ice-cream-sandwich-nexus

In a recent series of posts from an anonymous user on 4Chan, quite the detailed encounter with the Nexus Prime (or Samsung Galaxy Nexus as it’s being referred to) has been documented. Not only that, but there was also some seemingly accurate information shared on Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as Samsung’s Galaxy S III (this information will be in a separate post to keep discussion organized).

Because information on 4Chan is usually gone in the blink of an eye, you’ll find the entire thread below with information we deem important highlighted for emphasis.

Alright so these Samsung representatives dropped by work today and gave our team a heads up about their mobile division and their flagship phones coming out in the near future. Basically they came in with the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus. They said it was a beta model, but it looked like a proper retail version. They talked about that phone, their Galaxy S II, it’s success and the Galaxy S III next year which is already in R&D.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus:

- Samsung representatives showed a working a working model of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus but not the Galaxy S III. They passed around the Galaxy Nexus phone, and we got about an hour to play with it while they were here. The phone looks similar to the Sprint variant of the Galaxy S II, with a round-edged body, but also similar to the Nexus S with a curved screen. It’s a good size, not too big if you’re used to Android phones. It’s a monster compared to iPhones though.

- Reps said that Verizon passed on the SGSII to have an exclusive deal with Samsung to stock the Galaxy Nexus.

- The SGN will run on Samsung’s Exynos dual core CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Super AMOLED Plus 4.65-inch 1280 x 720 HD display, 16 GB internal memory (with SD card slot). It’s 8.8mm thick with a metal body and a 2000 mAh battery (the same as the new one that’s being released for the Galaxy S II).

- It is heavier than the SGSII, weighing in at around 130g-140g because of the metal casing. It feels nice and has got decent weight.

- The phone is blazingly fast; I guess it’s as fast the SGS II. It has no issues with general use and opens apps, drawers, etc. instantly. No lag. I tried opening a whole bunch of apps, but it was still running smooth and would auto-kill once it got overloaded anyway, so you never feel the performance taking a hit.

Ice Cream Sandwich:

- Ice Cream Sandwich is very nice. It works like the current Gingerbread OS but has gotten a major facelift. The menus are a lot nicer and smoother, screens have a ‘glassy’ look to them. It just feels more polished with more animations (fast and smooth) when accessing things on the phone.

- On the demo unit, the Android version was 2.4.1, not 4.0 or whatever people were expecting.

- The app drawer has three sections at the top that you press and it goes to the drawer for your selection. There are sections for apps, games and widgets. The apps section is what we are all used to. Just a drawer for all the apps on the phone. The games section is just a drawer for all the games you’ve downloaded; the widgets section shows all the apps that have widgets available. The cool thing is you can click the widgets in the widgets section to get a view of what they look like. So you don’t have to screw around with applying a widget on a homescreen, seeing you don’t like it, deleting it, doing it again with a slightly different setting, etc. to see the difference. On ICS you get a visual representation of the widget, you can swap easily between the widgets the app provides, change the settings in real time, and then you can go ahead an apply it on a homescreen.

- Best of all with the drawers is that you can create and name your own app drawer if you want. I think the ICS comes with three standard drawers mentioned above (apps, games and widgets). The demo phone had app drawers created called “Sports” and “News” that contained all the sports and news related apps that you download. I’m not sure if the sports apps you download automatically go to the sports drawer (with some setting like auto push sports apps to drawer “Sports” or something) or if you have to put it there manually. Either way, it was very good and reduced the amount of searching for an app. With the Galaxy phones, if you didn’t know where the app was–which page it was on–it would take a while to search through it, because they weren’t in alphabetical order; they were just in the order you downloaded them. This is a LOT cleaner, more organized and feels more polished.

- I’m not familiar with Honeycomb, so I don’t know really what it pulled from there. I’m guessing quite a bit, because visually it’s quite different to current Android phones. I always thought that Android phone manufacturers made great phones, but the Android software lacked polish and user-friendliness. I was told the glassy look is from Honeycomb. There are a lot more blues and purples on the phone, rather than green. The icons look different, more shiny. The marketplace app is the same as the current one. Not sure if a new one is being worked on.

