New smart-phone

Due to certain circumstances (shattered my Nexus 4 :P), I had to get a new smart-phone. I had already pre-chosen my make and model after testing a buddy's Nexus 5.

:) Massively content with CPU and memory performance, coupled with 4G (LTE) network-capabilities; a definite must-have for superusers and devs :D

It is driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.26GHz Quad-Core processor coupled with an Adreno 330 GPU supplemented by 2GB of LPDDR3-1600 RAM, 16 or 32GB internal storage and an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera with OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) and an 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera.

It is also a rather great smart-phone for those who are tired of the typical bloatware (mostly user interface additions / modifications / replacements, and some resource-heavy services) on manufacturer-branded sets (Samsung, HTC, Sony, etc.).

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"About" menu-page on Android L.

I wasn't in any way disgusted when it got upgraded to Android 5.x "Lollipop", also known as "Android L". But the 5.0.1-bugfix was dearly appreciated after struggling with battery-trouble on 5.0.

Software update popup on Android L.

Additions and modifications:

• GUI-modifications (there were a few, notice the navigation-buttons on the screenshots)
• new and better security-features
• and function-rewrites (I'm used to it, been using Android since v1.5).

Actually I was really impressed by the speed and performance of the totally re-written runtime format : ART (AndroidRunTime), which replaced DALVIK (from earlier Android-versions 1.5.x to 4.4.x) in v5.x and up.

Samsung Nexus S

--// Samsung Nexus S \\--

My next tech-upgrade, is the cutting edge smart-phone Samsung Nexus S.

As a collaboration between Samsung and Google, it's the next-step innovation in smart-phone technology.

My first Android-phone was the developer-phone HTC Magic ( non-Google branded B-revision ). It was a barebones Android-system without any major UI additions like HTCs newer Desire-models  (Sense UI).

From what I can gather, Nexus S is like the previous Nexus phone with updated components and firmware. Pretty much an updated developer-phone for Google's latest Android-platform: v2.3 "Gingerbread".

With an up-2-date CPU of 1GHz, codenamed "Hummingbird" ( ARM Cortex A8 ), the Nexus S is multitask-capable. Making it the most powerful Android-phone at the moment. The ARM Cortex A8 chip includes a co-processor: the PowerVR SGX 450 GPU for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 for enhanced 2D/3D mobile graphics and animation.

As a superuser, my previous phones have all lacked enough memory-capacity for my userload. The Magic had 192MB of userland-accessible memory, my current Desire-phone has 150MB userland-accessible memory.

Both Magic and Desire has expandable storage by using a microSD memory card slot. Magic can handle cards of up to 16GB capacity and Desire can handle up to 32GB capacity. The only problem with external memory storage is read/write-times while using externally stored applications, which at times would entail a lot of loading-time when using data-heavy applications. Instead of just boosting and mostly utilizing the userland-accessible memory that is incorporated into the chipset.

With the Nexus S they have eliminated these problems as the userland-accessible memory is a 15GB iNAND-partition :D It really doesn't bother me that the memory is iNAND and that it doesn't sport a microSD slot, in my experience, phones and memory cards don't always work all that well together ( mostly because microSD cards doesn't handle rapid mounting/unmounting good at all in my experience ).

I'm looking forward to getting my new smart-phone, and can't wait to play with new features and functions :p

Addition, april 23rd:

I have now been tinkering with the Samsung Nexus S for a few days, and I am one happy techie :)

It is excactly like I imagined it to be by reading the published specs online. Allthough the user-land accessible memory-partition wasn't 15GB, it was more like 14GB. And with one 1GB user-land accessible system-partition to support the restricted 1GB nternal Android-system.

512MB of dedicated Mobile DDR with the PowerVR gpu really boosted the animation speed and look. Even the startup-logo is pure eye-candy :p Google-logo fading into a Nexus "X" symbol animated with colored spiral-lines, niiice! :)

I can even store all the games I've bought from Android-market without worrying about slowing the device down like I had to with the Desire. All apps are installed, all my games, utilities, etc. And I haven't even used one gigabyte completely yet :D

Yay! Woohoo! Awesomesauce! ^_^