My Nexus S came in

[Bateluer]

Light weight of the Galaxy phones is one of the best feature. It would be dumb for Samsung to make the phone heavy when they have weight advantage over others due to light and thin AMOLED screen. AMOLED makes low weight possible and Samsung is simply highlighting the positive feature which is smart. Thin and light is what everyone is striving for. If Apple had access to the AMOLED technology they would have designed the iPhone to be light as well. They might on their future phone with that new Sharp screen which features thinner and lighter glass like AMOLED.

The GS phones feel cheap when compared to other phones, not just light. Powerful and pretty, certainly, but they feel like a child's toy rather than a flagship smart phone. Its possible to build a lightweight phone without it feeling it was made out of the cheapest plastic possible. Scrapping their cheap plastic for an aluminum unibody would be a great move for Samsung, provided they design the antenna accordingly.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

^ Exactly.

The reason the SGS phones are light is because of the plastic build. It's sturdy, but feels cheap sometimes. The Nexus S is actually much better than the normal SGS phones. I think the NFC antenna and a few other things added a bit of weight.

The iPhone is heavier because of the glass build and the use of metal. Droid phones are heavy because of the metal too.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want a brick, but the iPhone not only feels dense but solid too. You could throw it at someone and knock someone out. LOL. The other positive side about a solid build is you get zero creaking.

Galaxy S series is not known for strong signal. But different modems do make a difference and the rom you flashed might have subpar modem. I would try different rom, kernel, modem and see if that help.

Yeah, I've been playing with different radios. The stock radio has HSUPA crippled entirely. I get like 100kbps uploads only. The other 2 radios are ok, but yield similarly poor SNR still. The odd thing is that while SNR really sucks on this phone (probably 10dB worse than my Motorola Milestone), the data holds up well. If I assume that bars => SNR is the same across modern Android devices, I have bad data issues on the low side of 2 bars and worse. At 1 bar, I'd disable 3G on my Milestone and rely on EDGE for a more consistent connection. And I think my Milestone gets hot a lot as the radio powers up to really boost signal especially when data isn't solid (despite decent bar count). I dont ever remember seeing 0-1 bars on that phone, but that may be because the phone tries hard to boost reception.

On the other hand my Nexus S drops to like 0-1 bars when I pick it up (death grip anyone?) but I get a solid 3mbps download on SpeedTest. LOL. Works for me! This may be like what Anand pointed out about the iPhone 4. While the iPhone 4 got worse reception and had death grip issues, it could hold onto calls at like -113 dB still and not drop while other phones (like the 3GS) would drop out.

 

[BenSkywalker]

How are you liking the bowed screen? Haven't spent a ton of time with the phone, but it was slightly awkward for me(that said, the power button on my current phone has a major PITA at first, now I like it better then a normal one). I know it isn't severe, I'm wondering if with time it actually ends up being a benefit or if you simply stop noticing it.

Also, how is the battery holding up for you? I noticed you made a few comments about preserving battery life but what I have seen led me to believe that shouldn't be an issue.

I've been using it for a while now. Seems faster than stock or Dolphin HD, but I don't think its hardware accelerated. It only loads pages faster because the pages are highly compressed from Opera's servers. I did notice that it loads pictures kinda funky, pixelated then sharp.

Are you thinking of OperaMini? OperaMini and Opera Mobile are two very different browsers made by the same company, Mini compresses the hell out of everything and is still my go to choice if I'm stuck on Edge.

Scrapping their cheap plastic for an aluminum unibody would be a great move for Samsung,

If they did this, I would stay very far away from their devices and tell everyone else I know to do the same. For however great phones built like the iPhone feel in the hand, and I'm not arguing that point at all, they *shatter* very, very easily. You can easily say don't drop your phone, so far out of all the current and past iPhone users I know(just under 20) that has worked for two of them. Yes, you can put them in a case, then what the hell is the point of having that stylistic construction? Not saying your perspective is wrong, but I have seen too many shattered iPhone screens to ever consider picking another phone up with that design style. Big advantage of light weight, F=MxA, when M is less, F is less.

