Lightroom Mobile

Lightroom Mobile has been a surprisingly useful app ever since the Android update a few months ago. Not only have they improved the interface, they've also added pretty much all the features of Lightroom for the desktop into it, along with a fully functional RAW shooting camera with full manual control. 

Top all the new functionality off with Creative Cloud sync, and I can pick up any edits I'm doing on my phone directly on my desktop, or vice versa. While I can't pull RAW files directly from my camera with the PlayMemories Mobile app from Sony for editing, I can make tricky shots taken with the OnePlus a bit more flexible. Good job, Adobe.

If you haven't checked it out yet, it's definitely worth looking at now.

Goodnight, My Old Friend

Another year, another disappointing Google phone release. In 2015 the 5X and 6P came and went, and weren’t enough of an upgrade for me to consider a switch. The OnePlus Two and the Moto X Pure arrived, and I sighed. The OnePlus X was tempting, but not enough. My Nexus 5 was still plenty for what I needed. 2016 came and went, and we saw a departure of what Google used to stand for. The Nexus brand was retired in favor of the premium Pixel devices, and I was unenthusiastic about dropping $900+ on a phone, no matter how attractive the device. I knew, however, that it was getting to the point of taking the Nexus 5 out behind the barn.

A brief history first. The Nexus 5 was initially purchased by me about a year after release to replace my aging, but reliable Galaxy Nexus. I’ve been madly in love with the Nexus 5 since I’ve owned it. For all intents and purposes, it has been my perfect device, with a few reservations. Like any piece of hardware, it ages overtime. The screen size and resolution are practically perfect. The build and design, although not perfect, are practical and durable. The cameras are serviceable, and even the aging internals are still relatively quick.

Now, as you’ve probably determined from reading this blog, I tend to lean more toward being a geek - A power user and an enthusiast. Though the aging hardware is still relatively quick, I’ve been craving something that stands up to current day multitasking. I would be wrong to say the Nexus 5 can keep up with my day to day heavy demands. To top it off, the battery life has been suffering more and more. I don’t believe it’s a fault of the device or the aging battery by any means, but instead just what I use for applications. Sitting at 25% currently remaining at the end of a slow day, I’ve had just over an hour screen on time. I haven’t been on anything but WiFi, and most of that access has been various social media platforms, snapchat, web browsing, etc. On a work day, I’ve been needing to top up mid day, with less usage.

My frustration with the Nexus 5 lead me on a bit of a search. I really, really liked the Pixel devices, but the price tag left a sour taste in my mouth. For the past many years, Google has offered affordable and impressive hardware in the form of the Nexus lineup, but felt the need to shift into a new brand to better align themselves against the market. Don’t get me wrong, these units are premium, and have just about everything I want for features - Pure Android released really quick, super fast hardware, premium build quality, and even the perfect size with the regular Pixel. But the price tag just feels like too much after spending so little on such a nice device as the Nexus 5.

Other options explored included various other manufacturers such as HTC, Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, etc. Unfortunately, they all had some form of problem. No stock android, poor speed to update, middling build quality, poor battery, too large, too expensive, etc… After crossing everything off the list, I returned to my previous runner up when deciding on my Nexus 5 - The upstart OnePlus.

OnePlus formed in 2013 as a subsidiary of Oppo, a large Chinese based smartphone brand. OnePlus wanted to build devices that balanced a high quality, flagship level phone, with a low and affordable price. Their slogan? Never Settle. At the time of purchasing my Nexus 5, the OnePlus One was my runner up. My major concerns were screen size and availability - It was very hard to get a OnePlus off the invite system they had in place, which ultimately led me to buying the Nexus 5. OnePlus has however dismissed their invite system and made device availability much better. The November released OnePlus 3T ended up being the best phone for the price point as of the beginning of March which matched up well with my planned retirement of the Nexus 5.

The OnePlus 3T is above and beyond an upgrade from my 3 year old Nexus 5, and I can happily say I’m pleased with my purchase. Before getting into it’s improvements, a quick spec rundown.

