Gadgetory

hey everybody thanks for tuning in the Android Authority my name is Darrell doke and this is our review for the Google Nexus S 4G on Sprint it's physically identical a t-mobile version of the phone that launched approximately six months ago except for this one has support for Sprint's optional 4G WiMAX network the Nexus S phones are based on the Samsung Galaxy S phones so there are some physical similarities here like the volume rocker being located on the top left the power button being located here on the top right but there is some changes where they took the power port and the headphone jack and relocated them to the bottom and they've also added a concave screen and taken away the Gorilla Glass the only complaint I have about the physical side of the device are the rearranged capacitive touch buttons in comparison here's a samsung epic see the brightness difference of the buttons and so in the daylight you cannot see these buttons at all and you'll have to remember which order they're in except for they are different than any other set em Android phone out there on the market right now so that's one frustration the only other thing I would complain about on the physical side of the device is this plastic back cover is very glossy gathers fingerprints and really feels kind of cheap in comparison to something like a soft touch back when it comes to the software the phone everything is really really smooth it is really nice to use there's no hiccups anywhere in here there's no lag and everything runs very smoothly there's really only two complaints that I have when it comes to the software first one is the inability to do more than 160 characters in an SMS the way you resolve that is by using a third-party application like Hansson SMS the only other complaint that I have is the inability to activate 4G through a widget there's no widget support in this one so the only way to do it is by going into the settings going to wireless and networks 4G settings and enabling it right here but when you're browsing the web and you want to download something you want to jump on the or G network there's no quick way to do it there's no way to do a drop down and doing like quick settings or somebody at that quick settings can't control the 4G and so there was some frustration on there as well as doing something like widgets oídos not able to control the 4G in this phone either when it comes to bonuses of the Nexus S one of the only things I could really think of except for the fact that this is vanilla Gingerbread is the Netflix application where you're able to stream video directly to the handset which not a lot of Android devices are able to do these days Sprint does offer a couple different applications that I found interesting one of them was the total equipment protection application which makes it to where you can sync contacts and do a location on a lost phone and TeleNav navigator which if you do not like the Google Navigation they do offer you a free navigation program that does work pretty good when it when you look at touch tests they just like the other Samsung Galaxy S phones it supports up to five touches at a single time another aspect of the phone that actually seemed pretty disappointing was the camera quality when doing still shots there was still quite a bit of noise in the pictures even though there was enough lighting you know it does have its LED flash right here but that really didn't help anything when it came to the shots they were still pretty grainy even in the in the bright daylight when I came to video quality it was pretty disappointing because it's limited of only a 480p where Galaxy S phones are normally limited to a 720p so I found that pretty disappointing and then during a quick video call quick chat using the front-facing video camera had a pretty poor time where it was even on wine even on Wi-Fi it was sending a pretty poor quality of call to an Evo and so I was pretty disappointed overall with the camera quality over over the whole device whether it was a still or the video or the front-facing camera had a pretty much pretty bad experience overall overall the Google Nexus S 4G was a pretty enjoyable device however there were two glaring problems that I could not actually get past one of them was a data connection issue we're on a WiMAX connection I would often only get about a one megabit connection and on a 3G connection I would only get about a 100 to a 200 kilobit connection and so these are areas that normally I would see on an Evo a six to a seven megabit connection on WiMAX or a seven eight to 800 kilobit connection on 3G and so that was a big problem the other issue was the the battery uptime I there was one point I only saw about a little over six hours on a battery from a hundred percent down to zero which it was pretty unacceptable for a device that is running vanilla Gingerbread and really there's not a lot of stuff that was running in the background so I was pretty disappointed with that and overall those two issues would make it to where I just could not have this device on a daily basis thanks for tuning in to android authority and definitely check back with us in the future on future handset reviews