There's been plenty of enmity between Apple and Samsung with accusations of patent infringement and abuse of market power flying about. However, there can be no doubt that Samsung has gone its own way when it comes to smartphones. The Galaxy Nexus, which was co-developed with Google and is co-branded, looks nothing like an iPhone ñ something we think is critical in driving competition and giving users freedom of choice.
In the hand
The Galaxy Nexus feels smaller than it actually is. With a wedge-shaped profile and tapered edges, it's easy and comfortable to hold. The power button is on the right side with the volume slider on the left. The headphone socket and micro-USB power are on the base. The back, Home and Task manager buttons are no longer hardware so they move as required.
At 135.50 x 67.94 x 8.94mm and 135g the Galaxy Nexus is not small but can still be used with one hand as the buttons and controls are well placed ñ far better than the HTC Sensation XL we reviewed recently.
The 4.7-inch AMOLED display is crystal clear and runs at 720 by 1280. As you'd expect, it uses capacitive touch so it supports multi-touch gestures.
Storage
The Galaxy Nexus ships with 16GB of inbuilt storage with no expansion.
One thing we really liked was the ability to connect the Galaxy Nexus to our PC via USB and it appearing as an external storage device making it easy to transfer files to the device without the need for any third-party software.