• Snapdragon 821 CPU (2x2.35GHz, 2x1.6GHz) w/ Adreno 530 GPU
• 6GB RAM
• 64GB Storage
• 5.5” Optic AMOLED display (1920x1080)
• 16MP OIS f/2.0 rear camera, 16MP f/2.0 front camera
• 3400mAh battery
• 158g weight

The phone is currently running OxygenOS 4.1.0 at the time of writing (Android 7.1.1) and has so far met all of my wants and needs in a smartphone for 2017. Where the Nexus 5 was starting to struggle with maintaining a silky smooth 60 FPS in day to day operation, the 3T seems to always have more power to spare. The radios, much like with the transition from Galaxy Nexus to Nexus 5, are improved. The cameras are absolutely fantastic, even if they aren’t the absolute best on the market. Low light and selfie performance are in a completely different league than the Nexus 5. If anything though, the biggest improvement is the battery. I have yet to have to charge in the middle of a day, and even on the heaviest use days I’m still making it to the end with juice to spare. For comparison, a heavy use day on the Nexus 5 might have netted me 1.5 hours screen on time before crawling to a charger or my powerbank. The 3T can eek 4 hours or more on the same workload. With lighter tasks, I’m guessing it would be pretty capable of hitting 6 hours of screen time without breaking a sweat. Did I mention that a fingerprint reader is probably one of the biggest game changers too? More apps adopting it means less PINs or passwords on the phone. I’m in love.

If I was to give any negative marks to the 3T, it’d come in the form of screen size. This is more personal than anything, and the 5.5” screen size is now the most common on the market, however 5.5” is bordering on almost too large for my hands. I will in time get used to it, however it won’t ever really rest in my hands like the 5 did. On top of that, the alert slider is usable, but I would like a bit more customization in regards to what each position does, and the ability to completely adjust the rules for each position would be fantastic.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I’m going to miss the Nexus 5. It was the perfect, size, the perfect weight, and the perfect price at the time, and it continues to kick ass, even in 2016. For a regular user, it’s an absolutely killer phone. For power users who yearn for the return of the affordable, powerful, and minimalistic Nexus line, you can find a great home with OnePlus.

Watch You Got There?

It's been a few months with the G Watch, so I figured I'd finally share my experiences with Android Wear, and the OG G Watch. For the basics, I'll start with the tech specs.

1.65" IPS LCD
400Mah Battery
Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 1.2GHz CPU
512MB RAM
4GB internal storage
Bluetooth 4.0, 9 Axis sensor (Accelerometer/compass/gyro)

Yep, that's right, watches now have processors and RAM. The great thing about Android wear is that it's pretty well regulated across the board, and even newer devices coming out these days have similar base hardware as the LG G Watch. The only real difference is stuff like speakers, additional sensors, screen tech, and design. Otherwise, pretty much everything you get will have the same internals. I'm happy to say although the G Watch is one of the oldest Android wear devices, it's still receiving regular updates, and recently just received 6.0 Marshmallow, adding doze functionality, along with some other tweaks affecting devices containing speakers, and it added some new gestures.

The adjustment period for the watch didn't take long. I was used to wearing my BM8180, so other than a slightly larger case size, and a larger strap, it wasn't a huge deal. It does take a standard 22mm strap, so it was very easy to find a replacement for the horrible white thing that was included. If I was able to obtain a black model for the same price as the white one, I likely would have kept the strap. I do still have it in it's box in case my new one ever fails. More on that later. As for similarities to my BM8180, well... It tells the time, and shows the date. Other than that, it's essentially just notifications on my wrist. It's very good at a few things - lists in Google Keep (Groceries!), controlling Google Play Music, setting timers, alarms, and reminders with voice. I even find myself occasionally replying with short messages using the thing. The voice recognition is surprisingly good, but that's to be expected from Google. I'll check the weather with the Google Now cards, get ETAs to and from specific places of interest, but most importantly, it's a fantastic notification filter.

