Samsung Galaxy Nexus review: Opening new doors

Once again, it is the Nexus time of the year. This time, Google has left the Gingerbread cookies and, together with Samsung, has brought to us the Galaxy Nexus to deliver the Ice Cream Sandwich. And while a cold dessert is totally out of place this holiday season, the latest release of Android is more relevant than ever.

The Galaxy Nexus packs an impressive spec sheet, but it is (yet again) the OS which is the device’s main highlight. After all, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is widely expected to put an end to the fragmentation, which currently plagues Google’s mobile platform.

Unlike its Nexus S predecessor, which was essentially a rebranded Samsung Galaxy S, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a completely different device from the current flagship of the company, the I9100 Galaxy S II. The latest Google phone sports a different GPU and chipset, which are, well, not as powerful as those found inside the Galaxy S II.

Here is a quick look at what the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has to offer, along with its main disadvantages.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM; penta-band 3G support
• HSDPA 21Mbps; HSUPA 5.76Mbps
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS with stock UI
• 4.65” Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution; 16M colors; oleophobic surface
• Slim profile at 8.9mm
• Dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 CPU; PowerVR SGX540 GPU; TI OMAP 4460 chipset
• 16/32GB built-in storage; 1GB RAM
• 5 MP camera (2592x1936 pixels) with autofocus, LED flash; 1.3MP front-facing unit
• 1080p video recording @30fps; touch-to-zoom while recording
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
• DLNA; Wi-Fi hotspot
• Bluetooth 3.0 with ADP
• Charging MHL microUSB port with TV-out (1080p) support
• GPS receiver with A-GPS support
• NFC connectivity
• Accelerometer, gyro and proximity sensors; compass; barometer
• Back cover made of Hyper Skin material for increased grip
• Excellent audio quality

Main disadvantages

• Camera resolution is not on par with the rest of the high-end dual-core competition
• Below average battery life
• Lacks a dedicated camera key
• No microSD card slot
• No mass-storage mode (some files don't show up in MTP mode)
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is yet to be fully compatible with all apps from the Android Market
• No FM radio

A quick look at the key features of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus will show you that the smartphone’s hottest hardware feature is its Super AMOLED screen with HD resolution – a first for a Samsung smartphone. The display combines amazing contrast ratio and superb viewing angles, with eye-popping size and resolution – a perfect match for the spanking new OS on board.

As far as the rest of the hardware is concerned, we heavily suspect that Samsung has intentionally omitted a couple of Galaxy S II features such as the microSD card slot and a superior 8MP camera unit. The superior screen of the Galaxy Nexus, while giving it a touch of exclusivity hardware-wise, will not be enough to cannibalize the strong sales, which the I9100 still enjoys.

The latest Google phone will be aimed at the Android purists – the crowd, which doesn’t like launchers or UI tweaks. And also the crowd that likes to get the latest OS updates from Google first. In this aspect, the smartphone is entirely in a league of its own.

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BlackBerry Curve 9380 review: Not what you’d expect

The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is RIM’s first ever-released Curve with a touchscreen. The Curve lineup is usually an expression of RIM’s understanding for a budget phone and this one supposedly, doesn’t make a difference. It should attract customers with a lower entry price while offering the full BB OS 7 experience.

The new Curve 9380 is basically a downgraded Torch 9860 – it has a less-capable processor and smaller and low-res display. Both gadgets look similar too, but the Curve's pricetags makes up for the differences.

So, let’s take a look at the Curve 9380 full feature list, followed by potential deal-breakers as we saw them.

Key features:

• 3.2" 16M-color TFT touchscreen of HVGA resolution (360 x 480 pixels)
• Quad-band GSM support and tri-band 3G with HSDPA
• Single-core 800MHz processor
• 512MB RAM
• BlackBerry OS v7
• BlackBerry’s proprietary email service and data security
• Wi-Fi b/g/n connectivity
• GPS receiver and BlackBerry maps preloaded
• 5 megapixel fixed-focus camera and a LED flash
• VGA video recording @ 30 fps
• 150MB of inbuilt storage
• 2GB MicroSD card pre-bundled
• Four physical buttons at the bottom
• Optical trackpad
• Hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
• DivX and Xvid video support
• Office document editor
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Smart dialing
• Ultra-fast boot times
• Solid build quality

Main disadvantages:

• BlackBerry Internet Service account is a must to enjoy all the phone features
• No physical QWERTY keyboard (a potential deal breaker for a BlackBerry)
• No videocalling and no front facing camera either
• No Flash support for the web browser
• No FM radio
• Screen has no haptic feedback
• Poor audio quality and loudspeaker performance

As you can see, most of the listed drawbacks of the new Curve are typical BlackBerry. So if tyou are even thinking about getting any of RIM’s phones, you’ve probably already accepted to live with those – the mandatory BIS plan for emails and data traffic as well as the poor variety of apps and the high App World prices.

