Galaxy Nexus Available In US | Hacker News Reader

Galaxy Nexus Available In US

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54 pointsghempton44 comments

Maybe I'm alone, but I won't be getting the Galaxy Nexus because it's too damn big. My current phone is 4.3", and it annoys me because it's a struggle to reach the top of the screen with my thumb (i.e. one-handed operation). I tried a 4.5" Galaxy SII and it was just too much for me.

That said, my old Nexus One feels tiny once I've gotten used to a larger phone. I think 4" is the sweet-spot for me- I just hope that phones don't keep climbing ever higher and ignoring the smaller form factor.

I liked when phones were getting smaller. I don't like this getting bigger trend. I'd like an iPhone sized Android that doesn't suck.

I'm going to buy a Galaxy Ace: http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_ace_s5830-3724.php.

Admittedly it has a weaker CPU and worse screen than the Nexus or the SII, but it should be the right size :) the same as an iPhone, and Android, which is what you ask for, and much cheaper :) (U$ 150 with a 20 dollar contract over here).

I love that they are getting bigger. I had a big issue with the Galaxy Note vs Galaxy Nexus. The Note's 5"+ screen sold me, but the button configuration was last generation (android 2.x), and no ICS, and not the pure Google experience.

HP, ignoring the disaster that they are, really were headed down the right path. A tiny phone, a large phone, and a tablet. Over the years, you could totally see that large phone getting larger and the tiny phone getting even smaller. Great for both me and you. Too bad they went and screwed everything up.

If you are willing to go smaller than iPhone, consider Sony Ericsson Xperia ray. It doesn't seem too exciting looking at the specs, but so far there have been quite a few pleasant surprises (camera, overall snappiness, solid construction) and not too much suckitude (unremovable Facebook and SE bloatware, lack of polish compared to iOS in places).

I'd say this is all a matter of preference. If you have smaller hands or something this phone is probably going to be annoyingly big to you. If on the other hand you have large hands like me, its perfect and just the right size.

I don't mind the feel of a larger phone in my hand but I do find the larger size a distraction when it's in my pocket.

It would be a shame if you didn't buy the Nexus if you like 4". It would be a huge mistake. The Nexus is barely larger than the Fascinate because of the lack of hardware buttons.

Seriously, give it a shot. I was shocked that it was not much larger than it really wound up being.

Good point about the lack of hardware buttons. When I first heard how big it would be compared to my Nexus S I was worried, but now that I think bout it the buttons take up a nice chuck of space.

Your concerns are well-founded. I just got my Galaxy Nexus, and while it immediately made my Nexus One feel quite old, the size is really not comfortable. As far as I can tell, it's going to be impossible for me to fully operate the phone while maintaining a grip on it. Opening and closing the notification drawer, for instance, is impossible for me without shifting the phone or holding it in such a way that it's balanced on my fingers.

That said, two-handed operation feels great, and ICS is just wonderful. If I knew a phone with similar specs, an open bootloader, and a smaller screen was coming in the next two months, I would wait.

I adjusted. Going from the Nexus One to the Galaxy S II was a big jump and it felt a bit uncomfortable at first, but after a few days, I realized I had adjusted my grip to hold the phone a little bit more on the side (that was totally subconscious).

Now, I used my Galaxy S II single-handed just as much as I used my Nexus One, and I'm loving the big screen.

When you go big, you don't go back, but I agree that 4.3-4.5 is probably the highest a phone should ever go.

I agree. I tried it out in the store and the size was a bit concerning. I'm considering the S2 as an alternative but it looks like ICS isn't going to hit for a few months. Not surprising, but unfortunate.

I still think that Android is missing that key combination of excellent hardware and unbranded/unmodded software. The carriers should leave it alone.

I love the large screen. But I have trouble typing on the small Nexus S screen and my pockets are big.

I had the same concerns about one-handed operation. That was my complaint with the Nexus One, but the Galaxy Nexus' nice display and better balance make it not such a big (no pun intended ;) problem.

Same here. I ordered a Nexus S yesterday. It will be capable enough to do what I need. Let's not get caught up in a megapixel style race with phone processors. Have the mobile OS vendors work on their code instead.

I don't know the screen is large enough and crisp enough that this may replace my tablet.