For performance, it's always zippy. The 1.2GHz snapdragon, although rather old, is plenty fast for what the watch is doing. The interface is pretty constantly running at 60FPS, with very little stutter or lag. I've had one instance since starting to use the thing that it actually locked up on me, but it quickly recovered itself. For battery life - It really depends on daily workload/notifications. If I'm getting a lot of notifications, or checking things a lot, or heck, even playing a bit of Ingress, battery will usually end at around ~35% with screen always on and the basic digital watch face you see above. If it's a slower day, I can sometimes hit bedtime with 60% or more remaining. A 2 day stretch on battery is definitely possible, but would require minimal use or a low number of notifications. Overall, daily charging doesn't bother me, as I do have the dock right next to my phone's charger, which also gets thrown on the charge when I go to sleep. Charge time is about an hour.

For my replacement strap, I decided to reach out to Popov Leather again. I am still absolutely in love with my wallet I got from them, and the watch strap is no different. I did end up having to trim my strap and add an additional hole, but I don't think you can really tell. (I have what feels like dainty, un-manly wrists, and anything Popov Leather provides should fit the general population just fine!) Shoutout to Popov Leather, they provide a high quality, Canadian made product for a decent price. The strap also looks a heck of a lot nicer than the white one included.

Anyway, for anyone looking to check out Android Wear, find a watch on the cheap and give it a try. If you look hard, you can probably find a G Watch for around 100 bucks like I did! It's well worth the try if you enjoy any form of geekery. I hope to be posting a bit more over the next week or so, as I do have a few other new things to showcase, and some possible future plans to throw onto the internet as well!

Mobile Tech For 2015

Okay, okay. I know I did say earlier this month I was going to be sorting out my flashlight situation, but I had a good opportunity to replace my now non-existent Nexus 7. I had been looking for a while to replace it due to poor quality memory (Either controller or flash) causing the thing to be slow as dirt for multitasking. It served me well for 2.5 years, but ended up leaving me as a gift to someone else. As a result, I've been tablet-less since Christmas, and I definitely missed not having one.

I really wanted to replace the Nexus 7 2012 with another Nexus device. The first possible choice was the Nexus 7 2013 which improved on the 2012 in pretty much every way. The only issue though is at this point it's close to a 2 year old tablet, and the SoC (System on Chip) is getting a bit long in the tooth. A new 2 year old tablet started at 250 bucks, and there were better options for a bit more. On top of that, I wanted something just a bit bigger in the screen department. The next stop was the Nexus 9. Although it was a lot newer and faster, the 8.9" 4:3 screen was a bit of a turn off, and the price point felt a bit high for what you were getting in a device.

Final stop for my tablet search is what you see above. In my opinion, it's what the Nexus 9 should have been. It's the Nvidia Shield tablet. The specs are:

• 2.2GHz quad core Nvidia Tegra K1 w/ 192 core Kepler based GPU


• 2GB RAM


• 16GB storage (MicroSD expansion available)


• 8" HD IPS display (1920x1200)


• 5MP front and rear facing cameras


• 6700mAh battery


• 390g weight

Also included are dual front facing speakers, a stylus, micro HDMI output, and your usual array of connectivity options. The cherry on top of the package is it runs on stock Android Lollipop with a few Nvidia goodies baked in. I can't really offer much beyond initial impressions, but compared to my Nexus 7 2012 this device is night and day difference. I was initially fearful that the 8" size would be almost as unwieldy as a 10" tablet like my Transformer, but it I was wrong to be afraid. The 8" size makes it more appealing to grab compared to my phone when I'm looking to do reading or browsing. On top of that, it still retains similar portability of the Nexus 7, however I will need to look into a new sleeve for it.

The screen is considerably better and the resolution is exactly what I wanted. Though 2560x1600 would be nice, 1920x1200 is plenty high res for an 8" device. Color reproduction and contrast is good and there aren't any dead or stuck pixels. The back light is very bright, and goes down to very dim as well. The front facing speakers outperform just about any other tablet solution I've come across, making for good and clear audio even in noisy environments like the kitchen. Build wise it feels good in hand with no real flex or play. My only complaint with the hardware is the power and volume buttons. They're very shallow travel and take time to get used to pressing, but I feel I'll get used to this in due time.

