The Galaxy Nexus I ordered back in mid December arrived today, a few hours ago.
As this is actually my first ever phone (much less anything Android), have been hoping to discover a lot of new stuff.

Firstly, the size of the screen was a little less than I had expected - I thought there'd be more noticeable a difference between the PSP's 4.3in and this 4.65in screen, but really, unless you line them up, they look about the same size.
However, the size of the overall device is much smaller and lighter, and feels pretty good in a pocket (unlike the PSP-1000 which has a fair amount of bulk) - I'd probably feel comfortable having this in my pocket all day.

The device doesn't seem to power on plugged into mains power without a battery (unlike PSP) though I guess, since the battery isn't exactly easy to switch out, it's probably not that much of an issue.
One thing I did find a bit disturbing was that there's no form of charging LED, neither is there really any indication when charging is complete.  Well, the screen does turn on momentarily to say it's charging, but that's it.
Only later discovered that you had to hold down the power button to turn on the device (which gives more info about charging).
This phone doesn't come with any pouch, protector or otherwise.  It would be nice if the initial plastic film stuck on the screen didn't have any text - that way you could actually use it as a screen protector.  For a $700 device, I would've thought that including a $1 pouch/protector shouldn't be too much to ask >_>

For the software, I'm a bit dismayed at the lack of settings available, although I guess it is meant to be dumbed down for casual users.
Me being familiar with desktops made me realise that having no tooltips or right-click menu (or a "?" contextual help button) can make figuring out some things difficult...

Took me a while to figure out how to set up the ADB USB drivers, but once done, you can install apps without going through the market.  Speaking of which, it's somewhat annoying that finding .apk files isn't always easy.  I guess apps generally aren't big, but then, I have a limited wireless data cap...

The music player looks neat from my quick test, mainly the fact that it can be controlled from the notifications area, but haven't tried it much yet.

Having a 720p screen, had to try some videos, but this seemed to be a bit problematic.
Stuck a 720p MKV, H.264 High@L4.1 video, which played back, but was really laggy.
As Youtube 720p uses H.264 in High@L3.1 (from memory), I tried that, but same result.  Then tried Baseline@L3.0 and still lagged.
Suspecting that the software decoder was kicking in, I looked at CPU usage, but it was pretty low, so weird...  Tried mVideoPlayer but same result.
Then tried muxing into MP4 and it seems to play back fine.  Weird that Android doesn't like MKV (not to mention that it doesn't support MKV header compression at all, which is enabled by default in mkvmerge).

Now for a custom video player, most don't seem to hide the on-screen menu buttons of Android 4.0, so I'm guessing they just need to be updated.  Out of the ones I tried, MX Video Player was the only one which had the functionality.  Although a decent player (certainly better than stock), it seems to be a fair bit less flexible than I had imagined.  My main wishes would be that touch-to-pause wouldn't always invoke the ICS on-screen menu buttons regardless of where you touch, and perhaps customisability of the player buttons (I would never use the next/previous video buttons - would prefer to have some sort of 'jump forward/backward 5 secs' button instead).

Browser also seems to be less flexible than I had imagined.  I'm supposing the default browser is Chrome-like, so not surprised at its lack of options, but Firefox Mobile seems to be in a similar league (unless you want to trawl through about:config).  I suppose that add-ons may help rectify the latter, but have yet to try.


Doesn't seem to be much of a method of controlling an app's permissions (eg control whether they have network access or not).  Quick search shows that Cyanogenmod can do it? but doesn't support the Galaxy Nexus yet.

Not all apps seem to have a quit functionality, and I'm not sure how to exactly quit from these.  One would assume that pressing the Back button would close it, but it seems to still be running if you look at the Apps section under Settings (and Force Stop there seems to be the only way to close it).

Perhaps it's time I looked into custom ROMs.
Back to playing around with the device...

(This post was last modified: 04/01/2012 03:54 AM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

Me is not real fan of android , like you said lack of settings to adjust... im still stuck with my win 6,5 windows phone.
I don't know why they jam such a good hardware with this android thing , or its just the more they can do , i don't know.

Ohh and congrats for your new toy!

(This post was last modified: 04/01/2012 04:00 AM by gsmoke.)

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(04/01/2012 03:44 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  Weird that Android doesn't like MKV

As far as I know only Samsung Galaxy S phones have native MKV support. Which would mean Samsung added it. I have played 720p MKV video (will need to get the specs of the vid for you) without issue on my Galaxy S i9000 (and this is the S II i9100 playing 1080p MKV) - native MKV support allows them to use softsubs with mVideoPlayer too but 720p and softsubs tend to make the i9000 struggle.

