So Should I Pop For It?

Chopstix9

Senior Member
May 28, 2011
477
69
0
Monroe, MI
Time for the eligible upgrade on Verizon for my wife's line. She has my old original Moto Droid and I have the Charge. Gonna pass my Charge on to her and I am for obvious reason leaning heavily towards the G-Nex.

I know there will be fans of other phones out there telling me to get 'x' instead. (then get out of the G-Nex forums trolls !!)

It has been in the wild a little while now. What are your honest impressions? I am expecting a little less crisp display than I have on the charge, and that's okay. I don't watch videos on the phone.

So long as I can achieve an easy down and dirty root to use wifi tether on my laptop in my truck, I'll be happy. No doubt in time, I'l start playing with different ROMS but I'm in no great hurry there. Development is still in the early stages for the LTE but as time goes on they will be refined and nice solid ones will come out.

Hell, with her having wifi with my charge, I might even get rid of comcast net and just use the phones. We're grandfathered in to unlimited.

Anyone out there think I could do better than this phone before I buy it?
 

chjade84

Senior Member
Sep 3, 2010
191
115
0
I've had it for 2 weeks now and overall I am as happy as can be. No need to list the awesome qualities since we all know them so here are the gripes:

Let's get this out of the way first -- the screen:

It's not as bad as a lot of people are saying. I got to compare it to my friend's Galaxy S II (who just switched to Verizon in order to get the G'nex after playing with mine...) and yes, large areas of darker solid color have a 'linen' or 'grainy' pattern. It's noticeable in the menus the most. FORTUNATELY, with the brightness set to 60-75% the whites don't have that texture which is the most common large area of a single color.

Otherwise, it's not really that noticeable. In normal use, games, browser, etc you don't really ever see it.

The screen also has a yellowish tint but that seems to be the norm these days. As long as you aren't comparing it to another source of "white" your eyes just make the adjustment. iPhones still have the whitest whites but their screen is tiny. ;)


The volume rocker tends to get in the way when playing games in landscape; maybe I'm just holding it wrong though.

The camera quality really is pretty bad compared to what it could be - not megapixels though, I'm one of those who argues megapixels aren't everything - but the picture quality even in bright light isn't that great if you zoom in all the way. Things are pixelated much more than I'd like.

BUT it's a camera phone. I have a DSLR for "real" photos. These are just fine for facebook, taking pictures for reference later, etc. It's still better than the HTC EVO!

The only notification light color is white but that can be fixed with apps.

External speaker is somewhat quiet but so long as I don't have to replace it twice (EVO!) I'm happy with it.

--end cons--


Also, the battery life is great. No problem going a day on a charge without playing games. Light use gets me 12 hours with 50% left.

You really can't get a better phone right now. I'm sure you can in 2-3 months but it will be a carrier modified phone with a locked bootloader, etc.



I say go for it!
 
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Kryptonian_Knight

Senior Member
Sep 19, 2011
212
22
0
Burlingame, California
thats what I did gave my wife the charge and got the nexus. I tried the razor and took it back the next day. I have no regrets about the nexus. for a new device I had zero bugs in that I can think of. I'm sure I will regret it after ces next month but thats a never ending story with cell phones now adays.

Sent from GALAXY NEXUS
Thank if helped
 
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Chopstix9

Senior Member
May 28, 2011
477
69
0
Monroe, MI
Yeah like I said, I've read some of the gripes about the phone. Having the Charge currently, which has an incrdible display for clarity and brightness, I expect a bit of degradation there. S'okay ... I don't really game on the phone either.

As for the next latest and greatest? Pfft .... you could drive yourself nutz with that one!! The landscape has been pretty quiet now since all of the phones that made it out prior to the holidays. You may not see some breathtakingly new device come out before summer at the earliest and maybe even next holiday season. I'm not too worried about that.

I was glad to hear the battery life is fair. Does anyone know if Juice Defender is compatible with ICS ? I use the ultimate on my phone and it works well.
 

EddieN

Senior Member
May 13, 2011
164
27
48
Gothenburg
I was glad to hear the battery life is fair. Does anyone know if Juice Defender is compatible with ICS ? I use the ultimate on my phone and it works well.
I only managed to try Juice Defender Ultimate 3.8.0 and it seemed like it worked but the battery life felt worse with it on imo. Could be that JD just isn't ICS compatible to 100% in 3.8.0.