- The Gmail app is a lot better looking than the current one. If you flip the phone to the side, it has the preview pane, like how Outlook works, with the emails on the left and the message on the right. It looks really nice. Vertically, it works similarly to the current Gmail app, but looks a lot cleaner. In an email the reply button says “reply” rather than having that arrow. There’s a down arrow next to the reply button that has “reply all,” “save as draft,” etc. The threads are smaller (could be due to the higher resolution screen) and around 10-12 threads can fit on the screen. Other than visual tweaks, it’s the same thing.

- Calendar app is revised, a lot less cluttered, glassy bluish look. New calendar widget available.

- The internet browser is leaps and bounds better than what you currently get. It has a completely revamped interface, and the icon is no longer the blue earth icon. The icon is now an Android behind the earth, which is green and blue. Name is still “Internet.” But it’s really easy to use. I personally hated the stock browser for Android, but I’d actually consider using this. It has its tabs at the bottom of the screen now, similar to Opera Browser mobile. The pinch to zoom is better than before, the rendering is excellent, no checkerboards. Zoomed out the text is pristine. Really liking the browser app.Anonymous4Chan

 

As you can see, there’s quite a bit of information here. Especially on Ice Cream Sandwich. Let’s dissect some of the more interesting things said.

First and foremost, the Nexus being referenced keeps being called the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. This isn’t the first time that name has come up. In a rather recent report from GSMArena, it was said that’s what the next Nexus would go by. Interestingly enough, that same report also goes on to describe the Galaxy Nexus as having a curved screen and metal body. Just how Anonymous describes it.

As for the rest of the specs on the device, it’s mostly things we’ve already heard. The screen size, resolution and RAM all look familiar, but the processor and battery size are interesting. The next Nexus has been rumored to use a TI processor for quite some time now. If Samsung was able to stick an in-house Exynos clocked at 1.5 GHz inside, this thing would be sure to fly. And with the 2000 mAh battery mentioned? That would certainly be a welcome change, as well.

The information shared on Ice Cream Sandwich may also seem relatively familiar. If you take a look at the first rumored screen shots of ICS and compare them to what was said today, things line up nicely. The blue tones, added polish and new app drawer have been documented before. However there are some interesting new details on the version number and refined app drawer, as well as the Gmail app and the browser.

Up until now, Ice Cream Sandwich was never given a solid version number. 4.0 was highly suspected, but apparently the Galaxy Nexus was using Android 2.4.1. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, considering ICS is supposed to be the next step after Honeycomb. But anything is possible.

In the leaked ICS pictures, we can see that there are multiple panes to the drawer. One for apps and one for widgets. According to Anon, there will also be a games pane. And for some added customization, you’ll be able to add your own panes, as well. One of the coolest things about the panes, at least in my eyes, is the ability to preview widgets. No more having to place them on the homescreen to find out which one you want.

The Gmail app sounds like it’s been changed to be more power-user friendly. You can now view email previews if your phone is in the landscape position. For tablets, this isn’t really anything new. But on a phone it is. Personally, I can’t wait to try it out. There’s also mention of being able to see more threads on screen when your phone is in the upright position. This is most likely due to the resolution, not some sort of added feature in Gmail.

No technical details have been given on the changes to the browser, but Anon was very clear on one thing: it’s much better. It’s faster, smoother and again, more polished. Should fit in nicely with the rest of the changes made to ICS. The only thing that’s changed in the browser from the original leaked picture to now is the name and icon. Anon writes, “name is still ‘internet,” but the screen shot shows the name Browser. A new icon with a little Andy peeking out from being a globe is also mentioned.

And that’s about it. A lot to digest, no doubt. As I said before, a lot of this information has already made its way online one way or another. Of course there’s no saying that’s not where most of this information came from, but the writer seems too fluid to be simply regurgitating information already found online. What do you think? Real or fake? Either way, one thing’s for sure: it won’t be long until we can finally find out.

« »