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Long time android owner and now Galaxy Nexus owner here:

I... Hate... This... Phone...

And here I could deliver a scathing rant about the camera locking up the phone and refusing to properly focus. Or I could go on about the constant gmail, navigator, and browser crashes, the horrid battery life (even in 3G with the "extended" battery) and yeesh I'll just stop here...

And don't get me started about my Galaxy Tab 10.1 still stuck on 3.2 6 months after the release of ICS.

So why did I buy the Nexus? Because I figured the much-vaunted 2011 google phone would get great support. But if this is the best they can manage, sign me up for a Windows phone. More realistically, I'm going IOS on the next spin. Android is dead to me.

Long time android owner and Galaxy Nexus owner here:

I... Love... This... Phone...

It takes beautiful pictures at an amazing speed, I get absolutely 0 crashes using multiple different applications, battery ALWAYS lasts at least the whole day no matter how hard I use it, and I love every single features ICS has to offer. I am in no way jealous of anything my iPhone friends can do with their phone and I will gladly buy another Nexus device when I'll decide to change phone.

I just wanted to offer the different experience I've had...

You mean the scrolling is smooth for you?

Edit:

Key steps in writing that comparison table:

1. Whatever iOS 6 has and ICS does not, list it to be on ICS via third party.

2. Don't do third party additions on the iOS 6 column as if there are no third party apps on that platform.

Might as well say, "Android is open-source and since the phones are Turing machines Android does everything ever possible by a computer through third-party support. Maybe it's a painful experience but it does do it." More than that, I'm tired of looking at such comparisons that boil down features to bullet points. Imagine BlackBerry running the following ad after the announcement of the iPhone in 2007:

   BlackBerry already offers more that what is coming in the iPhone.
   Open websites, send messages, make phone calls, read your email.

Disclaimer: I got my first iPhone this February after being a Nexus user for more than 2 years. And while my Nexus technically did everything that the iPhone does it feels very painful to use. Not just the scrolling. I don't even want to go into details but there definitely are people who don't care about such things and that's perfectly fine.

ICS scrolling is smooth and responsive for me, even on rather lower-end devices. Gingerbread definitely had some scrolling issues, but they've pretty much been fixed.

Something is definitely wrong with his particular phone. I don't have any of those problems either.

If he's running a custom ROM he should find a better one or return to stock. If that's not the case, a warranty replacement is in order because something is definitely faulty with his hardware.

Seconding this guy. It was great when I got it stock, and now I've put AOKP on it, it's even smoother, more responsive, and can do even more.

Sounds like there might be a hardware issue with the previous person's device perhaps?

Your choices are:

1. Have a phone/tablet you don't like and complain about it

2. Get a different phone/tablet that you do like.

3. Install a custom ROM.

I have a Galaxy Nexus and the Tab 10.1. Installing AOKP made a huge difference, regarding the things you mentioned and many more. My Tab 10.1 is a great tablet now because of it, and I hated TouchWiz while I had it.

Latest milestone: http://aokp.co/index.php/releases/_/milestone-5-r20 RootzWiki thread about it: http://rootzwiki.com/topic/19302-aokp-toro-june-4-build-38-4...

This segmentation for two kinds of Android users is exactly the problem. If you are an IOS user, whether a poweruser or not, you will get the latest upgrade and a range of new features by default. This delights users, they don't have to care about the issue to be satisfied with the device.

Perhaps I am lazy, perhaps I am somewhere in between those two archetypes you mention. I want to hold the device i buy before i buy it, as such i need to go to my provider store and see it, dare i say, touch it. This fact alone eliminates the option of seeing the nexus variant.

You don't have to follow the Techrags or details to want the latest and greatest.

Looking at the big red 1 on both my parents' iPhones' Settings app (not mention the much higher numbers on the App Store app) when I visited them this weekend, I imagine the same segmentation exist on iOS. Different proportions and easier upgradability on iOS, but the basic idea is the same on both platforms. If you want updates, you are able to get them. If not, and most don't, it is no loss to anyone but developers and security.

You can imagine the same segmentation, but you'd be wrong about the end result. 4/5 of iPhone users have updated to 5, while less than 1/10 of Android have updated to 4.

As a service provider, we see the device stats in our logs across tens of millions of users, and the numbers line up with Apple's slide: over 80% of iOS devices are updated to iOS 5, and under 7% of Android devices are on Android 4.

And really, it's a lot worse than that, with variations in the 2.x releases, even within the 2.3.x releases, affecting whether devices are able to stream video properly or not.

There are no power-IOS-users :)

I don't exactly know what you mean by this. At this stage both iOS and Android are limited compared to the abilities of a desktop.

What is considered tinkering is not necessarily being a power user.

For example, you can email yourself an apk that of a program that was removed from Google Play and install it (I did this - developer decided it wasn't worth his time to support the app but was kind enough to send me the file).

To me that's an example of a power user - something that IOS does not allow.

To take it further - I imagine that one can't be a power user of an IOS no more than you can be a power user of a toaster - there is one way to insert and remove the bread, equally available to all.

If you are an IOS user, whether a poweruser or not, you will get the latest upgrade and a range of new features by default.

If you're an IOS user, you're paying the comparable price of the latest nexus phone. If you buy the nexus instead of an iPhone, you WILL get the latest upgrade and range of new features by default. Let's keep a similar comparison please.

why buy any Android phone other than a Nexus variant straight from Google

Because the Nexus has been getting pretty mediocre reviews and none of the Nexus variants really interest me from a hardware point of view.

Eh? Basically every review I've read for it has said it's one of, if not the best phone ever (not exaggerating), save for the relatively weak camera.

In the reviews i read, the Galaxy S II was the best Android phone. I'm not sure about the current state with the S III released.

Not saying you're wrong (we probably just read different reviews), but a few examples:

http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/17/2568348/galaxy-nexus-revi...

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/10/sprint-galaxy-nexus-revie...

http://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Samsung-Galaxy-Nexus-Revie...

I have a Nexus S for exactly this reason, and yet I had to wait well over 6 months to get ICS. It's embarrassing that they can't push out a new OS to their own phones on time.

I have a Nexus S (4G Sprint variant). I got the update to ICS a couple months back and the phone has become more and more unstable. The same thing seemed to happen with the updates my older HTC phone got as well. My experience with Android devices thus far can be summed up in 3 words:

Bitrot, bitrot, bitrot.

But we doesn't the second group care? I believe it's simply because they don't know what is out there. Are you claiming that they would t care if they knew that a better alternative existed? I was an early android adopter, I now own an iPhone because it is simply better. I've never used ICS because the phone I had was never going to see an update. The phone I had, which was less than a year old.