Oh and it also started screwing with my screen. When I unlock, the screen is unresponsive until i manage to somehow reboot the phone by holding the power button down. Didn't get anything like that again when i uninstalled it until last night again, but after checking my phones internal memory there was some juice defender folders left so it may still be conflicting. Will do a factory reset.

Otherwise - Go for it!! Really happy with the phone. And tbh all the negative stuff on this forum is a really serious case of buyers remorse. The things people on this forum notice, normal people NEVER notice. It's normal though. When you pay a substantial amount of money for a phone you're bound to look for the con's rather than appreciate the pro's.

I never noticed anything with my phone until I logged onto XDA and found some threads. Then and only then do I actually notice "faults" (if you can call them that), and even then I have to look really hard... I wouldnt read the crying going on in this forum. I'd just be really happy with the device because it's a great piece of kit. I don't mind miniscule hiccups or faults. People on this forum have a hawk eye for things and dont settle until it's PERFECT lol.

The batterylife was really crap for me the first 2-3 days but that was also with heavy useage since I had just bought it. I find it to be really good now. I can easily go through a whole day and still have 46%-50% battery left before charging during the night.

The camera is alright and in light conditions I find it to be pretty good actually. Low light conditions is fine too but it's no DSLR of course. I don't find the flash making the pictures all "yellow" like someone said on the forums.
 

Boomer Dog16

Member
Feb 18, 2011
24
0
0
Well. Ive had G nexus since verizon release an all the ticky tack issues, screen burn in low volume, reception, non gorilla glass, unhidable buttons poor camera an several more have definatly help me decide that its (imo) a cheaply put to market phone. If it wasnt for ICS this phone would already be a flop. You ask is there anything else out there, well i have for a week been using predominantly a Galaxy Note. Yes it has 2.3 but it will be getting ics soon. Has gorilla glass sweet screen great camera, an great benchmarks across the board. Note is import so no Lte, but where i am at average 7-10mgps on ATT anyway so i dont miss lte. The note is considerable bigger than nexus, but at my age much easier on my eyes. Gluck
 

Chopstix9

Senior Member
May 28, 2011
477
69
0
Monroe, MI
If I were going to stay away from the G-Nex I would just get a second Droid Charge. It's a fine phone IMO. The Glass and buttons and stuff? You knew about that stuff before you bought the phone so shame on you !! Or at least you SHOULD have known. I wouldn't pop for 300 bones without a little bit of research first. I'm thinking for $50 more than the Charge, I'll be pleased with it.
 

dario3040

Senior Member
Feb 9, 2010
1,737
152
0
Oslo
Yeah like I said, I've read some of the gripes about the phone. Having the Charge currently, which has an incrdible display for clarity and brightness, I expect a bit of degradation there. S'okay ... I don't really game on the phone either.

As for the next latest and greatest? Pfft .... you could drive yourself nutz with that one!! The landscape has been pretty quiet now since all of the phones that made it out prior to the holidays. You may not see some breathtakingly new device come out before summer at the earliest and maybe even next holiday season. I'm not too worried about that.

I was glad to hear the battery life is fair. Does anyone know if Juice Defender is compatible with ICS ? I use the ultimate on my phone and it works well.
The screen on the Galaxy nexus is way better than any SuperAmoled Plus screen
 

Chopstix9

Senior Member
May 28, 2011
477
69
0
Monroe, MI
I only managed to try Juice Defender Ultimate 3.8.0 and it seemed like it worked but the battery life felt worse with it on imo. Could be that JD just isn't ICS compatible to 100% in 3.8.0.

Oh and it also started screwing with my screen. When I unlock, the screen is unresponsive until i manage to somehow reboot the phone by holding the power button down. Didn't get anything like that again when i uninstalled it until last night again, but after checking my phones internal memory there was some juice defender folders left so it may still be conflicting. Will do a factory reset.

.
If you've paid for Juice Defender Ultimate, why would you not try the latest version? Also, did you have the CPU throttling options enabled? There are a couple of the options that have the yellow lettering marking them as experimental that when I enable on my Charge it gives the same indications you describe above. Leaving those disabled but using all other JD features go a long ways to saving battery on my Charge. I don't know if it will work with ICS but that's my experience on the Charge running both Infinity and stock 2.3.6 rooted.

Edit: Current JD version is 3.8.8 .... anyone running it on ICS? With what results?