The front of the Nexus looks beautiful, but the back looks like any other Samsung phone - in other words, nothing special, and kind of ugly.

The display is really hit or miss. While AMOLED does have really nice blacks, it still doesn't perform as well in sunlight as an LCD. Also, the Pentile is still visible even at this high of a resolution, and that is annoying and you can't really unsee the graininess of text and straight lines once you've spotted it. A nice IPS LCD would have really have made this phone a whole lot better.

ICS is a whole lot better than Android has ever been, but the Android lag still surfaces every now and again. ICS is also really, really beautiful, and if I were Matias Duarte, I would be crying in my office because ICS is fantastic looking, but all other phones are going to have some ugly skin on them.

Battery life is nothing special. It makes it through the day, but it's not nearly as good as the iPhone 4S which I could use for 2 days of moderate use without charging.