***Official Galaxy Nexus Pre-Release speculation thread**

[rpretzel]

Me: Evidence is mounting that the Nexus will be out on the 17th! Glad I'm taking a vacation day to go pick it up.

My wife: You're a dork.

Me: Yes, yes I am. But I'll be a dork with a really cool phone.

(Woo Hoo! Nice win Niners!)

 

[BabyBlues]

Hmmm Scotty might be a good name for my Gnex (yes I name my phones - OG was Alfred, laptop is Floyd and desktop is Steve. Oh and my car is Kevin ) lol

Doesn't look like there was much gained over the weekend? Anyone still doing the twitter giveaway game?

My laptop is Fred. My phone never got named - it's just known as my third lung.
I haven't thought of a good name for my Nexus.

 

[Jon Nale]

For all of you hoping for the 17th....


I want to say that if the phone does in fact come out on the 17th, Verizon will announce it, at the latest, by the end of the day tomorrow. However, seeing as tomorrow is the release date of the Rezound, I am not sure Verizon would want to steal its thunder.

If this device is a flagship device or if Verizon, at the very least, believes it will be a MAJOR device (why would they get exclusive rights if they didn't think it would be?), I don't think Verizon would give us only a 2 day notice. I think they would try to build up some hype, not tech geek hype, but more general consumer hype. Therefore, I personally believe that if the phone is not announced tomorrow, we will probably see it sometime next week at the earliest.

I personally don't believe we will see a silent or web-only launch. Think about it, Verizon had to work with Samsung to get this phone as an exclusive in the U.S. Why would they take their exclusive phone and give it a silent, web-only launch? Isn't the point of getting an exclusive device to brag about it? "Hey, you want this totally awesome phone? Well, you'll have to come to our network because we are the only ones that have it (in the U.S.)!"

I hope for one of two things:
(1) Verizon announces the phone tomorrow, and it does in fact come out on the 17th.
(2) I am wrong, and the phone gets a VERY short announcement timeline.

 

[tdub88]

I think I may go to my neighborhood Verizon store tomorrow and check out the razr. Forgot the Rezound is dropping tomorrow as well. Should give me something to compare each phone to. l

So, you're going to compare 2 phones you can touch/operate to one you can only imagine holding? Good plan.

You might as well spell the other phones names' funny and talk about how you won't even be able o operate your HTC Verizon phone w/ all the BLOATWARE.

 

[charlie310]

I'm confused, the thread title has the 17th as the release date, but the OP has the 21st. What date is more likely?

Sorry, I would have tried to read through this thread if it wasn't 75% off-topic BS. If it was cleaned up, I suspect the 558 pages would be decreased to 200. LOL.

 

[rpretzel]

For all of you hoping for the 17th....


I want to say that if the phone does in fact come out on the 17th, Verizon will announce it, at the latest, by the end of the day tomorrow. However, seeing as tomorrow is the release date of the Rezound, I am not sure Verizon would want to steal its thunder.

If this device is a flagship device or if Verizon, at the very least, believes it will be a MAJOR device (why would they get exclusive rights if they didn't think it would be?), I don't think Verizon would give us only a 2 day notice. I think they would try to build up some hype, not tech geek hype, but more general consumer hype. Therefore, I personally believe that if the phone is not announced tomorrow, we will probably see it sometime next week at the earliest.

I personally don't believe we will see a silent or web-only launch. Think about it, Verizon had to work with Samsung to get this phone as an exclusive in the U.S. Why would they take their exclusive phone and give it a silent, web-only launch? Isn't the point of getting an exclusive device to brag about it? "Hey, you want this totally awesome phone? Well, you'll have to come to our network because we are the only ones that have it (in the U.S.)!"

I hope for one of two things:
(1) Verizon announces the phone tomorrow, and it does in fact come out on the 17th.
(2) I am wrong, and the phone gets a VERY short announcement timeline.

There was talk earlier that VZW might soft launch the GNex. There may be no announcement at all, at least initially. That kinda makes sense to me. With all the new big hitting phones coming out all at once, they may hold off significant marketing until after the RAZR and Rezound dust settles.

 

[BabyBlues]

I'm confused, the thread title has the 17th as the release date, but the OP has the 21st. What date is more likely?

Sorry, I would have tried to read through this thread if it wasn't 75% off-topic BS. If it was cleaned up, I suspect the 558 pages would be decreased to 200. LOL.

Your guess is as good as ours as to more likely date. But we have a couple sources that say they have seen the 17th.

As far as cleaned up - if we didn't go off topic sometimes I think that people would have been taken away by the men and women in white coats.

 

[nbajam]

For all of you hoping for the 17th....


