UPDATE
About a month ago, I got my hands on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Right out of the box, battery life REALLY sucked. I couldn’t go more than a couple hours before my 100% battery would be warning me it needed juice. In the last 30 days however, my phone has had two forced updates pushed from Verizon, and I figured out that the Exchange Services app was getting stuck trying to update and causing the data service to work overtime (the radios made the phone physically hot to the touch). So, below is my original post… which was valid at the time. Just know that now, 30 days later, I’m actually pretty happy with my phone. It pretty much rules!
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the flagship ice cream sandwich phone, kinda sucks.
The damn phone can not be called a battery powered device. It is a device that requires external power from an AC adapter, car adapter, or USB port… and just so happens to have battery backup. The thing can’t even get through a single night in airplane mode and all network intensive services like email and what-not shut down without going from 100% battery to 25% battery. God forbid I need to use my phone’s alarm feature and I only have 75% battery when I put face to pillow, lest I be slumbering through my early morning meeting.
Some people might say some gibberish about 4G LTE using a lot of power, well I don’t have 4G coverage at home so I took the 4G SIM card out and tested – same result. Others might point out there is a larger battery available, and to those people I say – Hey, I have a brand new luxury car for sale. It comes with completely bald tires, so if you want any kind of traction you have to buy our “high traction” tires. Oh and if you want door handles so you can actually open the door and not have to jump in Dukes of Hazard style, we sell those as well. – Without decent power performance, this phone is useless as a battery powered device.
Sure, the screen is fancy and the dual core processor could guide 1000 Space Shuttles into orbit… but if I can’t rely on it to at least last the day as a standard phone (no power user crap), then this is a worthless POS I’m embarrassed to admit I own. I spend my day looking like an electron junkie scammin for his next fix – Anyone got a USB port I can use? Anyone see an open AC socket? I just need a 5 minute charge to get me through the rest of the day. I swear that’s it an I’m gone.
I have no idea if this kind of performance is something that Verizon did when they molested the OS with their dirty carrier fingers, or if this is something inherent in Google’s failure to effectively control power usage – either through software feature failure or failure to control Samsung enough to provide power aware chipsets that can be put into low power states. The bottom line is, this phone is a huge step back in terms of usefulness. I don’t care if the thing can open a portal to another dimension… if it can’t run more than 5 minutes without me worrying about where I’m going to get my next dose of electrons, it’s basically a fun toy, not a useful tool.
Nicely put !