 

[YoungGun21]

No, Nexus S uses native EXT4 file system. Voodoo would do nothing to speed up the phone. The reason your and other Galaxy S phones need Voodoo is that someone at Samsung made the horrible decision to use faulty RFS filesystem instead of superior Linux standard EXT4 filesystem. Voodoo tries to correct this by converting the data partition from RFS to EXT4. The horrible lag on the Galaxy S is because of the RFS. It's also the reason stock Quadrant score is so low since RFS bottlenecks I/O performance.

Google and Samsung corrected the error by using EXT4 from the start on the Nexus S and Galaxy S2.

Ahh Sorry, I didn't know. Just browsed the XDA briefly and saw mentions of Voodoo in thread titles so my mind went something like Samsung -> Voodoo -> uber Quadrant because of my experiences. Guess I should have double checked to see if it was Voodoo file conversion or just sound/color (like it is).

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

How are you liking the bowed screen? Haven't spent a ton of time with the phone, but it was slightly awkward for me(that said, the power button on my current phone has a major PITA at first, now I like it better then a normal one). I know it isn't severe, I'm wondering if with time it actually ends up being a benefit or if you simply stop noticing it.

Also, how is the battery holding up for you? I noticed you made a few comments about preserving battery life but what I have seen led me to believe that shouldn't be an issue.

I notice the curved screen when I put it on my desk in front of me. When the phone is in my hand, and I'm looking straight at it, I barely notice the curve. It's barely noticeable when I use it. Hard to see, but yeah my hand does feel it especially as the phone is fatter at the base to, so when my fingers go for the menu, it feels slightly raised.

Remember the glass is curved, not the screen. The screen is flat. Otherwise you'd get a distorted image. Compared to my Droid it's more ergonomic overall, but that's also because the size fits my hand better. I can't attribute this to the curved screen because I'd probably have to take a regular 4" SGS phone and compare it to see how flat vs curved works. Honestly, the curvature is so small, I don't think it really bothers me.

Battery life... good question. I don't think it's that great, but that may be because I'm overclocked to 1.2ghz. All I know is I went 4 hours today at school looking at my phone for maybe 3 minutes tops and I went from 93% => 83%.

I'm going to evaluate more because I spent a good chunk of the first 2 days plugged in loading data to my phone. Here's what I can say though. I think my Droid does better in terms of standby simply because I have my 2G/3G toggle app working. It does not work for the Nexus S. But I think it's pretty close (with the Droid probably being worse) when screen is on because I think Moto has the radio ramp up in power a lot and the device gets hot as hell when data is hard to achieve. I have yet to feel my Nexus S get hot.

What worries me is the bad SNR I see. 0-2 bars at home a LOT. Probably 2-3 when I'm not holding the device, but there's a LOT of attenuation when I pick it up. As a result, I'm worried that the radio has to ramp up power for data a lot. I have to study it a lot more heh. I know this phone doesn't get good battery though in general from Anand's reviews, but hopefully custom kernels and ROMs will make it better.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I've been using it for a while now. Seems faster than stock or Dolphin HD, but I don't think its hardware accelerated. It only loads pages faster because the pages are highly compressed from Opera's servers. I did notice that it loads pictures kinda funky, pixelated then sharp.

Edit - Oh, welcome to the good life. Those of us with the top end Android phones have been saying its very lag free.

On ADW, you were using the free version? I have ADW Ex and its just as fast as LP on my TB.

BTW are you sure about Opera Mobile not being accelerated?

http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2010/10/14/opera-mobile-for-android-coming-soon

They talk about pinch zoom and stuff and how its accelerated. I kinda agree because it seems to take the fastest devices to handle pinch zoom on the stock browser. Even then dual core devices can show some stutter here and there on the image-heavy websites. Scrolling and zooming feel REALLY smooth on Opera Mobile.

 

[fstime]

I agree Opera Mobile is the best browser and the only one that features hardware acceleration.

The one place android is lacking compared to the iphone despite better specs is GPU acceleration.

I hope 2.4 takes care of that.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Oh FML. Today I got the dreaded AT&T text bumping me from the $15 MediaNET plan to $25 DataPro. That means my $15 unlimited texting => $20 unlimited for smartphones.

I guess this means I probably have to give up tethering too... Worth it for a lag free environment? Shrug.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Oh FML. Today I got the dreaded AT&T text bumping me from the $15 MediaNET plan to $25 DataPro. That means my $15 unlimited texting => $20 unlimited for smartphones.