Google is really letting Verizon screw this up. First no Wallet, then Verizon apps on phone, and now that the LTE model is released, we find that the GSM model is cheaper to import than the Verizon LTE model is to buy without contract.

The GSM model also happens to be pentaband 3g, so it works with TMobile and AT&T in the US. I've been using mine on TMobile for 2 weeks now, bought for about $730 from Expansys.

And yes, it is awesome. Just make sure you unlock the bootloader immediately, so you dont have to wipe it later if you choose to unlock then.

The verizon Galaxy Nexus off contact is 650+tax.

Unfortunately it doesn't work on any network besides Verizon's, so...

You are correct. I only looked at the price at Best Buy, which is $799. Wirefly is $709.

>we find that the GSM model is cheaper to import than the Verizon LTE model is to buy without contract.

The Verizon LTE model is $650 off contract. Third party retailers may charge more because they only otherwise make money if people sign contracts and generate commissions. I read Radio Shack and Best Buy charge $750 for the commitment free device. But if you go to a corporate Verizon shop or buy it off the web, it's $650.

That said: I actually found that with my corporate negotiated discount with Verizon getting me $50 off a device if you signed a contract, it is cheaper for me to add a contract line to get the subsidized price, and then immediately cancel it and pay the ETF rather than buy the phone outright. Doing that also means I only pay sales tax on the subsidized price rather than the full $650.

If you're in California you'll pay tax on the whole $650 unfortunately.

I went to one VZW store this morning, and they were sold out 10 minutes after opening. Headed straight for Best Buy and got the last of 5 (?!) that they had received.

The phone is not without problems. Everyone mentioned my voice sounds a little tinny compared to on my OG Droid, and Ubuntu won't recognize the phone so music transfer is a problem. Still, I think I'll be keeping it, even if it is unbelievably huge.

You need MTP stuff -- mtp-tools. The newest Amarok or Rhythmbox w/ plugin should work fine.

The Nexus unified the filesystem, and therefore cant give USB block-level access. MTP was the only way to go unless you want to have a separate partition, which leads to the terrible 'is the app on local or on sd?' situation.

Here is the situation described: http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/11/19/galaxy.nexus.f...

For mac users, you want this tool: http://www.android.com/filetransfer/

After having the Galaxy Nexus for 2 weeks, the phone no longer feels large in my hands, but the Nexus S it replaced looks ancient and pathetically tiny/low-resolution.

I'm one of the bought-it-just-this-morning crowd, so I'm doing the "MTP, WTF?" dance with everyone else. For the record, for folks who don't yet know: ICS has dumped the idea of managing the internal storage as a FAT32 filesystem that can be mounted on the USB host. Instead, it stores it internally in ext4 and uses the Media Transfer Protocol to export it over USB.

I found this gadget, which is a fuse wrapper around libmtp: http://www.adebenham.com/mtpfs/

It's not packaged (though libmtp is on fedora 16 at least), but is trivially buildable and installs just a single binary. Then "mtpfs /local/mount/dir" will mount your phone's /data partition for you. Much cleaner than trying to sync via a media player IMHO.

What I have seen on reviews is that this is not an ICS issue, but rather because the Galaxy Nexus doesn't include a SD card. Which can be a good thing.

The article you linked to explains that in the fourth paragraph. Their reasoning is that they don't want people to need a file manager in Android. It makes since to me.I like that they are going to a one large internal storage location.

It's neither really. The reason is that the data filesystem used to be FAT, so that it could easily be read by host computers using the preexisting USB Storage standard. But FAT sucks (for reasons too numerous to list here), so they went with ext4. But that can't be mounted on anything but a linux box, so they had to pick a new file exchange mechanism. It could have been something like SMB over a USB CDC network device (phones have done that in the past) but they picked MTP instead.

I have all the MTP libs. There are bug reports out there regarding the fact that Banshee can't detect the phone. I also manually set up mounting the device through FUSE, but without the developer tools activated it won't mount.