Performance wise the tablet flies. I've experienced no real issues with lag or stuttering with normal multitasking. The specs on the tablet also ensure some future proofing, with the SoC currently being one of the fastest on the market when it comes to gaming and general day to day use. Although the tablet is marketed as a "The ultimate tablet for gamers", my reason for purchasing wasn't gaming. The device is arguably the ultimate 8" stock Android tablet on the market currently. My only issues with performance would be in regards to battery life, which is a bit middling. This is to be expected considering the SoC in the tablet. I can estimate I'd get a good 8 hours worth of screen on time for browsing and general usage, dipping down to 2-4 for gaming depending on the title. Standby drain however is pretty exceptional, dropping only about 5% a day idle. So for casual use, I could expect the battery to last a few days, but only a day if I'm using the thing constantly.

The Nexus 5 and the Shield make for a very powerful and very portable Android pair. I don't think I'll have many complaints related to speed in 2015, that's for sure. For now I don't plan on adding anything more beyond accessories. Perhaps a sleeve, the Shield cover, a Bluetooth keyboard, and perhaps the Shield controller. Just enough gear to make things a bit more usable while on the go. Later in the year, if I plan on blogging a bit more, I may add a Windows or ChromeOS notebook. There are some things that the notebook form factor and "non-mobile" operating systems do better, and content creation is one of them in my eyes.

Minecraft: Pocket Edition

Minecraft: Pocket Edition is quite possibly the best 10 cent app I purchased during the 10 cent sale on Google Play. The worst part is, I didn't even know. I let it sit doing nothing for months, until I finally picked up the game, after spinning up a server for some friends. I never saw the draw of Minecraft. During college, all of my friends were playing it pretty heavily, back during the Alpha/Beta stages. I personally thought it was a pretty big tech demo, just to show a little bit more of what Java could do. Boy was I wrong. This is like a digital version of Lego, letting you build whatever you want, and I'm hooked. Well, at least on the mobile side.

The app is coded really well, it seems to run smoothly, not skipping many frames, even at 720x1184 on my phone, or 800x1184 on my tablet. I'd love to see how it ran on the Nexus 10 however. Features are a bit sparse compared to the full version, but each release gets better, even though they seem to be pretty far between.

Check out Minecraft: Pocket Edition on Google Play.

Back to stock

A while ago, with the release of Android 4.2, I decided I wanted to try it out on my Galaxy Nexus. I was also extremely lazy at that point in time, and decided it was a really good idea just to dirty flash 4.2.1 over my 4.1 install. Everything was great, phone worked fine, but I found that performance was spotty. Some of the issues included connection speed dropping, making it unbearable to stream Rdio, interface lag, and poor battery life. Silly me put that to issues with 4.2, and my Galaxy Nexus being slightly outdated, but that all changed last week after a backup and clean flash.

Realizing that I had probably made a mistake dirty flashing the phone, I did my duty and backed up my text messages, then played around with fastboot. After downloading the stock 4.2.1 image from the Google developers page, and some platform tools for fastboot from eFrant’s back to stock instructions on the XDA forums, I was back to a fully clean stock experience. Well, I did have a bit of a hang up with driver installs, but all in all, I was back to where I should have been in about an hour. A few days later, I got the OTA for 4.2.2. All is well.

The best part about being back to stock is all the fun stuff that actually works now! The camera is quick again, the interface is nice and smooth, and along with that, Google Now actually works! I was amazed to see movie times posted the other night for my local theatre, and that there are weather notifications in my notification bar. Battery life is once again awesome. I did a whole 2+ hours of screen on time with the stock kernel, which I think should be considered a basic benchmark for any phone I own.

Speaking of kernels, Ezekeel is back from a long hiatus. He was off recovering from a broken leg, followed by a very hectic work schedule. You’ll probably remember me mentioning his work; the GladOS kernel, from back in my Galaxy Nexus review. I’ve been running GladOS on my Nexus for the past few days, and I’m actually a bit disappointed this time around. I don’t find it handles idle and low signal areas great, even though any screen on time is awesome. For instance, I had 35 minutes of screen on time this morning after waking up, and my battery only drained to about 90%. I also find there’s a little bit more lag with this compared to the stock kernel, however, I’m going to leave it for a few more days to see how things go.