I guess this means I probably have to give up tethering too... Worth it for a lag free environment? Shrug.

Can you drop texting and just use Google Voice?

 

[Bateluer]

BTW are you sure about Opera Mobile not being accelerated?

http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2010/10/14/opera-mobile-for-android-coming-soon

They talk about pinch zoom and stuff and how its accelerated. I kinda agree because it seems to take the fastest devices to handle pinch zoom on the stock browser. Even then dual core devices can show some stutter here and there on the image-heavy websites. Scrolling and zooming feel REALLY smooth on Opera Mobile.

I had Opera Mini installed, not Mobile. Not sure if one is hardware accelerated and the other isn't, but I bumped up to Opera Mobile. Mobile is more than double the size of Mini though.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Mobile was so large I could never install it on my Milestone. The ~200MB user accessible internal memory was just pathetic and I kept running out. Give it a spin though and tell me how you like it.

I've noticed that opera Mobile's always been fast in scrolling and stuff. Even on my ancient N82 it felt fast (I think that was Opera Mobile 10 though... back in 2008 or whatever).

 

[ChronoReverse]

Opera Mobile is by far the smoothest browser for Android. Now that it supports flash, I don't even touch the stock browser (by stock, I mean the browsers that use the built in renderer like Dolphin or Miren).

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Regarding the SAMOLED display and other displays, I find the display very oversaturated. Some people say they can't go back to LCD. I don't know about that.

I actually like my Motorola Milestone's good IPS LCD with good color reproducibility. However, it does sometimes feel more dull because SAMOLED pushes colors so well.

4.0" is definitely a good size. My iPod's 3.5" feels small for sure. My Milestone's 3.7" feels small also because it uses 16:9 making the width very limited and hard for typing. I believe the iPod's 3.5" is actually wider making it easier to type. Also, Retina's sharpness and the brightness which in turn gives great contrast for the display still makes everything feel crisp. The lack of sharpness on my Android devices is pretty clear. I think it's definitely worse on the Nexus S given that it's pentile AND the pixel density is reduced. Is it bad? Nah. I would be fine with it had I not pulled out my iPod touch and surfed for a bit today. In fact the Nexus S is such a nice device (minus the lack of games) that I've stopped tweeting from my iPod Touch. Heh.

Regarding colors, I don't like the blue tint as much on the Nexus S. However, I feel that contrast and punch are more important as that's why I actually would pick my iPod Touch or Nexus S over my Milestone's accurate colors.

My final observation is Samsung's Tech support sucks balls. I dropped my phone on day 3 or something and killed the back. All before my screen protector and case came in. There's 3 giant scuff marks due to my clumsiness. However, I can't get Samsung tech support to work at all because I need a T-Mobile Nexus S or a Sprint 4G one to even get the serial # to register.

I'm not even asking for a free replacement. I just want to buy a new battery cover. I went through this hell with my Motorola Milestone having a defective SDHC card. I guess this is what you get when you buy imported phones.

I think they need to stop this BS and just work like the tech industry does. A serial # is universal. Just call Western Digital any day, give them your serial # have them verify and you can mail it back anywhere. Why the hell do I need to select my Wireless Provider on the Samsung website and not even be able to find the Nexus S for T-Mobile on there.

I called and was put on hold for 30 min only to be told I should call Best buy who then redirected me back to Samsung and told me that they don't sell it as an accessory. The Samsung hotline and official Nexus S support hotline is just so damn backed up it's not funny. Hell my phone ran out of batteries on Tuesday when I was put on hold for that long. I wonder how many of my monthly minutes I wasted there.

I gave up and tweeted to Samsung instead, and I found that they're actually decent at replying there. Oh goodness. The future of tech support. Done in 140 characters.

 

[s44]

You've installed a Voodoo kernel, right? The Voodoo Control app will let you calibrate the colors. It also lets you crank them higher than high, but DON'T DO THIS (obviously).

 

[vshah]

i know on the nexus one there was a renderfx widget included with cyanogen mod that let you tweak color temps - maybe there is something similar for the S

 

[zerocool84]

I actually like my Motorola Milestone's good IPS LCD with good color reproducibility. However, it does sometimes feel more dull because SAMOLED pushes colors so well.

