Galaxy Nexus: 5 months of amazing

Posted by Fish-chan on August 4, 2012 03:28 am 4

Howdy!

About 5 months ago, I bought a Galaxy Nexus. I never had a phone prior to it, and my carrier(TELUS) gave it to me for $50 AND had a promotion for a 6GB data plan for the price of 1GB. It was the final day of said promotion. I could have gotten an iPhone 4S for $50 too.

Now, I only needed a phone for data on the go, no calls or anything. I'm headed to college soon and my parents wanted me to have a phone. So, I did literally 3 months of research on phones. I've always been an Apple guy(not a fanboy. But a fan). I had an iPod touch(2G and 4G), iPad 2 and MacBook Pro. So it only made sense to get an iPhone. I was so invested in the ecosystem already. But I have huge hands. And the iPhone literally hurts me to use(same for my iPod touch prior). iOS on the smaller screen also began to become stale to me. I grew tired of it. It more or less still felt like 5 years ago when it came out.

I need updates, I hate being stuck in the past. So my only 3 options here were: a Nexus device, iPhone 4S or Windows Phone device. I'm glad I didn't choose the later or I'd be annoyed about no Windows Phone 8.

I figured I had nothing to lose with getting the Galaxy Nexus, my carrier said if I didn't like it I had a week to exchange it for an iPhone 4S. So I took the plunge into Android.

I also thought Ice Cream Sandwich looked really cool(I think a Google employee saw Tron and had a boner the entire time and said "Let's make our OS... COMPLETELY BASED OFF THIS IDEA"). So, here I am, about 5 months later. With NO regrets. I can use Android as a phone OS mainly because all the apps I /need/ are there. For a tablet, iOS is still better because it has a lot more apps I can't live without on my tablet and quality apps.

But anyway, I had one of those pesky international Nexus' where the updated are controlled by Samsung and not Google so the first thing I did was use an XDA-developers guy to convert to a yakju build of the OS so I am supported directly by Google. Now, a friend at Google(days before I/O) gave me a takju build and said "Here, take this. Trust me you'll be happy when I give you an update.zip in a few days" so I said sure. So Google I/O rolls past the first announcement of Android 4.1 when I get an email. the subject was "<3" and it contained an update.zip. It turns out the firmware he gave me previously was the firmware Google I/O Galaxy Nexus' were running and hte update.zip would only run on that. So I was enjoying Jelly Bean. At that point, I was super happy I got this phone.

I buy devices when I'm happy with their current state. I don't buy and hope it gets better later on. That usually leads to disappointment on my part. I also never expect a device to get faster and most of all more smooth as it grows older. But Jelly Bean really blew me away.

So long story short: Android has treated me very well for the past 5 months and I don't think I'd ever have second thoughts about buying another Nexus device ever again.

Sorry for that long-winded post.

~iFish