I LOVE THIS PHONE!!

I too am replacing my Droid Charge with this. I just got it about 4 days ago and it is AWESOME!! Going from gingerbread to Jelly Bean is just amazing and of course no comparison. The new OS is great and runs smooth.

As many have complained, the battery life is not the best but keep in mind this is a smartphone running the best of the best apps with a great display and 4g lte speed. You can't expect more out of the battery this size.

The screen is probably one of the best I have seen. It is not made with gorilla glass but from what I was reading on other forums, no need for a screen protector anyways. I have seen a youtube video where a guy scratched it with his key and it left no scratches on the phone. Also, a friend from work has had his for about a year and never had one, his screen looks just as good as my mine. lol! nice job Samsung!

I ended up making the decision to buy this as soon as Google announced that there will be no Nexus 4 running on Verizon so I figured I would buy an off contract phone and see where things go until my contract is finally up in May, plus I keep my unlimited data hehehehe. The price, being a year later, was also very cheap so kind of a win win situation for me. When I went to verizon to have this activated you could tell they were not very friendly and rather upset to see someone making a bold move as to not upgrade at a subsidized price for another two year contract, hehehehe.

If you want to stay with Verizon and still keep your unlimited data, i suggest going with this phone. The boot loader is unlocked so it is very easy to root and from a forum i was reading Google/Samsung were very smart as to partition the OS from the rest of the phone so that to brick it would be rather a difficult thing to do.

Best experience I had with Android and Verizon

The best reason to buy this phone is if you don't have an upgrade or don't want to sign another 2 year contract. I am surprised to see how cheap you can buy this phone unlocked and I jumped on the offer. The phone has a plethora of features and if you know your way around android, you can always add more. Being able to root(hack) this phone so easily is what the selling point was for me. I love to install custom software and add to the functionality of my phone. It does have a bit of a learning curve for new smartphone or android users but you can quickly adapt no problem. The only issue I have with the phone itself is its battery life. Out of the box it is below average for me at least. I got around 7 hours of heavy use out of it and about 11 out of moderate use. That being said you an buy an extended battery which I would recommend if you don't know how to root and change kernels. If you do know your way around an android phone then you know you can swap the kernel to one that manages battery and cpu power better and that will save you SO much battery. Really! I could not be happier with this purchase simply because it is a stock Google produce product with tons of developers and it is guaranteed software updates.

Solid Phone. Will stay competitive with new phones for months

So I had Bionic and I was happy with it, until this phone came out. The Galaxy Nexus presented too many awesome features for me to pass it up, and seemed to me to be a significant improvement over my Bionic. So I got it. I love this phone. I am running it regular stock, non-rooted.

Has everything I want, it is not laggy, ICS is great, NFC is sweet if not as widespread as I would hope yet.


The camera would be better if it was higher quality but it is good quality still, and the zero lag feature is clutch.

I have never run into an issue needing an SD card and feeling like I was stuck because I did not have that option, and Google offers ways to use the phone as storage easily anyway.

Battery Life is so dependent on your specific situation. When I am in my hometown with 4G I got very short battery life (I often was putting the phone under heavy usage at the time and never turned off 4G). I would have to guesstimate I got 5-6 hours medium-heavy use, and 8 hours regular on LTE.

Where I live now there is not yet 4G and I often use WiFi and I get up to 15-17 hrs on light use and about 12-13 on Moderate-Regular use.

Anyway it is just awesome to have a phone that just works how you want it to (I know, obligatory iPhone mention here: iPhone is a good phone but I don't want iOS - ok moving on) and it is a fantastic experience using this phone.

The screen quality and size make it great to use. Ice Cream Sandwich is great but I am not going to review that too. Little things like the notification light (which is customizable via 3rd party apps) and having the lock button on the right hand side of the phone are some of the things that I think take this phone a level above most. It may not be a key feature, but things like that set it apart from many other similar spec'd phones.


Best:

Huge/Brilliant Screen

NFC (Allowing you to use Google Wallet - not hard to get this even on Verizon non-rooted)

Ice Cream Sandwhich

Unlocked Bootloader

Notification Light

Right hand side lock button

Worst Things:

Screen is not Gorilla Glass (still scratch/break resistant but not as durable as Gorilla Glass in my opinion)

Camera is only 5 MP

No microSD Slot/HDMI out (they do have an HDMI via dock now)

Speaker phone not very loud (apparently you can get 3rd party apps to make it louder but I have not tried this)




TL;DR - It is not perfect but it is close, with no deal-breaking flaws or oversights; thanks to its wide range of features (LTE/NFC), early reception of Google software updates, and ability to root and overclock it, this phone will be the most capable of keeping up with technology on a 2-yr plan.

Phenomenal phone!

This is probably one of the best phones I have ever owned next to the Droid Incredible.

The resolution is great and the size of the phone is just perfect. I am very petite and wanted a phone that had great net browsing capabilities with a large enough display, yet not be like a tablet when talking to someone on the phone.

I gave 3 stars for the battery life, because yes, it does tend to deplete quite quickly, especially when browsing the Internet. But I guess a big portion of that has to do with the 4g. I usually manually turn off features that I dont need to save battery and it works well.

Overall, I am very pleased with this phone!

Stock battery not great, but a ICS "Nexus" phone is hands down the best.

This phone is super fast, and while maybe not as thin as the Droid Razr, its not hefty either. ICS is amazing. Phone is full of amazing features like face unlock and Google music from the cloud. Battery life wasn't THE WORST (cough..cough..Thunderbolt) but the extended battery was a gracious improvement. I wish the device was a true Nexus (minor VZW bloatware), but unwanted apps can be "deactivated" and hidden (not deleted) from the menu and update queue. All in all, I'm a happy user and would recommend this phone to anyone looking for a complete, reliable, fast smartphone on an amazingly fast LTE network without OS or manufacturer restraint.