With its untouched version of Google's Android Gingerbread OS, Sprint's elegant Nexus S 4G for Sprint ($199.99 with contract) will appeal to Android purists and software developers. But otherwise, it falls short of smartphone category leaders in almost every way, making it a good try, but not a winner.
Physical Design, Calling, and Internet
Sprint's Nexus S 4G looks exactly like the T-Mobile Nexus S ($199, 4 stars) we reviewed back in December, and it's a very handsome phone. A slim, smooth black slab, the 4.6-ounce Nexus measures 4.9 by 2.5 by .44 inches (HWD), with no visible buttons on its face and a rich 4-inch, 800-by-480 Super AMOLED screen. The display looks terrific, with pure blacks and deep colors, but Samsung's current top-of-the-line phones such as the unlocked Samsung Galaxy S II ($799, 4 stars) come with Super AMOLED Plus screens, with even better colors.
Press the Power button on the side, and the standard four Android action buttons light up near the bottom of the handset. The phone has a very slight "chin" at the bottom that curves up towards your face, and the back is smooth, black plastic. It's quality plastic, though, and the build feels very solid all around.
The Nexus S 4G is a surprisingly poor voice phone. Its biggest problem is RF reception: I consistently got weaker reception on this phone than on a Samsung Epic 4G ($249, 4 stars) in the same location. Voice quality was harsh, with the occasional dropout and a very quiet speakerphone. Transmissions through the mic sounded a bit thready, and the speakerphone sounded tinny. At least the phone worked very well with my Aliph Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4.5 stars), including activating voice dialing.
The reception problem carries over to Internet speeds, too. The Nexus S 4G works on Sprint's 3G and 4G networks, and it's licked the standby battery-life problem that the first generation of 4G WiMAX phones had; In my tests, I was able to eke out 6 hours and 6 minutes of talk time on the phone and well more than a day of standby. The phone also works as a tethered modem and a Wi-Fi hotspot. But download speeds were noticeably slower than the Epic 4G. Testing with the Ookla Speedtest app, I got an average of 2.12Mbps down and 610Kbps up on the Nexus, and 6.23Mbps down and 475Kbps up on the Epic.
The reception problems are a pity, because the Nexus's Google Voice integration is pretty neat. You can port your Sprint number directly to Google Voice to get voicemail transcriptions and make international calls at discounted rates. Google's Talk app now includes video chat which works with the 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, but I found it to be full of hiccups and audio/video sync issues when we tested it. But none of this matters if you can't connect at all.
The Nexus S 4G also integrates Near field communication (NFC), a fairly useless technology (at least in the U.S.) that banks and credit card companies have been promising would be part of a mobile-payment system for years. So far, it hasn't happened.
Android, Multimedia, and Conclusions
The Nexus S 4G runs Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" on a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor, the same CPU used in the Samsung Epic 4G. That's cutting-edge, for last year. The current state of the art is moving to dual-core phones such as Sprint's upcoming HTC EVO 3D. Gingerbread didn't seem to offer much of a performance boost over the Froyo OS on the Epic, but that's fine; the phone feels sprightly.
As a Nexus phone, this handset should get updates from Google more quickly than other Android devices. That remains to be seen, of course; Sprint still has to approve the updates, but at least they don't have to go through a phone manufacturer. The Nexus runs more than 150,000 Android apps, and it's refreshingly totally free of bloatware, even from Sprint.
The Nexus S 4G has no memory card slot, instead relying on about 14GB of on-board storage. The video player lacks XVID and DIVX support, and won't play HD videos even in supported MPEG4 and AAC file formats. Our H.264 sample file looked jerky during playback. I had more luck with the elegant music player, which handles all the expected, unprotected formats over wired or Bluetooth headphones.
The 5-megapixel camera takes sharp, but washed-out-looking photos with blown-out bright areas. Indoors, there's some blur caused by slow (0.8-second) shutter speeds. The camcorder mode captures smooth 720-by-480 video indoors and out.
If you're looking for a top-of-the-line, full-touch-screen Sprint Android phone, wait for the HTC EVO 3D. If you prefer a QWERTY keyboard, the HTC Evo Shift 4G ($199, 4 stars) and Samsung Epic 4G are both excellent choices. Just getting started with Android? The LG Optimus S (Free, 4 stars) is a great pick, and it's free with a contract.
There are still reasons to get the Nexus S 4G, especially if you're an Android software developer who requires the latest, purest version of the OS. But the Nexus S 4G is neither a budget phone nor top-of-the-line, and its poor voice and data performance left me uneasy in the end.
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