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HP Envy 15-3000 Benchmarks with AMD 7690M Graphics and SSD

The new HP Envy 15-3000, also referred to as the Envy 15 Late 2011 release, has been conspicuously absent from being reviewed.  While a full review will be upcoming on this site, the overall system performance benchmarks for the Envy 15-3000 deserve they’re own page in the sun and as such that’s what this article sets out to do.  The system as purchased came with a 500GB Toshiba hard drive spinning at 7,200RPM.  To make things more interesting we plopped in an 80GB Intel X25-M SSD.  Now, granted this is not the latest and greatest SSD on the market but it gives a very good idea of what kind of performance advantage an SSD is going to give you, even if it’s last years technology.

The key specs for the Envy 15 review system as benchmarked are as follows:

• Laptop Model: HP Envy 15-3000 (Late 2011 Envy 15 release)
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i7-2760QM @ 2.40GHz
• Memory: 6 GB 1600MHz RAM
• Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 7690M (v. 8.882.2.3000) 1GB VRAM, switchable with Intel HD3000 integrated graphics
• Storage: Intel X25-M SSD 80GB
• Motherboard: Hewlett-Packard 1688

Then Envy 15 can switch between using dedicated and integrated graphics, you’ll want to use the Intel integrated graphics for all those times you’re just doing productivity tasks unrelated to 3D applications or gaming.  For fun, we did benchmark permutations by alternating between AMD/Intel graphics and Toshiba HDD/Intel SSD storage.   The results of each permutation is below and a summary at the very end.  For those interested, you can also download a zip file of all the benchmark and system explorer results here to get a more detailed view.

An extra note, while performing the Integrated/Discrete GPU tests, the BIOS switchable graphics setting was set to “Fixed”, rather than the default “Dynamic”.  Setting graphics to Dynamic has a tangible impact on performance, with the “Fixed” setting producing the highest overall performance when used with the Radeon GPU.

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AMD Radeon 7690M and Intel SSD Benchmarks

HP Envy 15 Specs:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-2760QM @ 2.40GHz
• Memory: 6 GB 1600MHz RAM
• Graphics: Radeon HD 7690M (v. 8.882.2.3000)
• Storage: Intel X25-M SSD 80GB

Windows Experience Index (Windows 7 64-bit):

• CPU: 7.5
• Memory: 7.5
• Graphics: 6.9
• Gaming graphics: 6.9
• Primary disk (SSD): 7.7

PCMark Vantage Score: 15,835

PCMark Vantage Score Comparison:

Laptop	PCMark Vantage Score
HP Envy 15-3000 – Intel Core i7-2760QM 2.40GHz, 6GB RAM, AMD Radeon 7690M, Intel X25-M SSD	15,835 PCMarks
HP Envy 17 3D – Intel Core i7-2670QM, AMD 6850M 1GB, 8GB RAM, 7200RPM HD	9,340 PCMarks
SONY VAIO SA – Intel Core i5-2430M, AMD 6750M, 6GB RAM, 7200RPM HD	7,007 PCMarks
Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 – Intel Core i7-2630qm, Nvidia 550M 1GB, 8GB RAM, Intel SSD	12,160 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420 – Intel Core i5-2410m 2.30GHz, 4GB RAM	6,056 PCMarks
Dell Vostro 3450 – Intel Core i5-2410m 2.30Ghz, 4GB RAM	5,901 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron N411z – Intel Core i3-2330m 2.30GHz, 4GB RAM	5,285 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad T420 – Intel Core i3-2310m 2.1GHz, 2GB RAM	3,204 PCMarks

We’ll hold off on any more comparison tables until the end where we’ll summarize the four permutations of the Envy 15-3000 benchmarked.