I want to say that if the phone does in fact come out on the 17th, Verizon will announce it, at the latest, by the end of the day tomorrow. However, seeing as tomorrow is the release date of the Rezound, I am not sure Verizon would want to steal its thunder.

If this device is a flagship device or if Verizon, at the very least, believes it will be a MAJOR device (why would they get exclusive rights if they didn't think it would be?), I don't think Verizon would give us only a 2 day notice. I think they would try to build up some hype, not tech geek hype, but more general consumer hype. Therefore, I personally believe that if the phone is not announced tomorrow, we will probably see it sometime next week at the earliest.

I personally don't believe we will see a silent or web-only launch. Think about it, Verizon had to work with Samsung to get this phone as an exclusive in the U.S. Why would they take their exclusive phone and give it a silent, web-only launch? Isn't the point of getting an exclusive device to brag about it? "Hey, you want this totally awesome phone? Well, you'll have to come to our network because we are the only ones that have it (in the U.S.)!"

I hope for one of two things:
(1) Verizon announces the phone tomorrow, and it does in fact come out on the 17th.
(2) I am wrong, and the phone gets a VERY short announcement timeline.

Verizon regularly announces release dates the day before the phone goes on sale.

 

[Schex13]

Me: Evidence is mounting that the Nexus will be out on the 17th! Glad I'm taking a vacation day to go pick it up.

My wife: You're a dork.

Me: Yes, yes I am. But I'll be a dork with a really cool phone.

(Woo Hoo! Nice win Niners!)

I'm getting the same from my wife. She likes to walk over and whisper, "it's a phone, it'll make phone calls" when she sees me lurking in the thread.

I'm excited to move from the OG to this in a little while. She's willing to hang on to her enV Touch for a while.

BTW, I've enjoyed the insanity in here the last few weeks and hope to lurk less...

 

[IndecisiveElle]

My laptop is Fred. My phone never got named - it's just known as my third lung.
I haven't thought of a good name for my Nexus.

My first car was named Frederick. I like to name things lol. My Nexus needs something special. Perhaps dinosaur related because I love when someone started calling it the galaxasarus a while back!

So excited about learning something concrete soon!

 

[metasin]

For all of you hoping for the 17th....


I want to say that if the phone does in fact come out on the 17th, Verizon will announce it, at the latest, by the end of the day tomorrow. However, seeing as tomorrow is the release date of the Rezound, I am not sure Verizon would want to steal its thunder.

If this device is a flagship device or if Verizon, at the very least, believes it will be a MAJOR device (why would they get exclusive rights if they didn't think it would be?), I don't think Verizon would give us only a 2 day notice. I think they would try to build up some hype, not tech geek hype, but more general consumer hype. Therefore, I personally believe that if the phone is not announced tomorrow, we will probably see it sometime next week at the earliest.

I personally don't believe we will see a silent or web-only launch. Think about it, Verizon had to work with Samsung to get this phone as an exclusive in the U.S. Why would they take their exclusive phone and give it a silent, web-only launch? Isn't the point of getting an exclusive device to brag about it? "Hey, you want this totally awesome phone? Well, you'll have to come to our network because we are the only ones that have it (in the U.S.)!"

I hope for one of two things:
(1) Verizon announces the phone tomorrow, and it does in fact come out on the 17th.
(2) I am wrong, and the phone gets a VERY short announcement timeline.

Why must it be either or? How is a silent launch followed by bigger marketing push later worse then no silent launch and a big marketing push later?

The way I see it the marketing campaign will sell the same number of phones either way. I don't see someone saying "wow that phone looks cool. I would buy it if only it didn't come out last week."

This way they satisfy the crazies (us) and still market to the masses.

 

[ajdroidx]

So, you're going to compare 2 phones you can touch/operate to one you can only imagine holding? Good plan.

You might as well spell the other phones names' funny and talk about how you won't even be able o operate your HTC Verizon phone w/ all the BLOATWARE.

Not quite. I was going to compare the razr to the resound. I have a Droid x I know about bloat. I also know how to root and use titanium backup to freeze bloat. Or if I chose I can use root explorer to delete said bloat. I know roms would also be an option if I felt inclined to do so

 

[ckelly33]

My first car was named Frederick. I like to name things lol. My Nexus needs something special. Perhaps dinosaur related because I love when someone started calling it the galaxasarus a while back!

So excited about learning something concrete soon!

With the size of it how about Nex-zilla

 

[Old Member]

Will it be possible to port Beats By Dre to the Gnex or is it hardware driven and not software?

 

[HanSolo]

There was talk earlier that VZW might soft launch the GNex. There may be no announcement at all, at least initially. That kinda makes sense to me. With all the new big hitting phones coming out all at once, they may hold off significant marketing until after the RAZR and Rezound dust settles.

Do we know what a "soft launch" actually means?