I still do feel the Galaxy Nexus is aging. It’s been an awesome phone, and it’s treated me great. I’ve had the opportunity to discover a lot about Android and the phone community with it, and for that, I’ll probably always remember it. I do feel it’s getting close to the time to replace it. The Nexus 4 was released, and I can’t help but salivate over a phone with those specs, especially one that’s practically the same size. I won’t go into detail, as I think I’ll save those for an eventual review. Suffice it to say, my next device will definitely be a Nexus, and it’s probably going to be the Nexus 4.

Things I like: Rdio

Rdio is a multi platform music streaming application, designed to make managing your music collection easier.

I used to have a vast collection of lossless music, taking advantage of the extremely large storage space available to the iPod Classic line. Coupled with my Etymotic ER6i earbuds, I was in audio heaven. Obtaining a smart phone however, made things a bit different. No longer did I want to carry around a second device solely for music, and my smart phone didn't play back ALAC files, and didn't have the storage space for them either. Although I kept my music, I ended up selling the iPod and the Etymotics, and dealing without music on the go for the longest while. I however decided to give it another try, grabbing some new Etymotics, the HF2s, and playing with playlists that would fit on my phone. Re-encoding was a pain, managing playlists was a pain, and dealing with different players was a pain. I'd have to go through my entire collection, pick out which songs I wanted on my device, re-encode them to 192k MP3s, then move them via USB to the device. You can imagine that this could be an extensive undertaking, and most people would have just given up and purchased an iPod and dealt with having another device solely for music.

Mid 2012, after getting tired of the playlist management, I looked at other alternatives. Rdio seemed rather well received, and although I wasn't a fan of spending per month just for my music, it was quickly justified when looking at what I would normally spend on an album, followed by what would have to be done to have that new album loaded onto my device. With the cogs moving in my head, I quickly signed up for the 7 day trial and fell in love. For once, the music on my desktop was all accessible from my phone. Hell, it was accessible from anywhere I wanted it. This was a revelation. Rdio ended up showing me that I really couldn't tell the difference between an ALAC encoded song and one streamed from their service, which as far as I know, is encoded in MP3. Even with my accurate HF2s and Sennheiser HD555s, I really couldn't tell a difference. Adding new songs was as simple as searching for the artist and clicking the plus sign. Making playlists was simple, and there are even some social networking aspects, with the ability to follow other listeners and artists, subscribe to their playlists, and discover new music.

Rdio wasn't without it's bumps however. Initially the Android app was fairly buggy. I ended up getting 2 weeks of free service out of them for a bug which caused the app to stop playback after 3 songs. It's still not a perfect solution, but they're constantly working on it, adding nice features, like collection shuffle, a smoother user interface, and the ability to use the mobile app as a remote control. Overall, it's been pretty bug free for the past little while. The only real disadvantages to the service would be with the data usage for streaming, and the inability to stream with no network connection. Although I don't find it uses ludicrous amounts of battery, it definitely does make use if my 6GB of data from Bell. I stream music for at least half an hour a day, 5 days a week, and with the high quality setting, I can see Rdio using about a gig of data on its own. Coupled with my regular browsing and streaming habits, I can see that 6GB creeping up rather quick. Those of you without good data plans can make use of offline sync however, storing playlists on your device for playback without a network connection. This also mitigates that issue with poor/no signal quality.

Just last month, I removed all of my local music from my computer. I uninstalled iTunes. It feels good. All of my music, plus more than I could ever want, now lives in the cloud, and I'm satisfied again.

The Galaxy Nexus: My Review

It’s been about 2 months since I replaced my slightly aged HTC Desire Z with the Galaxy Nexus, and in this time, I’ve formulated what I believe to be a fair assessment of the device.

Background

With my HTC Desire Z starting to fall behind a bit in terms of speed and features, I decided to look into replacements. For a month a analyzed what was available on the market, narrowing it down to two phones. Those two phones being the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and the Samsung Galaxy S II. The big things going for the Galaxy S II were the better camera, and the slightly better processor/GPU configuration. The Nexus ultimately won it over for me though, as there are some things that peeved me about the S II.

• Still stuck with Gingerbread at the time. I was definitely anticipating Ice Cream Sandwich.