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Intel HD3000  and Intel SSD Benchmarks

HP Envy 15 Specs:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-2760QM @ 2.40GHz
• Memory: 6 GB 1600MHz RAM
• Graphics: Intel HD3000
• Storage: Intel X25-M SSD 80GB

Windows Experience Index (Windows 7 64-bit):

• CPU: 7.5
• Memory: 7.5
• Graphics: 6.4
• Gaming graphics: 6.4
• Primary disk (SSD): 7.7

PCMark Vantage Score: 15,405 PCMarks 

AMD Radeon 7690M and Toshiba 7200RPM Benchmarks

HP Envy 15 Specs:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-2760QM @ 2.40GHz
• Memory: 6 GB 1600MHz RAM
• Graphics: Radeon HD 7690M (v. 8.882.2.3000)
• Storage: Toshiba 7200RPM 500GB HDD

Windows Experience Index (Windows 7 64-bit):

• CPU: 7.4
• Memory: 7.4
• Graphics: 6.9
• Gaming graphics: 6.9
• Primary disk (HDD): 5.9

PCMark Vantage Score: 9,736 PCMarks 

Intel HD3000 and Toshiba 7200RPM Benchmarks

HP Envy 15 Specs:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-2760QM @ 2.40GHz
• Memory: 6 GB 1600MHz RAM
• Graphics: Intel HD3000 Graphics
• Storage: Toshiba 7200RPM 500GB HDD

Windows Experience Index (Windows 7 64-bit):

• CPU: 7.4
• Memory: 7.4
• Graphics: 5.9
• Gaming graphics: 6.5
• Primary disk (HDD): 5.9

PCMark Vantage Score: 9,534 PCMarks 

Conclusion

Let’s summarize our results for the PCMark Vantage scores achieved by the Envy 15-3000 with its varying configurations of dedicated/integrated graphics and HDD/SSD storage:

Laptop	PCMark Vantage Score
HP Envy 15-3000 – AMD Radeon 7690M,Intel X25-M SSD	15,835 PCMarks
HP Envy 15-3000 – Intel HD3000, Intel X25-M SSD	15,405 PCMarks
HP Envy 15-3000 – AMD Radeon 7690M,Toshiba 7200RPM HDD	9,736 PCMarks
HP Envy 15-3000 – Intel HD3000, Toshiba 7200RPM HDD	9,534 PCMarks
HP Envy 17 3D – Intel Core i7-2670QM, AMD 6850M 1GB, 8GB RAM, 7200RPM HD	9,340 PCMarks
SONY VAIO SA – Intel Core i5-2430M, AMD 6750M, 6GB RAM, 7200RPM HD	7,007 PCMarks
Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 – Intel Core i7-2630qm, Nvidia 550M 1GB, 8GB RAM, Intel SSD	12,160 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420 – Intel Core i5-2410m 2.30GHz, 4GB RAM	6,056 PCMarks
Dell Vostro 3450 – Intel Core i5-2410m 2.30Ghz, 4GB RAM	5,901 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron N411z – Intel Core i3-2330m 2.30GHz, 4GB RAM	5,285 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad T420 – Intel Core i3-2310m 2.1GHz, 2GB RAM	3,204 PCMarks

Quite obviously the overall system performance is greatly affected by the SSD and not so much what graphics card is being used.  However, if you care about Frame rates in gaming or anything else that utilizes the GPU for computing then of course it will greatly matter.  If we ignore the overall PCMark score and compare the PCMark Gaming GPU scores of the AMD Radeon 7690M versus Intel HD3000 when on SSD here’s what we get looking at the details:

Envy 15 on AMD 7690M	Envy 15 on Intel HD3000
Data decompression	1,762.49	1,174.14
GPU gaming	33.01 FPS	12.9 FPS

The AMD 7690M got 33.01 FPS while the Intel HD 3000 achieved 12.9 FPS, so performance is 2 – 3X better in gaming on dedicated graphics based on just this benchmark.  That’s probably underemphasizing the advantages of a dedicated GPU in gaming, but you get the idea.

Stay tuned for the upcoming review of the Envy 15-3000 that will include some extra benchmarks and comparison of the IPS screen to a ThinkPad laptop with a TN-panel screen.

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