Galaxy Nexus Phone Review

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(photo taken with the Camera 360 App,
using one of their "scenes")

I've had my phone for about a month, and just love it. There was a bit of a learning curve coming from an HTC Evo. I didn't realize how much HTC had messed with the Android OS. Having a PURE Google phone is wonderful. There was no pre-loaded blockbuster, facebook, or twitter app that I was stuck with. That means no bloatware that tries to update itself! 

A few other highlights:

• Love panoramic mode, so easy to use!
• At 5 megapixels, the camera takes photos that are as good as my Evo's 8 megapixel camera. 
• Face unlock is awesome. I just LOOK at my phone and it unlocks.
• Screen is wonderfully bright, even at 12% brightness it's bright enough to see things indoors. I never need it to be brighter than 30%. 
• Since ICS is new and very few people have that version of the Android OS, I was expecting to run into apps that weren't compatible. So far, only one. Robot Unicorn Attack crashes on me. Everything else is fine. 
• I thought I would miss having a microSD card slot, but with 32GB built-in, and like 27GB of that free at the start, I've not needed to worry. I've got all the apps I need, all the music and pictures I want, and still have over 22GB free still. 
• Using Google Wallet to pay for things is awesome. So far I've only used it at vending machines, but all I do is wave my phone over the sensor and the payment works. I've set up a PIN just to be on the safe side, which adds an extra step, but doesn't really slow me down.
• Even though it is an LTE phone, Sprint is still building that network and it's not available in Chicago yet, STILL the phone is very fast
• Google Music works very well, and the lock screen controls are wonderful. 
• Some of the apps I installed in previous android phones are no longer necessary as google has taken care of a lot of those gaps in functionality. Even though you really didn't need a task killer before on Android, you really don't need one for this one, it manages things fine. I never run into lag or sputtering at all. 

A few downsides:

• Battery. First, that's a common issue with smartphones. While phones and processors and all that stuff has leaped forward, battery tech is still lagging behind. Especially since folks demand paper-thin phones, and bright, highly-responsive multi-touch screens. I'd say it's no worse than my EVO, but, since the chargers I used for the EVO are compatible with this Nexus (USB Micro), it's not too cumbersome. I may invest in an extended battery at some point. That made a world of difference with my EVO and the added bulk didn't bother me. 
• Facebook app still sucks. Definitely wasn't the phone's fault. I also run into problems with the website version on both my phone and computer, as does my husband, so that's more in FB's hands than my phones. There are other ways around it since Path and Plume both let me push to FB anyway.