After thinking about it, I'm thinking it means simply that the launch date hasn't been set yet. Like "tentative launch".

As has been said, I can't imagine they will just magically appear on the shelves one day. It's going to be priced as a high-end phone, and they will market it as such. Also, there's no way they want exclusivity to just ignore it and keep it out of competitors' hands just for spite or something.

Doesn't make sense, unless there's some blood feud wife-stealing subplot between the CEOs of Verizon and Google.

 

[BabyBlues]

With the size of it how about Nex-zilla

I think I might try Nexadactyl Knight

 

[mistermojorizi]

I never argue with experience, but I will add that in solving problems we have a saying - one equation, one unknown (meaning you can't solve an equation if it has many variables).

My example had one unknown - megapixels today (and I would assert that pretty much any of the camera sensors from within the last year+ are of a day, give or take very little).

Your example has two variables - camera megapixels over the years.

Let's take a quick look at not too many years.

Early digital cameras were of one sensor type - CCD. There, each little pixel is captured by a device that holds charge, and it's charge level is read off and turning into a digital value after the image is "exposed." Trouble there - heat flow within the chip would change the charge levels in the pixels from the time of the exposure to the time of the read-off - and that would happen unevenly over the chip.

That all varied by CCD tech and chip manufacturing, which improved over time.

Then came the newer CMOS sensors - different way of skinning the same cat for converting light to digits and lots of extreme improvements in manufacturing that tech since introduced.

And what was the actual sensor size for those cameras you've bought over time? That has changed a lot over the years, from my understanding.

So - was the quality difference you saw a function of megapixels or it was it a function of simple tech improvement over time and they added megapixels because they could without harm? How can we be sure?

How about the image processing software built-in to those cameras? All the same jpeg standard? Maybe so. Did they all feature raw image outputs?

How about the accuracy of the ASIC processors? Maybe equivalent.

And how about the lens? We ought assume for fairness that you didn't buy any big changes there. Do we know? Lens are rated in lines of resolution. Did they use less capable lenses to keep costs down on the earlier cameras you owned? I won't go there, you can decide yourself if my assumption that they were equal is up to you, since you didn't say one way or the other.

I'll just stick with the sensor tech changes over time as too great for any of us to know at a glance - but generally, the physics will always favor the sensor quality over the raw MPs.

Hope that helps!

PS - You can click to enlarge my sample pics to their approximately HD resolution size.

PPS - Yes, once you hit the top in the other quality metrics, resolution then counts. I know a guy who photographs for the Smithsonian and National Geographic and his stuff is mind-blowing in detail - as are his image file sizes!

So - not saying that MP never matters - just saying it matters less than the other metrics before it.

Am saying I doubt it matters at all on a sensor this size if you have more MP compared to the noise specs.

thx for taking the time for this detailed response. Your assumptions are right on and I understand the variables involved. I get that resolution is not as important as sensor and lense size and quality and also software. However, in the harsh reality of retail electronics, and I'm not talking high end dslr stuff here, quality will correlate positively and significantly with resolution at a given point in time, variance and noteable exceptions, notwithstanding.

now camera on the phone isn't even a priority for me personally. I just think that as a flagship device they should know this (business not physics) trend to correlate resolution and quality and just gone with 8. Alternatively, they could have had some other quality about the camera to advertise such as a Leica lense or a huuuuge sensor or something.

I also think 1.5 ghz, sd slot, hdmi bigger battery and non pentile screen should be on it, regardless of the fact that there are arguably reasonable, lengthy and cerebral explanations for the lack of these features you would expect on a flagship. Again, just because that's what the market expects.

 

[matt999000]

O2 UK confirms it'll be selling the Galaxy Nexus on November 17th | The Verge the phone is being released the 17th hopefully it will the same for verizon

 

[nbajam]

thx for taking the time for this detailed response. Your assumptions are right on and I understand the variables involved. I get that resolution is not as important as sensor and lense size and quality and also software. However, in the harsh reality of retail electronics, and I'm not talking high end dslr stuff here, quality will correlate positively and significantly with resolution at a given point in time, variance and noteable exceptions, notwithstanding.

now camera on the phone isn't even a priority for me personally. I just think that as a flagship device they should know this (business not physics) trend to correlate resolution and quality and just gone with 8. Alternatively, they could have had some other quality about the camera to advertise such as a Leica lense or a huuuuge sensor or something.

I also think 1.5 ghz, sd slot, hdmi bigger battery and non pentile screen should be on it, regardless of the fact that there are arguably reasonable, lengthy and cerebral explanations for the lack of these features you would expect on a flagship. Again, just because that's what the market expects.