We had a thread on here at the end of last year and all the Motorola "Droid" phones had the best color reproduction of ANY phones. AMOLED was oversaturated and iPhone 4 was undersaturated. No one would have thought how good their screens were but they are.

 

[YoungGun21]

You've installed a Voodoo kernel, right? The Voodoo Control app will let you calibrate the colors. It also lets you crank them higher than high, but DON'T DO THIS (obviously).

If Voodoo Color is installed then all that they ask of you is that you run 100% brightness.

Tweak the colors only if you know what you are doing and are getting yourself into.

 

[s44]

If Voodoo Color is installed then all that they ask of you is that you run 100% brightness.

That's on Galaxy S version. Nexus (and CM7, I think) version of the Voodoo app has manual adjustments for each of the colors because Google screwed up SAMOLED color temperature between 2.3.1 and 2.3.2. These adjustments let you, among other things, manually set each color to pixel-burnout levels, which you shouldn't do...

 

[Icepick]

I'm going to be up for an upgrade on Sprint soon and was comparing phones to replace my 2 year old Touch Pro 2. Out of the phones out now this is the one I was most excited about. I sampled one in the store last week and it seemed great.

However, now that I've had a chance to read about end user experiences and the chronic poor signal issue I'm content to wait. This phone certainly won't be a serious option until the signal strength issue is fixed (most likely via a radio update.) Of course, the real downer is the nearly year old technology that comprises this phone (1GHz single core, SAMOLED display, no gorilla glass.) The more I wait and the more time that goes by without the software issues being fixed the more content I am to wait for the Galaxy 2. I just can't see being stuck with a single core and 512MB RAM for two years. Who knows whether the Android updates a year from now will still run on that hardware? If Sprint held onto the once per year upgrade path then I'd be tempted. At 2 years, this phone is already too old.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I'm going to be up for an upgrade on Sprint soon and was comparing phones to replace my 2 year old Touch Pro 2. Out of the phones out now this is the one I was most excited about. I sampled one in the store last week and it seemed great.

However, now that I've had a chance to read about end user experiences and the chronic poor signal issue I'm content to wait. This phone certainly won't be a serious option until the signal strength issue is fixed (most likely via a radio update.) Of course, the real downer is the nearly year old technology that comprises this phone (1GHz single core, SAMOLED display, no gorilla glass.) The more I wait and the more time that goes by without the software issues being fixed the more content I am to wait for the Galaxy 2. I just can't see being stuck with a single core and 512MB RAM for two years. Who knows whether the Android updates a year from now will still run on that hardware? If Sprint held onto the once per year upgrade path then I'd be tempted. At 2 years, this phone is already too old.

I really don't know about if the signal issues will be fixed that easily. I'm easily at iPhone reception levels which is pretty embarrassing. Places where my Milestone used to stand out and grab onto those 1-2 bars while iPhone users were like WTF is no longer the case. Today at the bar that I frequent, I had to keep my phone on the table to pick up anything. Then I disabled data so my phone wouldn't suck battery. For my Milestone it seemed to be ok, although I recognize the place is kinda a faraday's cage.

Other than that, when I have full bars, the phone is amazing. I just have to stick to the areas where AT&T has strong signal I suppose.

 

[tonygeor]

I just got a nexus s and i noticed my 3g speeds in el paso were around 500kps...how are your speeds?

 

[WelshBloke]

What benchmark is that in the OP?

 

[ponyo]

What benchmark is that in the OP?

Quadrant.

 

[WelshBloke]

Quadrant.

Is it the pay version, my standard version only has solid blue bars rather than showing a breakdown of the score.

Edit:Yep that's the pay version. Just got it now from the Slide market (there's way too many Android markets, its getting annoying)

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I just got a nexus s and i noticed my 3g speeds in el paso were around 500kps...how are your speeds?

Which Nexus S? The i9020T for t-Mobile?

I'm aware of the issues the i9020A has because it seems the Canadian providers capped HSPA or something.

We ended up flashing the radiofor the i9020T and that worked fine.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=975105

I'm using KB3 right now and it's fine. There's a newer KD1 that came out with the 2.3.4 release and it seems to work fine for me also.