably play a role, too. As far as data transfer speeds go, I don't need to move large amounts of data using the phone, so the difference between the two is probably not as relevant.

Photos are fine and video is markedly better than what my BB shoots (and better than what my Sony Cybershot does, too, but that's a different issue). The zoom is only digital, of course, meaning if you want to use the zoom you'll be losing resolution. However, it's not bad and is better than just being a nice camera to have when you don't have a camera.

The glass keyboard is ok, too. I make a few more typos than I did with the BB when holding the camera in portrait mode, but can go much faster than the BB with at least as much accuracy when the phone is in landscape (the keyboard flips when the phone does).

Other minor issues: on the BB you can set a time to password lock, and that can be different from how quickly the screen shuts off with no action. On the GN, they appear to be the same. So if you want to set a password or PIN to unlock your phone and you also want to have your screen shut off quickly to save battery life, you'll be entering the password/PIN a lot.

In various applications, there are icons I don't recognize. Tapping some of them has caused things I didn't intend. There's a bit of a learning curve... but that is probably applicable to any Andriod OS phone.

Overall, I'm happy with it. It does what I want it to do, and I haven't had any major problems. What would give it 5 stars IMO? A physical keyboard (it's an emotional thing) and better sound quality on voice calls.

Good phone if you really want/need ICS April 4, 2012

Reviewer:  Traian A. "PatRoX"  (DC, USA) -

It has a few problems, the most annoying one is the fact that it reboots at times... hopefully you don't get one that does it 20+ times a day... that will make it unbearable. Just google it and you will see the number of complaints. I bought 2 and both experience this. Still waiting for an update to fix it hopefully. The camera... is really bad ! The regret is I didn't wait for HTC One... I still love my NexusOne and was very happy... Already disappointed with Galaxy Nexus, quality ... below HTC.

best phone January 22, 2012

Reviewer:  zetroc88 

best phone ever no skin...runs flawlessly. blows iphone out of the water with higher resolution screen. plus its a nexus so youll always have the latest and greatest updates.

AMAZING! January 16, 2012

Reviewer:  awesomedude 

This is the greatest phone i have ever owned and seen. I was trying to decide if i should get this our the iPhone 4s and picked this. Im very glad i picked this. The screen is perfect for me becasue i like that it is bigger than other phones and has an amazing screen. The camera is very good too. i love this phone. i would recommend this to anyone who loves technology.