Something weird is going on here, and it's likely a problem with MTP handling in Ubuntu. I've never had this trouble with other MTP devices.

according to wirefly, verizon's basic plan is $60 per month for 450min and $30 additional for the basic basic data plan (4GB personal email only no idea what it means). That's a whopping $90 for a basic plan and I don't know if the data plan is viable to unleash Nexus Galaxy's power. Anything above that is going to be over $100 per phone. For comparison I just checkd out Sprint plan which is $70 per month with 450 min unlimited data. that's at least $20 per month and if you add the data plan you wanted it's easily going to be $40 difference per month. The unlocked version sells for $749 and with the verizon plan it sells for $189, which is $560 difference. With a $10GB data plan from verizon (seems to be the best discounted value) it costs $110/month from verizon yields a $40 difference per month. This will make up the difference ($560) in 14 mnoths. It mean this verizon offer is only cheaper if we are not forced to sign a two year contract and you are ought to migrate to some plans much cheaper as soon as you get the phone. Does it make sense?

It's sort of unreal how expensive phones are in the US. As an Australian who is used to everything being more expensive, you're looking at $57 per month for a fairly similar plan (500 minutes, 1.5GB data without charging for incoming minutes) with no upfront payment.

Total cost over 24 months is $1368, compared to (300+90*24 = ) $2460 on Verizon. Crazy.

(Note that I used AUD and USD interchangeably, they're pretty much worth the same).

I couldn't totally follow that. I don't see any benefit to switching plans, just get the plan you want.

On T-mobile and Sprint & ATT you can get the Galaxy S2, which, modulo network-specific capabilities and crapware, is in most respects the same hardware as Galaxy Nexus. Will be cheaper plan (well, except ATT), coverage, speeds will vary. Might be able to root it to fix the crapware.

Slightly off topic, but its a pet peeve that gadgets don't actually show (the limitations of) their product. See for example, their video camera: http://puu.sh/aKx3. The "video" taken is obviously not by the built in vidoe camera.

The burgers in the fast food commercials don't represent what your order is going to look like either

I'm pretty excited for this, I've been waiting to upgrade from my Droid Incredible and nothing else has grabbed my attention quite like the Galaxy Nexus.

I tried the Galaxy Nexus today and the really poor quality back plate (to gain battery/SIM access) threw me off. I was about to pay close to 700 dollars for a unlocked version and the quality seemed to be fairly humdrum. I can now categorically say that HTC phones seem to have better build quality.

Do pay attention to the finish of the backplate, in fact, try removing it in store. I saw that the fit and finish was slightly different between phones.

The NFC antenna is back there, which probably limits the materials they can use in the backplate?

Not that it matters on Verizon ;)

For a plate you will remove a few times in the life of the phone, it's a strange reason for killing the deal.

I agree, it is very cheap feeling, but it also feels thin and snug because it is a useless piece of shell.

You know, ideally, it'd be paper thin, but just as effective as holding in the battery/sim.

Precisely why I don't want it to be there, I don't really need access to the battery. For the SIM, a solution similar to the iPhone will ensure that the phone feels a lot more solid.

I guess you've tried putting back the back cover, each time a tab snapped into place, I winced, fearing I'll break one. I still have the first Nexus, it has its own issues, but it feels more 'solid'.

I'm always amazed at the minutiae that drives peoples experiences. It's true that the backplate is very thin. It "peels" from the phone more than snaps to it. I noticed that immediately and just filed it away as "interesting". Maybe it saves a half millimeter of thickness, who knows? Didn't seem important to me at all.

You are correct, it does seems like a minutiae indeed. I even took a video of it, just because the part peeled away (like you said). The problem is, once I saw that, I couldn't 'unsee' it. I started pressing the area of the backplate around the camera, and saw that it flexed quite a bit.

I don't change phones often, and I was looking forward to this one. But after I saw this, I decided that I'm going to check out the a Motorola with ICS...... if that doesn't happen by January end, I might jump ship to Windows Phone 7 with the Lumia.

Almost every review for this and the SII mentions the "cheap" and "flimsy" backplate. Have you seen this video of it getting folded in half and being entirely undamaged?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErXqnQKs-tA

I've not actually tried it because the video shows a Galaxy S II rather than the Nexus, but it's given me a lot more faith in Samsung's "cheap" plastics.

What an incredibly botched launch. I signed up like 3 times on the google site to get notified and they never emailed me about it. I went into a Verizon store last week and asked to preorder, they had no idea when it was going to come out.

Well, I still want one but my christmas budget is spent. Maybe next year.

I wonder if Verizon has some silly exclusive. The pentaband HSPA+ version went on sale here in Canada last week and even earlier in the UK.

I wonder when we'll see it available contract-free for ~500 from other places.

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