Sprint Nexus S 4G Review

One week ago today I retired my HTC Hero (a phone who’s time came and went within the first three months of its release). It was by far one of the easiest decisions I had to make in my life time. With its tremendously under-powered processor, beautiful but sluggish HTC Sense OS, and small screen, doing something as basic as trying to make a call was on average a 2 minute process. And if that wasn’t bad enough, about 30% of the time the phone would call someone other than the person I was trying to reach. I often joked that if I were to crash into a ditch on the side of a road, I would have better luck of reaching someone by yelling, rather than by using my Hero. The keyboard would render itself unresponsive for minutes for who knows why, the phone would constantly reboot its self, and it had one of the worst battery spans I’ve ever witnessed. R.I.P. HTC Hero, and good riddance!

Now (mind you, leaving Sprint is not an option), what to replace it with? An Evo? It was pretty enticing with its huge screen and the 4G speeds. But no, after my experience with HTC and their poor Sense user interface, I figured it would only be a matter of time that the faster Evo would be slowed to a stop. Next I thought about stepping away from Android completely, stick with the Hero in hopes of the next generation iPhone being released on Sprint? Switch back to a “feature” phone with no fancy smart phone capabilities? Heck, even BlackBerry even crossed my mind (Windows Phone 7 never came into play).

I then began thinking about all my past cell phones that I had liked, and I came to two realizations. 1, All the previous phones I had loved were Samsung and 2, The HTC Hero was the only phone I had ever had that was NOT Samsung. So it seems I had already made my mind. And once I started looking at Samsung, I found and really liked the Nexus S. It was the official Google phone, meaning the phone had just pure Android running on it, and not only that, but the latest version of Android, which is something that was and still is not an option when running with a HTC phone (how can HTC be releasing phones today with 2.2 Froyo? thats embarrassing). Sprint then dropped the news that not only would they be carrying the Nexus S but they would be adding 4G capabilities to the phone. That made the decision to grab the Nexus S 4G as easy as it was to dump the Hero.

It has been seven full days of using and playing with the phone, and I have to say this phone is worth every cent of its retail price and maybe then some. The first thing you notice when playing with the phone is its amazing Super AMOLED screen, it looks really sharp. Then after staring at the screen for a while, I began playing with and setting up the phone. Boy, I sure had forgotten how nice Android is, all the amazing widgets and apps, and all the customization and full app integration that can take place, its just a flat out awesome OS.

I am writing a piece next week on my Top 10 features of Android, and I wont reveal them all now, but one that is just too amazing to leave out of this first review is the mobile hot-spotting. The ability to have a bubble of wifi with me wherever I go for no extra charge is fantastic. And when I am lucky enough to be in a city where there is 4G coverage, that feature is even sweeter. Another nice thing is the ability to secure the wifi with WPA2 security. Android has enough security problems in the Market, so its nice to eliminate the security holes where you can.

The phone is really easy to live and work with. It is very light (4.6 ounces I believe), fits great in your front pocket, and the form factor feels good in your hand. The battery life is good. Not great like Apple iPhones, or amazing like iPads, but a solid good. I have used it frequently and consistently over the past week and have made it through the days without needing a recharge. To me, it seems a lot of the battery life depends on the screens brightness, more so than normally with smart phones. But that’s very easy to control if you install the power manager widget.

The camera on the rear of the fone is quite good. While many phones coming out are up to eight megapixels, the Nexus S 4G is sporting a five megapixel camera with a single (although very bright) LED flash. But when to cameras on cell phones, I use an entirely different set of criteria to judge its quality. How fast does the camera app open? How long is the delay between when I click to take the photo until the picture is taken? And can I get a clear image of whatever I am trying to photograph? I have a quality DSLR for taking beatuiful photographs, but when it comes to mobile photography, it really comes down to capturing the moment. The camera on the Nexus S 4G is exactly what I need with a fast opening camera app, quick response time and clear display. I have posted two photos on my Flickr page (titled “Handshake Line” and “Kitchen Table”) demonstrating the cameras capabilities.

All in all the Samsung Nexus S 4G on Sprint is a fantastic phone running a slick operating system. The next time I am looking for a new phone I will first look at Samsung.