• Even when upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, the interface would remain largely the same due to the evil known as Touchwiz.


• The screen was a lower resolution in comparison to the Nexus.

So, I purchased the Nexus. And I’m happy.

The Hardware: Overview And Opinions

The Nexus is a beautiful phone. Construction is mostly of plastic, but I definitely find it to be of high quality. Adorning almost the entire front of the phone is the gorgeous 4.65” 1280x720 Super AMOLED display, along with a 1.3MP shooter for video calling and quick pictures. Since Ice Cream Sandwich was designed with on screen buttons in mind, there are no capacitive buttons on the front. When the screen is off, the phone basically looks like a glossy black, slightly curved glass slate. Below the display is a multi color notification LED that is only visible when active. On the bottom of the phone is the microUSB port, a microphone, and the 3.5mm headphone/mic combo jack. The right side of the phone houses the 3 gold connectors for pogo docks, and the power button. Along the left side of the phone you’ll find the volume rocker, and there is nothing on the top of the device. The back of the phone is home to the extremely fast 5MP shooter with LED flash, and on the slight bump near the bottom there is a second mic for noise cancelling. The back plastic cover is textured to provide a decent grip even in a sweaty palm, which I find holds true.

Inside the phone you’ll find a TI OMAP 4460 chipset with a 1.2GHz Cortex A9 dual core processor and a PowerVR SGX540 GPU clocked at 308MHz. The phone also runs on 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal memory. There is no SD card slot expansion. Connectivity includes a pentaband radio, Bluetooth 3.0, Wifi 802.11 A/B/G/N, NFC, and GPS. Powering the device is a 1750Mah Lithium battery.

Build quality seems really good, even though it is constructed mainly of plastic. It’s a lot thinner than my HTC Desire Z, which actually makes it feel smaller in my pocket even though it’s a much larger phone. It didn’t take me too long to get used to the size, and as it stands right now, the 4.65” display is just perfect for my hand. The slim build and slight curve helps it too, as if it was any thicker, it might be considered a bit unwieldy.

The screen is gorgeous, as stated above. Colors are nice, blacks are really deep, and response time seems great. It’s also very viewable in sunlight. This is all a big thanks to the Super AMOLED technology in the display. The display isn’t true RGB, as it runs off a pentile matrix, however, at the extreme screen resolution of the Nexus, image quality and sharpness don’t seem to suffer like in most lower resolution pentile displays. Having no capacitive buttons on the front is really nice as well, as I found with my Desire Z, the buttons could be a bit fiddly at times. The multicolor notification LED is a great feature, as I can set color based on the application, allowing me to know what kind of message I received before even activating the screen.

Headphone jack and power button placement were a bit weird at first, but I quickly got used to them, and they’re more ideal. Having the headphone jack at the bottom is logical, as that’s how I pull my phone out of my pocket, bottom first. The power button on the side makes for easy access too, as it’s pretty much where my index finger would lay when using the device.

Both cameras seem to function well. The 5MP shooter on the back is really fast, and the flash seems to work alright. In practice, the camera will take photos as fast as you can press the shutter. I believe this is more to do with Ice Cream Sandwich than the camera sensor though. The low light performance isn’t great, however, understandable for a phone. Well lit pictures are absolutely beautiful. Very good color, nice sharpness.

    

  

The processor and GPU in the phone seem to be a good fit. Although I do find the phone can get a bit warm with prolonged usage. Everything I need to do is done quickly, with almost no slowdowns. The 1GB of RAM is plenty enough for any multitasking that needs to be done, and again, even when doing multiple things on the phone, I notice no real slowdown. The 16GB of internal storage space was almost a dealbreaker for me, however, after owning the phone, I found I could whittle down my music collection to my most listened to songs, re encode them, and change it up every now and then if things started getting old. Worst case scenario, I have access to everything available on my Subsonic server anyway.

The radios on the phone seem to be good. Reception is never an issue. The phone being pentaband also means I can take it to almost any carrier in the world, as long as they use SIM cards. It’s truly a world phone. Wifi is strong on both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz N bands of my WNDR3700N, providing excellent download and upload speeds. GPS seems good from what I’ve used it for, locking on quickly, and maintaining an accurate location. NFC will be absolutely awesome once Google Wallet legitimately comes to Canada. I cannot wait to use my phone instead of my credit card.

