Review: NEXUS S, Best Android Phone To Date!

Android Smartphones have come a long way.  I remember when I got the G1 in the beginning, I thought to myself, this phone is significant to the mobile world but I'm not impressed.  Last Christmas, when we got the original Nexus One, I felt it was much polished but it didn't blow me away.

Over the summer, when we got the HTC EVO 4G, I started to feel like Android OS and hardware is getting serious... especially with the support for Flash animation via Froyo 2.2 build. This year, when I picked up the NEXUS S for the first time, I was blown away.  This phone is polished!

In terms of performance, the HTC EVO 4G has always been impressive, in a heavily modified Camaro SS kind of a way.  Its fast, powerful but bulky.  With the NEXUS S, it feels more like a refined sports sedan like the BMW 335is.  First impression, LCD is crystal clear, the touchscreen and feedback is precise and the phone is light and thin.  Samsung did an amazing job with the hardware and Google's Gingerbread 2.3 is the pennicle of mobile OS.  With an all-star support around the OS, GMail, Google Maps 5.0 (released today), Google Talk, Account Sync, this phone is ready for action right out of the box (no wires needed).

I haven't played around with the features too much, but the camera speed and quality is comparable to my iPhone 4.  I already downloaded Google Maps 5.0 and will try out the offline cache mode.  This feature would have been Amazing for my last trip to Barcelona and will pay dividends for all my future trips abroad.  So far, the NEXUS S has been the best designed mobile phone to date.  Google is definitely setting newer standards for its vision on Android and with the embedded NFC chip, mCommerce is going to be very different in the near term.