Samsung Galaxy Nexus

It's been a wild day in Android land. Earlier this morning, Motorola and Verizon pulled back the curtain on the sleek, gorgeous, and positively anorexic Motorola Droid Razr, only to have the spotlight stolen by the double-whammy of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS.


Now, Samsung spent most of the day tripping over its own leaks with regards to the looks and specs of the phone, but that didn't dampen our admiration any. It's a phone that any carrier would be proud to offer, from the HD screen and 1.2GHz dual-core processor to the 1080p HD video capture and playback, to the barometer and NFC chip embedded within.


The phone is bound for the U.S. and parts of Asia and Europe, starting in November.


(SCREEN)

It starts with a huge 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD display (1280 x 720 pixel resolution.) Samsung makes some of the best screens on the market, with colors that pop, and a way of reproducing light that uses no power on black. That's better for battery life and also tends to improve contrast.


Although there is HD resolution, the screen size verges on the enormous, so there's a chance that pixel density may not be the absolute highest around, nor the absolute sharpest or clearest, but do expect some impressive screen quality.

(CAMERA)

Now, it's true that the number of megapixels can only take you so far, and the camera's light sensor and software processing also plays a hand. However, Samsung already has phones with great 8-megapixel cameras on the market--the entire Galaxy S II lineup--so this 5-megapixel camera feels like a backtrack. Still, Android 4.0's new camera software could make up for it, and could even surpass the 8-megapixel camera in image quality and photographic satisfaction, but this is a deep hands-on test for another day. Samsung also boasts that there's no shutter lag.