Battery life is purely dependant on software running the phone, so I’ll touch on that once I finish my opinions on the software side of things.

Software: Overview and Opinions

The operating system running this phone is what was the much anticipated Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. Ice Cream Sandwich is essentially a merging of 2.3 Gingerbread and 3.0 Honeycomb, to create one unified OS for both tablets and phones. Design elements are really refined from previous versions. The Holo theme is absolutely gorgeous. It uses very simplistic design elements, with a lot of symbols and clean lines. The Google applications and widgets follow this theme really well, making the entire phone interface look spectacular.

4.0 brings GPU acceleration to the table. With Gingerbread, all rendering was done by the processor, which could make for some less than appealing stuttering and lag when navigating the phone and various applications. With Ice Cream Sandwich, the entire UI is rendered using the GPU, making for an extremely smooth experience. Although Google allows applications to be GPU accelerated as well, some are not. This can be remedied using the developer options that force GPU rendering on all applications.

More nice features added with Ice Cream Sandwich are improved multitasking with a new task switcher/manager, Android Beam, which allows you to send links to another ICS phone with NFC, responding to calls with text messages, and built in photo editing.

I won’t go into detail on any of the applications, as by now, many other reviews have covered the changes in many of the apps, but suffice it to say, everything is a lot shinier and more usable than what it was in Gingerbread. All of the base Google applications are overhauled to be more user friendly, and take advantage of the new, slick holo theme. It just makes everything easier to use and navigate.

Of course, this being a “developer phone”, it’s extremely easy to unlock and modify. For this reason, I’m not running the stock ROM or kernel. My ROM of choice at time of writing is AOKP Milestone 4, coupled with my kernel of choice, GladOS by Ezekeel from Rootzwiki. I find these two modifications add just the little bit of extra control I like to have in my phone (Mainly notification bar toggles and some visual changes from AOKP, and the better battery life, audio/screen mods, and charge limiting from GladOS). So, I suppose this is more from my experience with this software installed on the phone.

The software is great. Coming from CyanogenMod 7.1 on my Desire Z, it just feels a lot faster. Moving between applications is much quicker, opening the camera app is faster, music doesn’t lag like it occasionally did on the Desire Z. Although I am a big fan of Swype, they’ve done awesome things with the new ICS keyboard. I’ve been running that for the past week or so and I’ve really enjoyed it. I don’t feel annoyed by the persistent Google search bar on the home screen. In fact, I find it fairly useful.

Soft keys are awesome. I really didn’t like the capacitive buttons on my Desire Z. I don’t mind losing a bit of screen space just to have those nice, modular, persistent buttons on screen. Dropping from the 4 in Gingerbread down to the 3 in ICS simplifies things too. I don’t miss the search button, or the menu button. I like having the task list button available. It makes switching between apps just one step quicker.

Touching on battery life quickly too, I can pretty easily get through a day of average use with the stock 1750mah battery. I rarely use wifi anymore, however, when I did, the best I managed for screen on time was approximately 3 hours with 5% remaining. Depending on what I’m doing, on 4G HSDPA+, I can usually see about 1.5-2 hours of screen on time, with the inclusion of music listening. Very impressed with the battery in the phone. It performs considerably better than that of my Desire Z with similar tasks. I can only assume that it’ll be even better when my extended battery arrives.

Conclusion

The easiest way to describe a Nexus phone is that it’s not really supposed to be an uber powerful awesome flagship device. The phone is put out to launch a new version of Android, and to really give manufacturers a baseline as to what an ideal phone is for the OS. It’s a device designed to spark development. Most importantly though, it’s a piece of hardware designed to just get out of the way and showcase what’s really important, Android itself.  Does the phone do this well? Yes. It does this extremely well. I will be the first to admit the phone isn't the greatest thing on the market. There are a number of better Android devices on the market with better specifications. This phone however, offers something that many manufacturers don't; a pure Google experience, which is exactly what I want when buying a phone. I believe this will be a phone that I will remember for years to come.