Sounds like apps need to catch up to Android 4.0 and yeah - you'll need to get used to the lack of flexibility a computer has... but you'll have more with Android than you would on iOS. Amazed it's your first phone. Enjoy it!

^ There's no need to change anything. Android 4.0 stock looks great.

:)

(04/01/2012 03:57 AM)gsmoke Wrote:  Me is not real fan of android , like you said lack of settings to adjust... im still stuck with my win 6,5 windows phone.
I don't know why they jam such a good hardware with this android thing , or its just the more they can do , i don't know.

I heard WiMo7 has a really good interface.
But Android mostly because of existing applications available, and wider hardware selection.

(04/01/2012 04:54 AM)1-R Wrote:  You can always google your apk's, there's a website that has direct links to apk's.

*cough*blapkmarket*cough*

Figured, but wish that there were somewhat more "legit" methods of getting them sometimes...
Seems that Firefox do give out .apks, but you have to browse through their FTP (don't seem to find any links on the website).

I guess people don't mind re-downloading everything after a phone wipe >_>

(04/01/2012 04:54 AM)1-R Wrote:  Custom ROM's make a huge difference, I personally prefer MIUI roms because it's very customizable and easy interface to use, try it whenever your phone get's it. =3

Interesting, there seems to be a version available, but not complete.
Listing of available ROMs I can find: http://galaxynexus.roms-db.com/

(04/01/2012 04:54 AM)1-R Wrote:  Opera is the best mobile browser.
I use RockPlayer as my media stuffs~ MKV's don't play well on my phone either =P

Might try those, thanks.

(04/01/2012 04:54 AM)1-R Wrote:  Controlling app's permission? Not sure maybe SuperUser is what you're looking for? You need root access but maybe someone else could enlighten you on that xP

Sounds like it.  Seems like a number of ROMs include it, so I probably won't have to bother much.

(04/01/2012 04:54 AM)1-R Wrote:  Download Advanced TasKiller to get rid of the apps, MIUI has something similar built into the UI.

But surely you shouldn't need to kill the tasks?  I mean, you'd expect something similar to the "X" button on Windows...

(04/01/2012 04:54 AM)S7* Wrote:  As far as I know only Samsung Galaxy S phones have native MKV support. Which would mean Samsung added it. I have played 720p MKV video (will need to get the specs of the vid for you) without issue on my Galaxy S i9000 (and this is the S II i9100 playing 1080p MKV) - native MKV support allows them to use softsubs with mVideoPlayer too but 720p and softsubs tend to make the i9000 struggle.

I think Android 4 has it native (I can play MKVs in the stock video player), just is rather whacky.
Speaking of which, tried an MP4 and seems to exhibit some odd behaviour:
- seeking doesn't properly seek the video, whilst audio seeks correctly, so you can get desync if you try to seek
- after a few minutes of watching, I got some weird glitch where, every second, it sticks in a frame from an unrelated part of the video
Trying MX Video Player's software decoder doesn't seem to have these issues, so it's probably Android 4 having whacky video support.  Lolwot, it's not like these videos are particularly strange...
One would imagine that container support should be done in software, whilst the hardware does the video/audio decoding.  PPA on the PSP can read MKVs fine with CPU set to 66MHz...

(04/01/2012 05:41 AM)300nukez Wrote:  Messing with roms is dangerous stuff since it voids your warranty in a few places.

I really recommend getting a custom rom only if you really need the extra memory speed. Don't worry about the UI you can make an Android look and behave like a windows phone or an iPhone with a little trip to the market. All you need to do is look carefully allot of the apps suck at fully copying the UI.

Thanks for the tip.  Yeah, it'll void warranty (maybe can flash back stock ROM if I ever need to send it in?), but I think I'll need root eventually anyway, for stuff like SuperUser.

(04/01/2012 08:31 AM)carpinttas Wrote:  they never give you a screen protector or a pouch, they sell those at stupidly increased prices...

Interesting thing is that I don't think I've ever seen accessories for Android phones in stores around here, only for iPhones.
Meaning that you'll probably need to get them from online stores, which will mostly source them from cheap Chinese places.

(This post was last modified: 04/01/2012 08:26 PM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

(04/01/2012 08:08 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  maybe can flash back stock ROM if I ever need to send it in?

That's what most people do. Do a full nandroid backup of your stock phone state and if you need to send you should probably remove superuser from the phone too (un-root).