1. The 5 MP camera was a trade off required to get the no shutter lag
2. So you're going to be able to tell the difference between a 1.2 ghz and 1.5 ghz clock speed?
3. It has HDMI through the MHL port
4. PENTILE DOESN'T MATTER

 

[zx10droid]

thx for taking the time for this detailed response. Your assumptions are right on and I understand the variables involved. I get that resolution is not as important as sensor and lense size and quality and also software. However, in the harsh reality of retail electronics, and I'm not talking high end dslr stuff here, quality will correlate positively and significantly with resolution at a given point in time, variance and noteable exceptions, notwithstanding.

now camera on the phone isn't even a priority for me personally. I just think that as a flagship device they should know this (business not physics) trend to correlate resolution and quality and just gone with 8. Alternatively, they could have had some other quality about the camera to advertise such as a Leica lense or a huuuuge sensor or something.

I also think 1.5 ghz, sd slot, hdmi bigger battery and non pentile screen should be on it, regardless of the fact that there are arguably reasonable, lengthy and cerebral explanations for the lack of these features you would expect on a flagship. Again, just because that's what the market expects.

i believe the mainr eason the nex doesnt have an 8mp camera is because there are no options currently on the market for them to maintain a zero shutter lag using an 8mp camera, the speed of read/write just isnt fast enough yet to maintain that speed. as far as the hdmi, it does have it, just like the other galaxy phones it will go through the usb/mhl port. we're not sure on the battery size yet, as some say it may included a beefier 1850mah battery, so we'll have to wait and see for confirmation.

edit: ninjad above

 

[mistermojorizi]

1. The 5 MP camera was a trade off required to get the no shutter lag
2. So you're going to be able to tell the difference between a 1.2 ghz and 1.5 ghz clock speed?
3. It has HDMI through the MHL port
4. PENTILE DOESN'T MATTER

1. Please cite an official,source for that. No shutter lag is software not hardware bases I believe. Also not gonna use this phone to get magazine quality shotts of sporting events where that would matter. Might be no shutter lag but it lags on preview of ur next shot which offsets the benefit.
2. Didn't say I would
3. I have an hdmi cable as everyone else. Not a mhl cable
4. No need to yell that. I'm extensively familiar with the argument on this. We will see as many people also make the argument that pentile never matters.'it does to my eye.

I think you may have missed my point a bit. I'm not saying that I don't know the pros and cons of these things or that they all matter to me (sd slot does).

I'm saying from a consumer/market/ business perspective, not from an informed geek perspective, a big dog phone should just have these specs without these explanations needed.

 

[VJKotts]

off topic

Just downloaded this app from the market after reading an article on Techcrunch
One of the best to do apps I've ever seen on any platform (from the Taskos team)

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.anydo#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDIxMiwiY29tLmFueWRvIl0.

 

[callmeox]

Will it be possible to port Beats By Dre to the Gnex or is it hardware driven and not software?

FWIW

Audiophile opinions aside, Consumers Reports rates a number of Beats earbud and headphone models as recommended.

 

[eddieruko]

I also think 1.5 ghz, sd slot, hdmi bigger battery and non pentile screen should be on it, regardless of the fact that there are arguably reasonable, lengthy and cerebral explanations for the lack of these features you would expect on a flagship. Again, just because that's what the market expects.

while engadget or others may post an article about the inferiority of some of these features, i really don't think a majority of the market really places much stock in those items.

i understand your point about the 8mp (although as others have explained, its a tradeoff). but for example, 5 out of 6 people in my family are on android devices. 4 of them would not know the difference btwn 1.5 and 1.2ghz, would not even realize it came with an SD slot or not, and has no idea why anyone would complain about a pentile screen. aside from myself, and i presume the relatively few of us that geek out over this stuff, i don't think those are the marketing features mainstream android users are sold on. most people don't see the hardware on the inside. they see the brand on the outside and the gui on the screen.

if there's one thing i've seen is that the integrated and relatively seamless google experience that android provides is what brings people back to android. android has the ability to fill a very large number of niche markets. want a keyboard, you got it. want a phablet, you got it. want an 8mp camera, you got it. use an SD slot, you got. monster/removable battery, etc. you got it.

i think many of us here recognize the power of gnexamus and the exciting google experience that ICS will bring.

 

[Ytram]

1. Please cite an official,source for that. No shutter lag is software not hardware bases I believe. Also not gonna use this phone to get magazine quality shotts of sporting events where that would matter. Might be no shutter lag but it lags on preview of ur next shot which offsets the benefit.

Zero shutter lag is going to be a combination of hardware and software. And from the videos I've seen, there's no lag between shots either, so I'm not sure what you're referring to there.

Overall though, I agree. They should have bumped it to 8MP just to match in a comparison matrix. I've gotta assume there's a reason they went this way, as the HTC Rezound is advertising zero shutter lag too, and it has an 8MP camera.